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We’d say that Chris Gayle’s biggest achievement today was looking like a relatively small person. The route to achieving this wasn’t easy. He first had to hit a double hundred and this then allowed him the opportunity to stand next to Ian Bishop at the post-match press conference.
Bishop appears to have spent his time since retirement growing, such that he now looks like a bigger than life-size version of a human – all in proportion but built to completely the wrong scale. We’re desperately hoping that England get to play the Windies and that James Taylor puts in a match-winning performance.
Shortly after Gayle had exited the pop-up stage, Jason Holder made an appearance. Miraculously, he was taller than Bishop, but looking at his spindly physique, it was obvious what had happened: someone had stretched him.
Also today, Shane Warne used the phrase ‘absolutely salmon trout’ to mean ‘out’. Combine this with all his talk of cherries, poles and globes and it’s obvious that the man is somehow entirely unfamiliar with the language of cricket.
Yep it’s part of the challenge of listening to commentators. Like Bumble’s “he’s a big unit”. No, Bumble the word you’re groping for is “man” as in “he’s a big man”.
Don’t get me onto “he’s got long levers”. Do they do basic English in evening classes?
I think in future all cricket press conferences should be conducted with interviewers who are either very tall or very small. Preferably they should be alternated in every match in a series so that the cricket watching world becomes confused as to how tall world cricketers are. It will provide a welcome distraction from the phrases of “momentum”, “expressing ourselves”, “brand of cricket”.
England could neuter this distraction by ‘fronting up’ either a very tall or very short interviewee from their pool of talented vertical extremes, depending on either who’d had the least bad match and/or height of interviewer.
Cricketers on the whole are so tall we lose perspective when we see relatively short players.
James Taylor, the titch archetype, is 1.68m tall, which is just shy of 5’7. That is short but not ridiculously short. My dad was 5’6, which in regular company was just a bit short. I am just shy of 5’9 – about average height for my age.
But when we see him alongside, say, Stuart Broad or Will Jefferson (illustrated), then Taylor looks minuscule.
http://xmedia.ex.ac.uk/wp/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/titch.jpg
Will Jefferson is, self-confessedly, 6’10-and-a-half. Charlie the Gent Malloy famously suggested that, at Jefferson’s height, it seems excessive to boast the half.
Still, if I sit in this room rambling on the web long enough, I might avoid an entire Haydos commentary stint. Ireland seem to be doing well enough without my company. And without the need for Haydos’s pearls of wisdom.
At the risk of dragging KC into the gutter, are all men not known to exaggerate when measuring anything in inches (not necessarily feet, as a rule)? Granted, Jefferson did appear to be a real and not cyber six-foot-ten-and-a-half. He should be nailed on for any Giants XI.
Ireland seem to be struggling in that tricky sub-300-vs-non-test-nation chase…
James Taylor is 5’7″?
Citation very much needed.
Source: I refuse to believe he’s taller than me.
The Guardian has previously said that even 5’6″ is an exaggeration (in the sense that he’s actually smaller still).
http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2012/jul/29/james-taylor-england-south-africa
Where is the Court of Arbitration for Sport when we need it?
Bert…
BERT!!
…ran up a huge bill and bankrupted the whole orphanage.
Eh, what, did someone call? Oh it’s you Ged, wanting clarification on the tricky issue of height. Well fortunately, this was all sorted out long ago (Crown Vs Lester Piggott). There are two official heights in sport, and indeed in life. There’s Perfect Height, classed as anything around 5’6″ ish. And then there’s Abnormally Tall, which is everyone else.
Anyway, today is your lucky day. The Court, also known as C – OAFS, is having a buy one get one free offer. This means that as well as the answer to the question you asked, you also get an answer to a question you didn’t ask. And your free answer is… No, a salmon trout is not a thing. It’s either a salmon or it’s a trout, unless it’s neither of course, which lots of things are. Salmon trout is like saying coffee tea, or Hayden communicator, or rugby football. Oh hang on, that’s a thing isn’t it? Jeez this is complicated.
Rugby football is two things. At least until they get rid of flankers and lineouts and ruin the good thing.
I watched a game of rugger many years ago during which Ian Jones (taller than 5’6) grew 2cm and then shrank back again. It said so on the telly. So it must be that James Taylor grows and shrinks in the same way.
I love that picture, Ged. Thanks for sharing. It reminds me of the infamous snap of the Peter Crouch/Shaun Wright-Phillips substitution.
1) Salmon trout is a perfectly acceptible name for the sea trout although i thought the rhyming slang was Wally Grout even snout in Cockney, never heard it used for out.
2) Coffee tea refers to herbal tea made from non-bean parts of the coffea (coffee plant).
3) Rugby football has RFU and RFL, i like one of them more than the other.
4) Lester Piggott was 5’8″ so too tall to be a jockey.
5) I’m watching Nabi and Naib bowling, is this the first combination to be an anagram?
Totally with you, Rus, salmon trout is not cockney rhyming slang for anything. Much too posh a fish for rhyming slang. I’m not convinced that Wally Grout is rhyming slang either, not least because the word “out” is pronounced “art” within the sound of Bow bells. Indeed I’ll hazard a guess that the word “out” doesn’t really have a rhyming slang phrase at all.
My mum claimed to have been born within the sound of Bow bells. Indeed she used to say so in “port wine and cut glass” tones resulting from the elocution lessons that were the fashion for aspiring working parents to buy for their kids in the 1930s.
As for the Nabi and Naib anagram, that is exactly the sort of important matter we should be discussing here on KC. Well spotted. I cannot think of another anagram pairing, but no doubt someone else will report in if there have been previous instances.
I do recall someone here noticing that the Trott/Root pairing had only three letters between two blokes, but that is not the same thing at all. Important, though. Nabi and Naib have a wasteful four letters between them, despite the anagram.
I bumped into a very tall cricketer in Port Elliot hotel today and when I said sorry he said ‘no worries’
It was Shaun Tate.
He may have said it because I did that gawping thing where it takes a few seconds to realise that though you recognise them it’s not because you know them.