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The very great thing about Shane Warne having a book out (ghosted by Mark Nicholas, of all people) is that he appears here, there and everywhere and talks his nonsense and we all get to marvel at how swiftly the man can form opinions and stick to them.
Warne thinks England should make Jos Buttler Test captain. This is a very Warne-ish thing to think. Put the eye-catching player in charge.
Like most of Warne’s ideas, there’s something underpinning it but maybe not all that much.
Firstly, he knows Buttler from Rajasthan Royals. Warne pretty much always talks up people he personally knows, particularly if he’s met them fairly recently.
Secondly, he reckons England need to unshackle Joe Root.
“Maybe England could think about their best player having the shackles off, not having the responsibility of captaincy, and give it to someone like Jos Buttler,” he said.
There’s merit in this. Maybe Joe Root would bat better unshackled. But wouldn’t that transfer of power merely amount to the shackling of Buttler?
“Jos could play with his freedom and captain the side, and Joe could just concentrate on his cricket,” Warne reasoned.
Apparently Buttler is unaffected by shackles for reasons that aren’t exactly explained. We can only presume he is able to wriggle out of the captaincy shackles whenever he wants (and presumably wriggle back into them whenever England are fielding or it’s a press conference or whatever.)
Anyone listen to The Cricket Social? I found it rather jarring. It was like listening to a rain delay, but while the cricket was actually going on – until the rain delay obviously. Then it seemed to fit into its place in the universe.
They only mentioned the match as a slightly rushed aside in-between Tuffnecdotes. A bit frustrating. I suppose I could always have listened on TalkSport but that somehow didn’t seem like an option to me.
I quite liked it in the short bursts I heard (switched over whenever Hughes came on obviously). Tufnell was unsurprisingly good value and oddly it was the most listenable Vaughan has been in about 5 years.
The problems that I have
– Even though I quite enjoyed it, I’m not sure what the point of it is. Does that matter? Maybe not
– 2 hours of it was fine, I think it might be a touch grating after 7 hours
– I shudder to think what they are going to be talking about come the 2nd innings of the 5th ODI
Talksport wasn’t that bad in my opinion. Competition is good.
The amount of time they’ve had to fill and the amount of time they’re going to have to fill is the main issue, but then we suppose the actual “played into the off side, no run” part doesn’t actually take very long so presumably it’ll be fine.
Are they not allowed to commentate on the actual cricket?
It’s essentially a King Cricket match report.
This is not surprising, when your opinion of captaincy is that every captain you’ve ever seen is bad at it the only reasonable option is to give the captaincy to someone who hasn’t done it.
Or more accurately, someone who hasn’t done it yet to your very thin knowledge, and so they haven’t yet failed to meet your personal unachievable criteria yet. Criteria which you happily spout from the comfort of your now highly worn office chair, itself sagging under the weight of your stupid backside, completely failing to understand that the reason you were never captain in the first place is because you regularly come out with complete horse shit.
I’m generalising, of course.
The way I read it from one of the Q & A reports, he said Buttler should be captain, but Tim Paine shouldn’t be Australia captain because he is a wicket-keeper and being a captain and keeper doesn’t work, but it would work if Buttler did those two roles because that is different.
Sometimes, you don’t need to credit a quote to know exactly which of the thousands of ex- international cricketers said it.
Looks like England may have found a proper fast bowler again.
Taking Duckworth & Lewis out there has proved to be the real success – often you don’t see as much of them on away tours, but they’ve really stepped up today.
Those ads that used to tell me all about looking at retirement with my £250,000 portfolio, have now switched to lamenting “how far does £1 million go in retirement?” I suddenly feel so very much poorer.
Maybe they’re a step ahead of you. Have you checked the Premium Bonds this month?
Rucksacks with millions of compartments for me. Almost as if they knew I was going to some matches next summer and might want to spend ages holding up the security queue.