NewsBiscuit » Ashes

“You’re Now Better Than Us” says Ricky Ponting as he starts Ashes mind games

Guest — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 11:00:34 +0000

Just a few days after the England team’s arrival in Perth to begin their Ashes defence, Australian captain Ricky Ponting has already started the mind games which are the traditional precursor to every series between the old cricketing enemies.

In a clear attempt to unsettle the English players, Ponting has cunningly departed from the traditional claims that Australia will win the series 5-0, and is instead predicting a thrashing for the home team.

“There’s no doubt about it,” he claimed to journalists yesterday, “England are by far the better side, they’re in form and we’ll be lucky to escape a whitewash. It’s hardly worth us turning up.”

England captain Andrew Strauss was however in no mood to let the initiative be taken by Ponting’s Aussies. “This is the usual nonsense we’ve come to expect,” he insisted this morning.

“We just have to play our game and get on with it. But I’ll tell you one thing – there’s no way we’re going to stand by and let them lose, and if he thinks we will, he knows nothing about what this England team are capable of. I can’t wait to wipe that smug frown off his face…”

IABP

Women still buying the existence of ‘cricket’

Genghis Cohen — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 04:00:32 +0000

As the Ashes series gets underway in Cardiff, men from the world’s cricket-playing nations are congratulating themselves on another summer in which women seem prepared to continue believing that cricket is a genuine sport. Despite the rules being understood by no one and matches taking ages to complete, having breaks for meals and being halted should the sun go in, women appear happy to let their men-folk disappear for days on end to participate in or watch absolutely nothing happening at all.

‘After they went for the whole golf thing – basically a long walk to the pub with luggage – we thought there was no way women would fall for another make-believe sport,’ said 42-year-old Geoff Stanley, ‘wicketkeeper’ and captain of the Woodside Green XI. ‘But credit where it’s due, the early players did a lovely job on the laws of the game. None of this off-side rule or winning by two clear points and scoring in French, they had the balls to see it through all the way. Every time someone’s dismissed leg before wicket, run out by silly mid-off or sent to chase leather at deep third man, we have a job not to piss in our boxes laughing.’

‘To be honest, we thought the whole international tours thing would be a bridge too far,’ added team-mate Dave Robinson, known as the team’s all-rounder due to his ability with both food and drink, and his wide circumference. ‘But bless ’em, the wives and girlfriends bought that one as well, so every winter I get to go on tour to the Caribbean or Australia with the Barmy Army for a fortnight‘s ‘cricket watching‘. I don’t why they haven’t seen through it.’

women: they just don't get it

Despite most training sessions taking place at the local tandoori, the Woodside Green XI are enjoying an excellent run of form this season, and no one is more pleased than Geoff’s wife Shirley. ‘She takes her role as wife of the club captain very seriously,‘ said Geoff. ‘Only last Saturday we unexpectedly got the league’s top-scoring batsman out for a duck, and she wasted no time in taking him into the clubhouse to rub linseed oil into his bat, before showing him an uncovered wicket he could get some practice on. God, I’d hate to think how she’d feel if she knew we’d been deceiving her.’

A&E departments put on red alert for two days without sport

Guest — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 11:00:10 +0000

Accident & Emergency departments were put on the highest alert yesterday morning at the start of two whole days without sport. With Wimbledon finishing on Sunday and The Ashes not beginning until Wednesday, reports have been coming in of cack-handed men emerging from the sofa to tackle the backlog of DIY, often with devastating results.

‘We warned that this would happen’, said Liz Matthews of The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, ‘The start of the cricket season overlapped nicely with the end of the football, and the under 21 tournament segued nicely into Wimbledon, but this gap was always a concern. We urged the authorities to arrange a darts tournament or even just a snooker friendly, but they wouldn’t listen. And now it’s carnage out there’

Exigo