Posted by Ged writes:
An annual tradition in my business is to have a day of County Championship cricket at Lord’s with Uncail Micheál, my Irish-American business partner. Uncail Micheál is a real stickler for spelling and grammar. Indeed, he has specifically become a stickler for English spelling and grammar; he was horrified when our last book was “translated” into American spelling and grammar for joint publication on both sides of the pond.
Uncail Micheál especially berates staff if they confuse the name spellings “Lloyds” (Lloyds TSB, the bank) with “Lloyd’s” (Lloyd’s of London, the insurance thingamajig), as that is not only a confusing misspelling but also an apostrophe aberration.
The early morning before one of our cricket days out tends to be a fairly fraught affair, with both of us trying to clear any urgent overnight e-mail workload before setting off for the ground. I fired off what I thought would be my final e-mail to Uncail Micheál, but it seemed I had missed him, as seconds later I received an out of office reply:
Out of the office at Lords… “Many Continentals think life is a game; the English think cricket is a game.” George Mikes.
I love that Mikes line; one of my favourites. Mikes is pronounced Mik-esh by the way, in case you didn’t know. But Hell’s bells – Uncail Micheál has spelt Lord’s incorrectly – without the apostrophe. What will people think? Can we avert this potential apostrophe catastrophe? Thinking quickly, I rapidly e-mail Uncail Micheál back, pointing out the potential disaster, copying in his assistant and hoping for the best.
We were in luck. Uncail Micheál hadn’t yet actually left his desk, so he corrected his out of office reply and informed me that linguistic-Armageddon had been averted. Thus we both set off for Lord’s relieved and ready for our day at cricket.
I am delighted to report that the rest of the day passed without further incident.
Send your match reports to king@kingcricket.co.uk and on no account mention the cricket itself.
Thank goodness.
How do you pronounce that name? Uncle Michelle?
I believe it is pronounced Moyck-ill.
Pseudonyms don’t really have standard pronunciation. Nor standard spelling. Nor even consistent names – I realise on seeing this that Uncail Micheál was Timothy Tiberelli last time I wrote about him on King Cricket:
http://www.kingcricket.co.uk/middlesex-v-surrey-twenty20-match-report/2011/10/04/
…although he has been Uncail Micheál in the past on MTWD.
Micheál is the Irish for Michael (I know, who’d have thought?) and is pronounced mee-hall.
This is not related to Ged’s excellent report above (sorry Ged!), but anyone remember Guy Whittall? He seems to have had an interesting visitor:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2423311/Man-40-finds-8ft-crocodile-hidden-bed-spent-entire-night-just-inches-slept.html
He’s got a nice scethrog.
I saw Guy Whittall play in this match:
http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/match/65227.html
That was Daisy’s first ever visit to Lord’s. Daisy and I both near caught a chill in the Lower Compton.
I doubt if any crocs wandered across from the Grand Union Canal to Lord’s that day, but who knows…
He’s not Uncail Micheál to you, Ged, he’s Uncail Micheál to me.
No wonder you can’t pronounce his name properly.
Actually he is Alderman Professor Uncail Micheál to you, Hippity.
Don’t be so uppity, Hippity.
Lancs are gently drizzling their way to the League 2 title at the moment, with some earlier assistance from the young lad Key. And due to the unique way the County Championship is viewed, we’re already being discussed as title contenders for next season. Sadly, those of us in the know understand that winning the Championship will have to wait another 75 years.
We’ve discussed before that the optimum tactic for winning the County Championship is to pack your team full of not-quite-good-enough test players, on the basis that if they get fractionally better the county will never see them. Durham are proving this point as we speak. So here’s a question. Let’s say that due to a huge scandal involving Giles Clarke, N. Srinivasan, James Sutherland, two koala bears, a lemon, a group of N-Power girls dressed as Nazis and Robert Mugabe wearing Matthew Hayden’s baggy green hat, all international cricket next summer is cancelled. Who would win the County Championship?
Yorkshire. Or Warks.
Or Durham.
Or Nottinghamshire.
Northants, at a pinch.
Sorry, I should have said:
“Who would win the County Championship? (Please show all working).”
Anderson’s return would strengthen Lancs enormously, and Warwickshire would be stiffened by the return of Bell and Trott. But I reckon Notts would win, with the return of two of the three leading test wicket takers in the world this year.
All of this reminds us of how painfully right we were when we wrote this:
http://www.kingcricket.co.uk/surrey-are-pretty-bad-at-cricket/2011/05/19/
It won’t be Leics, anyway. Still, can’t really get any worse.
(Minor Counties, here we come!)
The answer depends on where the lemon was lodged before the scandal became public knowledge.
I’m afraid only one of the koalas survived DC. On the plus side, the other one won the right to run an IPL franchise.
Yorkshire, then.
If the international cricketing dignitaries were getting up to all that, I don’t think I’d be following the county championship that season, I think I’d be following the dignitaries. Sounds like top sport.