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If you’re wondering where we’ve been, we’ve unfortunately been too busy writing things to write things. One of these written distractions was about Rob Key.
Cricinfo gave it the coveted midnight on a Friday slot at the top of the homepage, clearly of a mind that this would be perfect for Key fans who would almost certainly be hitting city centre bars until the early hours before returning for a light spot of reading before bed.
It briefly mentions warehouses, biscuits and Ini Kamoze and we misquote Kevin Keegan, but it’s mostly a fairly straightforward look back on Key’s career. We didn’t think Cricinfo would want our usual Key tone. Maybe we were wrong.
Don’t think that we didn’t get carried away though. We overshot our target word count by 100 per cent and only succeeding in hacking it back to 50 per cent over. Fortunately, they let us off though on the grounds that “it’s not every day that Rob Key retires.”
Excellent piece.
Deserved the extra words, because everything you said was worth saying.
That photograph looks like a watercolour with Key photoshopped in. It’s quite incredible.
And a very good piece too, he quickly adds to stop himself from looking like an unappreciative arse.
You worked in a warehouse? Hauling stuff wearing pants caked with dust, sweat, and soil patting other warehousers on their bottoms by way of encouragement?
You don’t touch in a warehouse, Deep Cower. But yes. Several years. Back then we had the musculature to lift relatively heavy things and then deposit them elsewhere. Good times.
In all the Rob Key retirement sadness, I almost missed this picture – Ben Stokes and Joe Root clearly have the potential to feature in a future ‘lies about pictures’ filler post (if those are still a thing).
Man alive, that’s quite an intense look from Stokes.
“Just relax, Ben, and think of Marlon Samuels’ face.”
I’ve sort of followed his career from afar when I discovered that he and I were born on the same day. He gave us all hope that a fat bloke could make it in professional sport, and even at my age, I’ve only just given up that dream (unless Man Utd get rid of De Gea this summer and give me a call, but I’ve more chance of kissing Natalie Portman)
Just heard one “Jed Ladd” getting his comment read aloud on radio Middlesex/Durham. Broadcast has been fine for me, “Jed”.
I’ve always wondered why people insist on misspelling my pseudonym as Jed rather than Ged. Even if I spell it out as G-E-D (perhaps in a theatre or concert hall bar) or, as in this case, when it is and has been there to be seen spelt correctly, consistently.
Actually I was getting the “this content doesn’t seem to be working” on all of the internet radio commentary channels on my PC today. Perhaps I need to reboot the machine or perhaps the Beeb has a problem with this particular combination of browser and operating system.
I was able to listen fine on Ivan the Smart Phone, but he wanted to do other things at times, such as act as a phone, or shut up when Daisy was on the phone…
…I’m not boring you, am I?
Just last night a friend of ours revealed that he has always pronounced your name with the G sound from ‘garden’ rather than the G sound from ‘giant’. Is that what’s happened here?
I always thought the E was silent.
The G in Ged is pronounced the soft, giant way, not the hard, garden way. Very occasionally Daisy will call out “Ghed-Ladd”, with that hard “garden” G as a variant of calling out my full name, just as I might call out “Daisy-doo” as a variant of her forename.
I have met real people named Ged with a G and Jed with a J, but always pronouncing the name with soft G. Indeed, only last Friday, my business partner (Timothy Tiborelli) and I were at a publishing function. Timothy came up to me with some chap I didn’t know and said, “Ged, meet Jed; Jed, meet Ged. Jed here is reading our book just now…” and off went Timothy. This I found odd, as Timothy has never taken much interest in my “Ged side” and I should imagine the introduction came as a surprise to Jed who was reading a book authored under my other “pen name”. The conversation moved on book-wise without further reference to the Ged business.
Do stop me once I start boring you.
…cripes, I had indeed always thought your name was pronounced with the common or garden “g”. Middlesex county radio has shown me the light.
STOP EVERYTHING.
INCLUDING SPAKING?
YES, INCLUDING SPAKING!
We imagine that you can’t.
I’d imagine that this is the closest challenger yet to The Day to becoming the new The Day…
Darn. I’m running late already, I have two really big meetings today…
..what do I tell them?
“Due to circumstances beyond my control…”
Crikey, cripes and indeed crumbs.
Not to revel in the schadenfreude or anything, but it appears his replacement at the top of Kent’s order has so far handled 50% of the balls he has faced in County Championship innings this season. Must be the pressure of trying to fill such big shoes.