Posted by At the moment we can merely smell Rob Key being part of England, but soon – oh so soon – we’ll actually get to taste it. It’ll taste like hand-pulled elixir of life and we’ll quaff it like there’s no tomorrow.
This is ironic, because the elixir of life kind of devalues the concept of ‘tomorrow’. With eternal life, you can pace yourself; there’s no need to live each day to the full. We’ve got to get us some elixir of life, even if it’s just bottle-conditioned.
Rob Key is in the 25-man England Performance Squad. The Performance Squad is a kind of thumbs-up system the England selectors use for letting players know that they think they’re good.
The mainstream media have gone with the James Foster and Sajid Mahmood angle, which is an unsatisfactorily obtuse angle. The national media are as crap at reporting on 25-man England Performance Squads as they are at reporting on provisional 30-man England Twenty20 squads.
If any of the national newspapers want a specialist to help them cover big, unwieldy, largely meaningless England cricket squads, we’re open to offers.
Why can’t England just have an “A” side like everyone else? Everybody knows that any other team besides England proper is the “A” team, which is really the “B” team…but some countries actually have had a “B” team…whatever. In any case they only manage to confuse a few people with these crazy names.
Isn’t Robert Key one of those Division Two Johnnies, KC?
Can’t imagine why on earth you might want to watch him, then.
Does it taste like Chicken and Mushroom or Minced Beef and Onion?
Well hopefully he’ll be playing for England instead.
Being a player in division two isn’t worthless, but achievements in division two are worth less. That’s all we’re saying.
I saw RWTK at Beckenham on Monday: the lovely pre-season Kent v Surrey fixture. He wasn’t playing, but was wondering around purposefully. I thought he’d lost a bit of weight: which worried me, really. We thought he might have had a tough Lent.
KC –
Is this your ‘Rob Key post of unmatched and iridescent brilliance’?
Sam, if it were, you wouldn’t have to ask that.
If Rob Key becomes captain of England, even if it’s just the Twenty20 side, we’ll unleash the post. We’ve decided that ‘captain of England’ warrants it.
We can’t build it up enough. It’ll literally be the best page on the internet.
These are indeed heady times. I see that Bob won the toss at Lords this morning. A winner through and through.
Cricket Vicar, your accidental oxymoron is lovely. It does not, though, detract from the sense of sympathy I feel for Bob after his tough Lent.
Hmm… going back to my accidental oxymoron, I see I can’t spell ‘wandering’! Perhaps he was wondering about the England captaincy…
Typical, isn’t it? Having lurked for so long on this site, I then make a ‘who is this idiot?’ spelling mistake in my first post!
I’m no grammar fascist. I only brought it up as I do like the idea of wondering purposefully. I’d compare it favourably to being aggressively lazy.
Never before have I seen the words ‘lovely’ and ‘Beckenham’ in the same sentence.
And never again, I suspect.
Aside from the germane grammar issues raised here, I wonder if anyone else noticed Mr Key’s sort-of prediction (featured in a number of the nationals) that he will score 3 hundreds to help England bring back the Ashes.
Are you really a Vicar, Vicar? If so, do you bowl drifty non-spinning slow balls on an ecclesiastical length? Or are you a six-foot-six opening batsman who takes his guard a foot outside off stump and for whom the phrase “solid defensive prod” was invented? Or are you a twenty-five year old perma-smile Methodist minister fresh out of college who had trials for Lancashire as a fast bowler but who gave up cricket to follow a calling (presumably a calling to terrorise unsuspecting batsmen like me).
In my experience of cricketing vicars, that’s all there is (the other batsmen might have been like Viv Richards for all we knew – we never got to see anyone but the openers and the bowlers).
rob key got 60-odd in an england win over south africa on brian lara cricket 2005 for the playstation in my house today
Didn’t RK shoot himself in the foot choosing to bowl? If you want to be chosen for your batting you have to be seen batting… In view of the weather reports he could also have demonstrated opportunistic captaincy doing this and lets face he looked sulky and unable to lift his team in the 2008 20/20 final day.
Is Robert Key better than any of current line up ? I ma not so sure