Posted by Cricinfo have a headline describing Zimbabwe as ‘woeful’ after they were bowled out for 162 by New Zealand. However, Bangladesh were bowled out for 58 against West Indies. And they were at home.
Cricinfo’s editorial staff really need to get together and establish an adjective hierarchy. Like most people, we rate all events that happen in our life according to the Premier Manager II scale, which runs as follows:
- Fair (one to five stars)
- Good (one to five stars)
- Very Good (one to five stars)
- Superb
- Outstanding
- World Class
- Exceptional
- The Ultimate
But as you can see, there are obvious flaws in this system. We can go out and have a great meal, musing over our brandy whether it was ‘world class’ or ‘exceptional’, but what if we contract dysentry and the waiter punches us in the kidney? ‘Fair *’ seems rather generous in that situation.
We need an improved scale for evaluating poor performance and if Premier Manager II lets you down, where do you turn?
Maybe people could turn to the comments section of a post on kingcricket.co.uk…
meh
I submit ‘English’ as a suitable adjective for “beyond woeful”
How about, afflicted, agonized, anguished, appalling, awful, bad, calamitous, catastrophic, cruel, deplorable, disappointing, disastrous, disconsolate, disgraceful, distressing, doleful, dreadful, feeble, gloomy, grieving, grievous, grim, heartbreaking, heartrending, heartsick, hopeless, inadequate, lamentable, lousy, mean, miserable, mournful, paltry, pathetic, piteous, pitiable, pitiful, plaintive, poor, racked, rotten, shocking, sorrowful, sorry, tortured, tragic, unfortunate, unhappy, wretched.
I’ll leave you to sort out the hierarchy!
source: http://www.theasaurus.com
Think you’ve been busted as being someone who pronounces ‘thesaurus’ as if it’s a type of dinosaur because of that link.
I used to be quite good at spelling, but just lately its been abominable, alarming, appalling, atrocious, deplorable, depressing, dire, disgusting, distressing, dreadful, fearful, frightful, ghastly, grody, gruesome, grungy, harrowing, hideous, horrendous, horrible, horrific, horrifying, nasty, offensive, raunchy, repulsive, shocking, stinking, synthetic, tough, ugly, unpleasant, unsightly.
source: http://www.thesaurus.com
A flawless riposte.
I am a bit disturbed by the adjective Cricinfo plumped for in the end:
“Craven Bangladesh crash to nine-wicket defeat”
I don’t know what that means. Didn’t he used to present Blue Peter?
Does anyone know how John Craven became involved in Bangladeshi cricket? Sounds like a remarkable story…
What about using the Battrick levels?
useless
worthless
abysmal
woeful
feeble
mediocre
competent
respectable
proficient
strong
superb
quality
remarkable
wonderful
exceptional
sensational
exquisite
masterful
miraculous
phenomenal
elite
Or perhaps, Bangladish.
at the other end of the scale I propose ‘ Brutal Deluxe’.
Shite.
Marginally less shite than shite.
Good enough to avoid insults from your own mother, but no-one else.
Good enough for it not to be worthy of angry tweets from extremists.
Lindsay Lohan’s acting skills.
Satisfactory, but not acceptable.
Acceptable.
Exceeds expectations.
Owl.
Newt.
Gandalf.
Biblical.
Brutal Deluxe.
This is a good scale, Bastheram.
Brutal Deluxe has definitely taken hold, Daneel.
The only way I could’ve liked this list better was if Kallis preceded Shite and Sehwag succeeded Biblical.
Leslie
Turner
Craven
Its Friday and I can’t be arsed to work
Purves
Huq
Singleton
Noakes
Brutal Deluxe
Huq above Singleton, surely, but great scale.
No Ellis? For shame…
Daneel, I ommitted Ellis because I don’t know what to think about her questionable offspring.
I mean how would we feel about Len Hutton if Richard Hutton had gone on to record “Murder on the Dancefloor” rather than playing 5 tests in 1971? (thanks Wikipedia)
Huq above Singleton.
Do you have some photos?
Remember Katy Hill?
Man alive, thems were the days.
Perhaps whoever has the job of trying to produce a full-lenght highlights show of today’s game could pad it out with images of Blue Peter presenters through the years.
KC did you ever play PM2 as Halifax? As the only Good** team available they were the obvious choice, but I wonder whether it would have offended your Lancastrian sensibilities.
The long-term advantages of having Godfrey Obebo in our team did lead us to Halifax on occasion, what with the tragic and wrongful omission of Witton Albion on the spurious grounds that they weren’t in a league anyone had heard of.
Did you miss the Sehwag interview? Bangladesh are “ordinary”. 🙂
I thought you had it nailed eons ago: http://kingcricket.blogspot.com/search/label/angry%20or%20amazed
Chris
As a cricket writer, we’re not keen for Cricinfo to catch wind of that simple approach to match analysis.
They would produce a program to churn out articles along the lines of: “Bangladesh anger, Windies amaze” and dozens of spindly men in glasses with alcohol problems would instantly be rendered redundant.
Pterodactlys. Angry or Amazed. England beaten by some lads who just turned up. It’s all very retro round here at the moment.
I knew I’d seen something similar to this before…
http://scaryduck.blogspot.com/2010/12/on-scaryduckworth-lewis-method-for.html
Ajit Agarkar
Mohammed Sami
Chris Martin
Brett Lee
Dale Steyn
Wasim Akram
Andrew Caddick
Brutal Deluxe
Brutal Deluxe is clearly a win…
At the woeful end of the scale . . .
Genital Warts
Not just pants, but something worse you could find inside of them.
“Charlie Sheen”
Following housemonkey’s idea:
Charlie Sheen
Lindsay Lohan
ShahRukh Khan
Michael Caine
Marlon Brando
Audrey Hepburn
Natalie Portman
Brutal Deluxe
Charlie Sheen on top of Lindsay Lohan? Scarily likely.
Sell the sponsorship rights.
Kevin O’Brien produced a Hero Honda Brutal Deluxe knock last week.
AB de Villiers is in nPower Audrey Hepburn form.
Bangladesh put in a Durex Charlie Sheen performance. Wait, that doesn’t sound so bad…