Did you see Shoaib Malik flat-bat his own stumps like an absolute gimboid?

1. That was a glorious dismissal.

   1. It really was.

2. Is that a Red Dwarf rererence?

   1. Technically, although you could probably argue it’s become common parlance.

      Or at least it has for 40-year-old British men.

3. Fact check: Shoaib Malik first played for Pakistan Under-19s in Dec 1996 aged 14 years and 10 months, so technically he was one of the younger ones

   1. Yes, technically. We should have made it clear that it was very much Swann’s opinion that Shoaib was “one of the older ones” for Pakistan during the 1998 Under-19 World Cup, at a time when he was officially… 15.

      1. Was he really 15 though? I see Afridi has admitted he is actually about 56.

      2. That is exactly the point we’re apparently being far too obtuse in making.

4. A school friend of mine, aged around 12, did that in the nets, except that he backed away so far the first point of contact was the leg stump and he demolished all three. At that point we decided that cricket wasn’t a career option for him. Maybe we were a bit hasty in that decision.

   1. Definitely. The All-Three-Er has just this minute become something we desperately want to see at the elite level.

5. I couldn’t believe that… like the commentator at the time, I thought at first he’d been bowled – but the ball was nowhere near it really. Absolute blinder. (Like you say, surprising it doesn’t happen more often.)

   A propos of nothing much – I am a British man in my 40s and I don’t think I have ever heard the term “gimboid” before… regional thing maybe? (Then again I didn’t watch Red Dwarf)

   1. “In my 40s” is probably the key element that explains your non-watching of Red Dwarf.

      If you were 38-42, we feel confident you’d have watched it and that gimboid would consequently be an integral part of your vocabulary.

      We honestly didn’t even know that’s where it came from until we googled it this morning. We just thought it was a normal word.

      1. Probably right. My wife is a few years younger than I am, and she used to watch it when we first got together.

         Didn’t have all this frivolity when I were a young lad, back in the 17th Century…

      2. Just remembered Cat’s alter ego, Duane Dibbly-(Dobbly).

   2. That makes Mr Flibble very cross.

6. Well, moving your body as far from Mark Wood in full flow without actually being able to hold a whispered conversation with Jos Buttler is a reasonable reaction.

   The stupid ones are the players who charge at the fast bowlers.

7. (We swear they’re better at chasing 350 than 200 by this point)

   That sounds flippant but its… kinda true? They are better in high scoring games than low scoring games.

   1. Yes, that’s it. They’re a great flat pitch side as we wrote once.

8. Not having grown up in the UK, and not yet being 38, I never did watch Red Dwarf, but I like the word.

   And yes, the ‘play the ball late’ is taken to ridiculous extremes these days.

9. I too had to look up the word gimboid and I’m pretty sure I had never encountered it before.

   I like it.

   I have spent most of my life believing that there is no English word that exactly substitutes for schlemiel…

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlemiel

   …which is still sort-of true, but there is a good English slang word: gimboid.

   I shall use it. Thank you.

   1. Pleased to be introduced to the word ‘schlemiel.’ I use the Yiddish ‘schmutter’ quite a lot.

   2. Do you tend to use the word schmutter literally, to describe bits of rag you use, perhaps in your line of work, or do you use the word colloquially to describe the way that someone dresses, e.g., on seeing me entering the Lord’s pavilion wearing my latest sharp linen suit, you say, “nice bit of schmutter”?

      1. Exactly the latter.

      2. I approve.

10. Chris Jordan making some things happen in Northamptonshire today

    1. . . . and old uns’ Anderson and Onions proving they’re still as hard as bell metal in Div 2.

       1. Ian bell metal?

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