“I can’t claim any actual school cricket heroics,” says Ian Rubenstein, but we did invent a pastime called “Gesture cricket” which was played in the classes of some of our more fidgety educators.
Touching the nose a single, glasses two. Telling a student to stand up was a boundary, out of the classroom a six.
Dismissals were signalled by a thump of blackboard (I’m old) or desk. One teacher had a fit of anger, thumped his desk repeatedly and engineered a batting collapse that saw my team dismissed for 10 runs total. Cue the four of us playing at the back of the class rolling around on the floor in hysterics.”
I love this! Can someone please engineer me a route back to school just to play this – toilet cricket was as far as we got.
Who doesn’t want more Eoin Morgan – what a human being he is. I still find it hard to grasp how few Tests he’s played, and would be seeking a way to get him back in.
‘It’s weird, very strange’: Eoin Morgan on hitting record 17 sixes for England – video
“I’ve been out of the country for 20 years,” brags Tim Maitland. “Does your mention of Vimto mean you’re proper northern or has it become the ironic drink of choice by ukele-playing, man-bun wearing, moustache-waxing southern hipsters?”
I’ve worn many insults, but hipster is not one of them – I am pure unreconstructed in the proudest tradition of the OBO. I grew up drinking Vimto because my dad is Manc – we’d come back from my gran’s with carloads of that and kuchen, a kind of tea-loaf but nice, kuchen meaning cake in Yiddish. Depending on the variety selected, it came with icing, raisins, glacier cherries, cinnamon, jam and cheese and was absolutely spectacular, though think it has pretty much ceased to exist.
Ok, seeing as we’re here for a bit, one of my other school, er, holidays: reciprocating a Nescafe handshake offered from a bus window, only to accidentally trigger a rather large confab the following afternoon.
“This match is at least the prince if not the king of the roundrobin stage,” reckons Amod Paranjape. “And if South Africa are knocked out today, then are we again allowed to use the C word mate?”
The umpires have reinspected, “it’s improving” says Umpire Gould, and we’ve got another inspection at 11. The outfield is wet, all of it, and they need the sun to come out to dry stuff out … AND THERE IT IS! There’s a good chance of play soon, they reckon, and the thunderstorms predicted for last night failed to materialise.
The umpires inspect the pitch. Photograph: Matt West/BPI/Shutterstock
“In this BCCI world cup feat. ICC,” emails Krishnamoorthy V, “should the schedule be so blatant to give a red carpet treatment to India? The India-Pakistan match on Sunday (holiday in India but not in Pakistan), gaps between matches so long that a world tour is possible between them.”
The thing that was extremely wrong was how long India waited to get going so their players could recover from the IPL. I think I know what Barry Galahad would say about it, but he’d be wrong.
“Kia Ora” begins Hari Shankar. Thanks – Vimto for me. Sorry, that is an awful joke, but here we are. Anyway: “Hello in kiwi tongue, from the southern hemisphere, where it’s dark, wet and cold. Just like your English summer. Will we have a game on? Would be fun to start the game with a haka to startle the Saffas.”
Yes, I’d say we will have a game. There’s a possibility of thunderstorms, imminently and this afternoon, but we should have enough to get something through.
Email! “That photo looks positively doomsday-esque,” says Ben Bernards, “could we be looking at a rain-inspired 20/20 slap-a-thon at last? As a Kiwi, I feel the team is seriously undercooked right now. The favourites for the cup all possess openers that more often or not go big before they go home – Finch, Warner, Roy, Bairstow, Sharma & Dhawan. By way of comparison, their black-clad equivalents: Munro (one 50 in 19 innings, unlikely to ever stay longer than 10 overs) and Guptill (clearly not in form) look a poor man’s version. So much rests on Taylor and Williamson who have performed solidly rather than spectacularly, and the lower order has failed its only audition with the bat thus far vs Bangladesh.”
Yes – if New Zealand get it done, it’ll be because they win the toss, field, and their bowlers have a good day in helpful conditions.
I loved Robin Smith growing up, I guess because I identified with him more than his contemporaries, who were either a bit this or a bit that. And also because when he posted that wondrous 167 not out against Australia, I was home from school with a box of Superkings, suspended for setting the floor of the science labs on fire. And obviously England still lost.
Anyway, regale us with tales of your school derring-do while we wait for some progress in the middle.
There’s going to be an inspection at 10.15, after which we’re expecting nao drahmahs. This might be a good toss to win – I’m sure New Zealand will be desperate to get South Africa in.
There’s been a lot of overnight rain and we’ve got a delayed toss. It’s dry now, though, and Baz McCullum – yeah, we’re on nickname terms – Isa Guha and Shaun Pollock have come in matching petrol blue suits, so.
South Africa coach Otis Gibson and captain Faf du Plessis check out the weather. Photograph: Stu Forster-IDI/IDI via Getty Images
Psst … psst … are we … are we … back? After a riveting start which suggested this strange format was to all our benefits because it gave us lots of matches involving lots of fine teams, the rain intervened and things started going exactly to form. The top four seemed settled – perhaps it still is – and the individual feats of derring-do dried up too.
Not no mo. On Monday, Bangladesh battered West Indies – not a seismic shock, but the emphatic nature of it was as memorable as it was majestic – then yesterday, Eoin Morgan reinvented our conception of the possible. Now, here we are today.
South Africa are in the brown stuff. They’ve been rubbish so far and looking at their batting order it’s not especially hard to see why, missing pacemen or not. But they’ve still got enough to trouble anyone, and surely they can’t play this many matches without happening upon a performance at some point – they’re not quite out yet, but they need to win today.
New Zealand, meanwhile, are doin the do like Betty Boo, seeing away everyone you’d expect them to as they prepare for final or semi-final defeat … except that this time they combine fair and solidity so effectively that maybe, just maybe, things’ll be different. Given their last two tussles are against England and Australia, they need to cement that possibility – if one can actually cement a possibility – with victory today. If they cannot, they too have a problem.
