England

Flower v Pietersen and the potential implications for the relocation of our bathroom

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‘He goes or I go’ – this is supposedly the stance being taken by Andy Flower, according to Mike Selvey in the Guardian. We almost wish there were a sixth Test so that we could continue talking about cricket – but of course that would merely postpone this sort of stuff. It wouldn’t prevent it.

Let’s naively take the story at face value, ignoring the mechanisms and motives of the press. We’re doing this for no reason other than it gives us an excuse to write about our bathroom.

Kevin Pietersen may well be a pain in the arse; he may well disrupt the rest of the squad to some extent; but if a ‘him or me’ ultimatum is the best method you can come up with for resolving such things, it doesn’t bode well for the rest of your strategising.

In our house, the bathroom is downstairs, next to the kitchen. It’s a stupid layout, we don’t want it there and there have been many suggestions as to how to move it upstairs. No plan is perfect, but we’ll eventually go with the one that is most satisfactory. What we won’t do is dynamite the existing bathroom and just leave it at that.

You need a bathroom. If you’re in charge, your job is to find a way of having one in the house.

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27 comments

  1. Surely the advantage of a downstairs bathroom is that you can watch ‘Bangkok Chick-boys’. If you angle the mirror by the door.

    2. hey, i’m in the uk and i have no idea what sam is talking about. (but then, i work silly hours and don’t watch much tv)

  2. If you are naively accepting the Selvey story at face value, then surely the real issue in that story is that KP is about to go into the next IPL auction round and is bound to come back with some unacceptable requests for absence from first class cricket ahead of the test matches each summer.

    In your bathroom analogy, this would be the equivalent of your bathroom only being available to you some of the time – on bath days admittedly, but (partly as a result of your bathroom’s absence on the days leading up to bath days) the shower and bath don’t work very well on most bath days.

    In those circumstances, you might indeed resort to dynamite and relocate your bathroom in double-quick time. Unless you believe that, these days, all bathrooms are kinda like that?

    1. Or you could move house. To a house with a nicer, more convenient bathroom. Ok, maybe it’s a bit smaller and you don’t get to travel as much. But the sink has just been re-modelled and Rikki Clarke lives there.

      What was the question?

  3. I don’t get why everyone needs to be best mates to play cricket. I have this theory that team spirit, bonding etc is all pure guff, with no tangible impact on performance.

    I say let’s dynamite the bathroom, the kitchen, the bedroom and leave just the outhouse at the back (Andy Flower). Then we shall, Ikea style, bring in “modules” and assemble when neccessary. It will be cheaper, easier to take apart when it’s served it’s useful life and will get the job done.

  4. It appears Peitersen has to literally battle opposition bowlers, his own team-mates and coach, and his own national media to succeed and perform. My hats off to him. He still manages to be the best batsman in the team given all that. I wonder how much better he could have fared if he had a bit less opposition from his own side.

  5. There are, and have always been, plenty journalists who seem to be constantly trying to engineer KP’s removal from the team, with this story or that story about his selfishness / lifestyle / IPL contract / mobile phone use (not batting average, strangely). They are aided and abetted in this by some in the ECB as well. The ostensible reason for this seems to be a distaste for foreign players playing for England, a desire for sporting purity that seems to be forgotten when discussing Trott, Smith, Hick and Lamb. Clearly the reason they dislike him is personal.

    There’s nothing wrong with disliking someone, of course. I myself intensely dislike Giles Clarke, Plato, Lorraine Kelly and left-handed people. But I would suggest they need to think carefully before carrying on with this. Had they got him out at the start of his career, that would have been that – he’d have faded away into obscurity. But now his profile is such that as soon as he retires he will inevitably get a job with Sky, and therefore will be hanging around with them all FOREVER. And we will have to listen to him.

    1. Bert, are you saying that you’ve moved the bathroom upstairs at the expense of your bedroom and now have to sleep standing in the shower? I’m confused.

    2. My downstairs bathroom is a beautiful arrangement, manufactured abroad, with all the latest in style and effectiveness. But it will never, never, NEVER be moved upstairs, not over my dead body. No, upstairs I have an English-style bathroom made by Armitage Shanks in 1953, coronation year don’t you know. It’s useless, as you might expect.

      The only downside to this policy is that every now and again I nearly drown in a pile of my own shit.

    3. Speaking of drowning in your own shit, Mike Selvey has been suspiciously quiet on Twitter today.

  6. Michael Vaughan has waded in on this one:

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/cricket/25649105

    At first I thought he was suggesting that you need both the upstairs and the downstairs bathrooms. Interesting thought. Had you considered two bathrooms, KC?

    But then he talks about bashing the two together in a rather incomprehensible way. I think he might be suggesting a sort-of bathroom duplex. Fascinatingly original architectural approach, if that is what Vaughan means. Had you considered a bathroom duplex, KC?

    What a great captain and original thinker Michael Vaughan is/was. Shame that he hasn’t figured out that Alistair Cook is no captain at all and desperately needs to be relieved of the responsibilities in order to focus on what he does best…

    …singing in the choir…

    …I mean, batting.

  7. I still think Pietersen is the best candidate for captain of this side. If not him, they should give the job to I Ron. Or perhaps Fabian Cowdrey.

    These people are adults, they should be able to work in the same team as KP, even if they don’t like him. How much teamwork do you really need to play cricket? You field where you’re told to and you don’t deliberately run out your partners (unless they’re Boycott).

    You don’t have to be best mates – and it’s probably best if you aren’t, so you don’t end up with a clique of tosspot bowlers isolating your best batsman (talking hypothetically, obviously).

  8. The best way to deal with this situation is to get rid of specialty rooms, and make every room multi-functional so it does a bit of everything. It doesn’t have to cater to one need perfectly – who needs that? You could have a tub in the kitchen where you soak while the eggs are cooking. Now, you might have to get up midway, slip and fall, and flip the omelet, resulting in a shitty bath and a shitty breakfast because you still managed to burn one side of said omelet. But you’d have a bunch of rooms that can do everything. EVERYTHING. Surely everyone can see the merit in that.

    1. Indeed, DC, the days of one-dimensional rooms are surely over. We should have three-dimensional rooms throughout the house.

      Three-dimensional rooms give far more room for manoever.

      Have you considered installing a three-dimensional bathroom, KC, or is that another bright idea that hasn’t even reached your sketch pad yet?

    2. We have heard about these three-dimensional rooms, but we thought to ourself: “Why risk it?”

    3. Jacque Kallis would build a kitchen / bathroom / sitting room / bedroom with a super absorbent floor and non-drip bath, he’s going to put a lot of kitchen and bathroom fitters out of business. Maybe if Pieterson could get the tiling done he promised Andy Flower would be able to move on.

  9. Does that second sentence imply that you won’t be talking about ODIs or T20s? How formatist of you.

    2. We didn’t say cover in depth KC, merely mention.

      Besides, when this summer I had a choice between watching Mahela and Sanga in partnership in an ODI playing shots of incredible loveliness, and watching England dead bat full tosses in a Test (negative cricket anyone?) guess which I preferred to watch?

      Some smartarse will inevitably answer “watching England dead bat full tosses in a Test.” As you do.

    4. Think that was James Faulkner, wasn’t it? And don’t remember too many full-tosses since then. Not sure the Aussies should be considering handing out refunds for their own relentless bowling.

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