Posted by JP Duminy had initially been sentenced to a full Test tour of England but has been released early due to good behaviour and bad batting.
Duminy has been around a while. He made his one-day international debut in 2004 and his Test debut in 2008. Somehow he has played 46 Test matches, which is both more and fewer than you would imagine.
He has at various times been a batsman, a quasi-all-rounder and just a name on the team sheet. He averages 32 with the bat and 38 with the ball.
Newspapers have not for the most part expanded on his release from the South Africa squad, so we’re unclear whether it was intended as a kick up the arse, an act of mercy, or a merciful kick up the arse.
There’s also the possibility that it’s an out-and-out discardation, in which case ‘release’ seems even more euphemistic than normal.
If you did a venn diagram, would there be any overlap between ‘released’ and ‘axed’?
Released:
National Lottery balls
Engelbert Humperdinck (please?)
Lizzie Borden
Axed:
The National Lottery live show
George Washington’s dad’s favourite tree
Lizzie Borden’s step-mum
Some Combination of the Two:
Frankie Goes to Hollywood
That’s a cracking post, Bert. The one that confused me is the National Lottery live show – I had no idea it had departed from our screens. Well everyone else’s screens, since I don’t make use of one of my own. I just assume that the TV schedules are more or less fixed in their historical state circa 2000, but Google assures me that the Lottery show has indeed disappeared to Youtube. Wonder how many people watch it?
I had never heard of Lizzie Borden, so thanks for that Bert! It seems to me that the most remarkable aspect of her case is the jury that acquitted her:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/Lizzie_Borden_Trial_Jury.jpg
One would think they’d’ve moustached and bearded her all the way to the noose but no, they let her go! Them were gentle walruses after all.
Hell’s teeth! That’s one proper set of chaps right there.
I’m going to print and frame that photo, put it up on the wall in our hall. Then, when anyone asks who they are, I can make up some story about one of them being an ancestor of mine. The board of a firm of merchant bankers, setting off to explore The Upper Congo, Colonial Office civil servants in Lucknow, The Honourable Society of Derbyshire Cheesemen, the Rawalpindi branch of Stonewall.
I think I’ll adopt 4th from right, back row, check jacket, mad eyes. I’ll call him Uncle Bodley, short for Baudelaunce, second cousin of my maternal great-grandmother. He was with Gordon at Khartoum, you know.
Ah Bert – you’re so intimidatingly cleverly funny. Never change.
Your Uncle Bodley is fourth from the LEFT, Bert, not fourth from the right. Please try to be more accurate when constructing your family fictions
Most certainly the maddest look of the twelve and well done you for bagsying him first. I wanted him.
None of my ancestors come close to looking that crazy, although my Great Uncle Max, with a double bass much bigger than his small self, looks a bit different and by all accounts was rather good at constructing a fictional past for himself when necessary:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/ianlharris/10806645275/in/album-72157637567656963/
What raffish coves are these, Ged? All but three are bare-lipped, and even the moustachioed ones are several bushes short of a thatch. And in the company of a woman! In public! Without a moustache! O tempora, o mores!
It doesn’t surprise me one bit that you are related to such as these, Ged. These are not Men of Empire like my Uncle Bodley. They would not be able to single-handedly lift the Siege of Mafeking like he did, with only stout heart, pride in the king and two-thousand heavily armed men to sustain him. It’s no wonder we lost the last test if this is the quality of our manhood these days.
It’s true, Bert. Great Uncle Max could not lift the Siege of Mafeking single-handed.
But he could life a double-bass considerably larger than himself, which is an achievement of sorts.
I think those coves are probably a subset of David De Groot’s Piccadilly Orchestra and probably they are in Great Yarmouth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXnbKZMHfHQ
My mother used to use the term “coves” a lot; I’m not sure I’ve come across it since.
I do realise that I and my family have been a great disappointment – in my case both in sport and music; in Great Uncle Max’s case, only a disappointment in sport; he spawned a line of fine musicians.
Maybe he’s been ‘released’ to go play some T20 cricket instead of hanging around the squad?
fuckin why I love KC. short n sharp.
The Saffers had ludicrously high expectations of JP at one time. He wasn’t just going to replace Kallis, he was going to be better than Kallis.
Just think of all the England players who were going to be the next Botham and crumbled under the weight of that expectation.
Crumbled under the weight of Botham?
The weight of Kallis has a similar sense of proportion to it.