Could India actually be better tourists?

1. They have been excellent tourists, that’s for sure. So good in fact that I feel they deserve a reworking of that joke about a new guidebook called “Handcuffs”. Here goes:

   Hey, did you hear that King Cricket has written an article giving a metaphorical round of applause to a group of Indian cricketers, and has called this article “Handcuffs”?

   Yes, it’s for tourists.

2. The advertisement board behind Kohli says “Madhu”, which in Sanskrit means liquor. Which is probably what Kohli needs now.

3. Cook’s off.

   As in, has retired.

   1. *Cook off!

      Let the search for not one but two test openers commence!

      1. Interested to know what the ECB’s next excuse for not playing Rory Burns will be.

      2. “Are they saying ‘Boo’, or ‘Boo-urns’?”

      3. He’s a keeper, isn’t he? You’d think they’d be champing at the bit to get him in.

      4. And a Surrey player to boot. Perhaps he said something rude about one of Colin Graves’ ties.

      5. Because of all the inevitable ‘Rory burns another review’ when given out LBW and challenges unsuccessfully puns

   2. I don’t like that he’s retiring so “early” (32), there are chaps who might replace him who are older than him. Someone who’s been that good before and still has time on their side to turn things around is allowed a fallow year. He sounds like he has been mulling over retiring for some time, which makes me wonder whether he has mentally got stuck in a rut, ended up applying extra pressure to himself, and then thrived even less under the weight of it.

      1. He’s 33.

      2. Cooked should have dropped to one-drop when he was the captain.
         Now it is too late & Root’s call

      3. @sam

         Damn, that must make me one year older too…

   3. Massive respect from India. Great debut, great career and a good call to retire.

4. If India let Cook score a retirement-postponing daddy hundred then they’ll be the best tourists ever by my book. Though the fact I have such little faith that Cook would actually take advantage of the offer probably vindicates his decision to go.

5. He’s been a choirboy at a major cathedral. He’s been a test cricket captain.

   What’s next on his list of unbelievably middle class things to do? I mean, he’ll be captain at the golf club, that goes without saying. He’ll become a magistrate, and have four children. But these are relatively common middle class things. He excelled in his two main middle class choices, what is he going to excel at next?

   1. Fox slaughtering?

      1. Deer slaughtering.

      2. Capybara slaughtering?

      3. Excellent suggestions. What about becoming MP for the constituency of Killingham-in-the-Fields?

      4. That’s more of a job for Strauss I’d have thought.

   2. Please allow me to assist.

      Cook should become a non-executive director of a major financial institution, for example Fleeceham Good & Proper Asset Management. He might earn some £150,000 per annum for this very part time role – which represents a modest but respectable hourly rate of some £4,000 to £5,000.

      He should also take a senior role in a Livery Company – such as the Master of the Woolmen’s Company or Prime Warden of the Worshipful Company of Saddlers.

      1. That is so completely correct, Ged.

         Nice work, but tell me, how come you know so much about the middle class lifestyle? I’ve always had you down as quiet aristocracy.

      2. Aristocracy? Me?

         Cripes.

         My early life bears a passing resemblance to that of Mr Cook – middling sort parents, scholarship boy blah blah. Cook was awarded his scholarship for middle class pursuits (music and cricket) – mine was awarded for a far more oikish reason than that (academic).

         Admittedly, I now indulge my idling time pursuing music and cricket despite showing pitiful talent at either. This might, superficially, be mistaken for an aristocratic approach to such matters…

         …but I was and ever have been a player, not a gentleman. I cite in evidence the following Ogblog match report, recently crafted regarding a 1983 fixture in which I “appeared”:

         http://ianlouisharris.com/1983/06/21/my-thanks-for-coming-tfc-keele-festival-week-match-21-june-1983/

         “Quiet aristocracy”. Oh you really are the end, Bert.

6. It’s weird how little I care about Cook going, given how good he was and for how long. I don’t dislike him at all, but I just have no attachment either. He can go off and be a sheep farmer or whatever.

   Can we recall Trescothick?

   1. It’s now time to face up to reality.

      We need an opening batsman cloning program. Kidnap Tresco, Strauss, Vaughan and Cook, then harvest their DNA. We have no other solution.

   2. I was reading the Cricinfo article about Cook’s retirement and they had some numbers to go with it. You’d be surprised to see how often he was merely decent.
      He only had 2 ‘great’ years. Otherwise he has averaged in the 40s most of the time which is good but not great.
      Definitely not England’s greatest batsman (poll on the BBC).

7. I have a question, following on from Cook’s announcement. It is this.

   What reason is there now to select Cook for the final test?

   1. Where else will they find someone to score 15 and 3 at such short notice?

   2. From a future point of view, none at all. From a right thing to do, Joe’s a good egg point of view, every reason.

   3. I was hoping to read that he’d retired with immediate effect – series won, chance for new guy in home dead rubber, et al.

      1. I do hope they’ll take the opportunity to blood somebody new at three.

         They won’t.

   4. There isn’t one. Cook should have retired after the winter season and allowed a new opener to settle into the team (and the team selection to settle around the new opener(s)) during the home season.
      Now they have to get someone new and the first test that person plays will be in Sri Lanka. It’s ridiculous.

8. I’ll miss Cookie. There’s a couple of other people on the move today including DJ Chris Evans. I never forgave him for talking over Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Freebird.

9. I wish we would win a series in England, Australia, SA or NZ. Not all the time, just once in a while. Every fourth series or so.
   As someone else commented, this team is worse than the ones that would go overseas and just roll over and die. This team gives you hope. Its a faint hope, but its there. Its draining.

   1. Seriously. I know nothing about cricket, but I thought they’d do better.

   2. They did win in England three series ago…

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