Posted by For all their progress and despite all their resources, England still can’t compete in one-day cricket in India. We’ve thought of three things that would help their cause.
1. Hire a scientist
It’s staggering to think that England don’t have a scientist on their staff. We’re not talking about nutrionists or sports biomechanists. England should hire a proper scientist – a guy in a lab coat.
2. Develop a stealth capability
This one speaks for itself really. Quite why England haven’t invested in a cloaking device is beyond us.
3. Avoid being mauled by bears
We cannot emphasise this one enough. It is vital for performances in India that players aren’t mauled by bears. As well as the physical consequences, being mauled by a bear can really affect a person’s confidence. Any player caught goading a bear should be severely reprimanded and possibly even given a £20 fine.
this is a weird one.
I may be wrong but Ian Austin was a top scientist, occasionally invisible (I’ve been to OT loads and not seen him) and was never mauled by a bear. But he wasn’t able to tranform this into one day success in India. I think there’s another missing factor.
You also have to BE in India. That’s the only area where Ian Austin fell down as a one-day bowler in Indian conditions.
No he was there often, just remember he had stealth device qualities
No no no no no! I expected better of you than just jumping on the obvious bandwagon. You sound like Boycott, forever going on about scientists and stealth technology and bear maulings.
Point 1 – Scientists will distract the players by discussing the Large Hadron Collider at net practice.
Point 2 – Stealth technology will mean that the lower order players can’t find their pads.
Point 3 – If you stop players being mauled by bears in the natural way of things, you disrupt the thinning out process that allows the new players to come into the team. Do you seriously think Strauss would ever have got a game if Michael Vaughan hadn’t been mauled by a bear in St Johns Wood that morning? No, I don’t think so.
Stick to what you understand, KC.
Quite unrelated to this piece, cricinfo headline today read “Thunderstorm halts Australia”. I clicked the scorecard eagerly, thinking they were calling Steyn by his birth name. Alas, it was not to be.
I find that as I grow older, I am easily disappointed by such minutiae.
Why don’t we just do what the Japanese do and summon a mecha to solve our problems?
Or at least a huge mutant lizard.
South Africa always performs well in India, England just aren’t hiring the right South Africans for India
I take it all back, KC. It turns out you were right. A scientist would have been able to work out that slower balls every ball are not strictly slower balls, and instead are technically rubbish balls. Stealth technology would have prevented me from being able to watch this rubbish. And a bear could have eaten Jade Dernbach, and then taken his place as main bowler at the death.
Don’t behave like a lily-livered Englishman, KC.
Tiger Pataudi regularly took on bears of the mauling sort and I can assure you the bears tended to come off second best in those encounters.
Now there was a cricketer who knew how to perform in Indian sub-continental conditions.
And Matthew Hayden-Way and Symonds wrestle pigs in the bush