Posted by Everything’s amazing and fun and positive under the new England captain. Remember that previous guy? Man was he a miserable arsehole. Didn’t have a clue, did he? Whatever happened to him?
Sometimes you accidentally reveal something about the past.
We remember being on this cookery course in Thailand once with a handful of other tourists. During one of the breaks, one of them asked another if she was Dutch.
If we remember correctly, the woman was actually Canadian, but she wanted to know why she came across as Dutch.
“Oh you can quite often spot a Dutch person,” said the girl, who was from the Netherlands herself. “If you see a dark-haired couple camping and their kids are blonde, they’ll be Dutch.”
If she’d left it there, it would have been a bit weird but okay. Instead, she proceeded to run through a whole load of other scenarios and fine detail. Much of it was pretty funny, in the way these pet theories often are.
It came across like a stand-up comedy routine and towards the end, with everyone giggling away, she emphasised that the most important quality was that a Dutch person would always, pretty much without fail, “look a bit wrong somehow”.
And then we all sat in uncomfortable silence trying to work out if any of the other qualities she’d identified potentially applied to the Canadian woman or whether this was perhaps the only one.
“There’s been a good vibe,” said James Anderson after Ben Stokes’ and Brendon McCullum’s first match in charge. “I’ve enjoyed the positivity.”
“It’s been one of the most fun weeks we’ve had as a team,” said Stuart Broad.
Everyone seems aware of this. Moeen Ali has said he’d be open to unretiring. Adil Rashid is keen to play.
This is all highly lovely and everything, but when we hear these comments and see these developments, all we can think of is what they say about the preceding years.
This is the problem with saying how great and amazing things are now. There’s an implication that things really weren’t that great and amazing before.
It’s pretty obvious that England weren’t having a load of fun when they were losing every single game – and fair enough really. The issue comes when players start fiddling about with cause and effect and suggesting that performances are improving BECAUSE the team has started having fun. There may well be truth in that, but it also kind of implies that all of the previous losing was because Joe Root and Chris Silverwood were making everyone miserable.
You can get away with the Silverwood bit because he’s off in Sri Lanka now, trying to deal with a very different palette of problems. But Root’s right there. He’s right there in the same changing room as you, listening to you imply that his captaincy made the team more rubbish than it actually was.
This works another way too. It’s not just comments made about the present that can alter perceptions of the past; comments made about the past can also reflect on the present.
In the wake of Root’s latest hundred, Ben Stokes suggested that the batter perhaps felt like he’d had “the weight of the world lifted from his shoulders” by passing on the captaincy.
So where’s that weight now, Atlas?
(Point of order: Atlas didn’t actually carry the world; he held up the heavens, which are often depicted as a celestial sphere in art. We wouldn’t especially want to be condemned to carrying either ourself. We struggled enough with a very large flagstone yesterday. The celestial sphere is presumably pretty gassy and therefore maybe not that heavy, but by the beard of Zeus, it’s got to be unwieldy, hasn’t it?)
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The juxtapositon of Stokes’ and Root’s facial expressions pretty much says it all about “foot-in-mouth”, or rather “feet”. More please.
By the way. Your “point of order” about Atlas is also much appreciated in this world that increasingly upholds ignorance over knowledge. Ta.
I love the idea of Atlas pulling the old, “it’s not that it’s too heavy, it’s just awkward to carry” routine. “And I’ve got a bit of a dodgy back. Like an England seamer.”
“Why did no one think to give the celestial sphere handles?”
‘To me, to Zeus’
It wouldn’t be a celestial SPHERE if it had handles would it? It would be a celestial kettlebell or something.
Atlas would not come across as such a muscular hero if he was known for carrying the weight of some sort of celestial kettlebell on his shoulders…indeed with handles it would be pointless – even foolish – to carry the weight on one’s shoulders.
I was buying in to your thesis, KC, until your handles suggestion. Now I am wracked with doubt, to go along with my own brand of back-knack..
This is exactly the kind of keeping-us-honest scrutiny the comments section is for.
You’re right. Absolutely not handles. Perhaps some kind of celestial sphere harness then?
A sphere is a surface of genus-0. Adding a handle increases the genus by 1, which as any fule no, makes it a torus. With two handles it becomes a genus-2 surface, colloquially known as a double torus.
A Klein Bottle is also a genus-2 surface, but of course it is non-orientable, and so not topologically equivalent to a double torus. This is the reason why a double-torus can exist in three dimensional space without self-intersection, unlike the Klein Bottle. I mean, imagine how stupid it would be if the skies were self-intersecting, even if that would make them easier to hold.
I was just going to say what Bert said, beat me to it!
A question for those more able than I, how it is possible to hold up a celestial sphere/kettlebell if it is ‘pretty gassy’. My mind is considering a celestial sphere, or mass, to be a number of solid objects that move within a casing of gas. Therefore, as gas is not a thing you are able to lift, hold or grasp, how is it possible for Zeus to do so, or has he got a flaw which allows him supernatural powers?
A Celestial sphere with a harness? Isn’t that effectively a backpack?
What size water bottles fit into the side pockets and is there room in the main compartment for all the Apple paraphernalia amongst, well, the other celestial stuff?
Reckon you could fit a fair bit inside the celestial sphere.
What need for water bottles when you have rain clouds on… well, on tap?
My geographical knowledge of celestial spheres is a little rusty, but wouldn’t they live above rain clouds and that? Or do celestial spheres encompass all other spheres and just leave a bit at the top, like an attic, where Zeus and all them other mad fellas live?
I think Zeus could at least reach down for the odd raincloud. I presume Hephaestos needs to reach down to deposit his thunderbolts that don’t go directly to his boss: he’s not chucking them down there willy-nilly is he?
…is he?
Watching the highlights of last night’s London derby from the Home of Corks.
As another ball flew over the ropes, Niall O’Brien (NOB to his friends) exclaimed ‘HALF A DOZEN!!’
Made me LOL out loud.
That’s so, so, so much better than ‘sixer’ or ‘maximum’.
I wonder if they’re still having fun. As the captain said – if you can’t enjoy conceding 550 against New Zealand, what can you enjoy?
If they enjoy bowling and fielding then jeez, they’re having a veritable feast!
They elected to field and succeeded in doing so all day.
Moeen Ali’s back…
…as in, returning…
https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/moeen-ali-confirms-reversal-of-test-retirement-ahead-of-pakistan-tour-1319586
…he hasn’t got ankylosing spondylitis or anything like that.
I know you don’t do requests, KC, but Moeen Ali’s back.
He was excellent on TMS comms this week. Very entertaining passive-aggressive tension between Mo and Sir A Cook.
Well let’s just wait and see what headline awaits should he actually get picked.
Mo and Sralistair are rapidly attaining double-act status after their BT work over the winter.