Ryan Hairybottom managed to turn the Test match on its head as he snagged himself a hat-trick and, in the process, has made me look like a numpty. The bastard.
It’s all set up for an interesting last day. If England can bowl out New Zealand in the first hour will they then have a dart and try to win this match? Dunno but I’ll be sitting in front of the telly to find out so expect various drunken updates over the course of the next few hours…
Not posted anything for a while so it’s a bit of a shame that this is something of a rant aimed at another cricket blogger. Sorry about that. Will Photoshop Michael Vaughan as Wonder Woman later this week to make up for it.*
Anyway, I’ve just read an outrageous post over at Cricket 24×7. I’m shaking my head in disbelief at what Jagadish has written regarding the recent comments made by Matthew Hayden about Harbhajan Singh.
“It’s been a bit of a long battle with Harbhajan. The first time I ever met him he was the same little obnoxious weed that he is now,” stated Hayden.
He also said in the same radio interview that he’d like to get in a boxing ring with Ishant Sharma so I’m guessing that he was enjoying playing up to his bully boy role that he seems to have cultivated over the last few years (i.e. ever since he actually started to consistently score runs for Australia). The barrel chested Aussie opener is built like a brick shit house so I guess he feels he can get away with saying what he wants.
Personally I don’t like Matthew Hayden for all the reasons above (not least of all that consistent run scoring thing, particularly against England) but what has really got my goat is that Jagadish suggests that this comment is “obviously a case of racial stereotyping” and that it “very clearly qualifies as a racist statement”.
Obnoxious implies Harbhajan is annoying, offensive or disgustingly objectionable. Little refers to Harbhajan being smaller-built in comparison to Hayden (and the rest of his teammates). This is obviously a case of racial stereotyping, and hence vilification (just like Tony Greig’s “Those little Shri Lonkans” chant). Weed again refers to Harbhajan being obnoxious and detrimental.
Clearly this is a case of offensive and seriously insulting language. If someone tells me I’m a weed, I’d be pretty offended and feel insulted about it, since it implies that I shouldn’t be existing. Add in the ‘little’ part and this very clearly qualifies as a racist remark.
You can read the full article here but I genuinely can’t see how anyone can possibly believe that calling someone a “little weed” is in any way racially motivated. Maybe this is just a reaction to the recent Test and one day series and all of the associated..ahem..monkey business that went on there. Whatever the reasons, I actually found it quite sad that Jagadish has played the race card here.
What Hayden said wasn’t racist. It was just stupid.
OK so despite telling the world that I’m back in love with cricket, I’ve still single handedly failed to post anything of any note in the last week so rather than come up with anything of my own, here’s a video made by The Atheist over at AYALAC.
Ermm..I still love cricket, by the way. Does that help at all?
Those sneaky Aussies, eh? They’re always looking for ways to ring fence their position as the top team in Test cricket and they’ve really excelled themselves in the announcement of their squad for the series against Sri Lanka by including their own personal drinks waiter.
Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last few days (hello Osama!), you’ll have noticed that Duncan Fletcher is about to publish his autobiography. Now this is something I’ve been looking forward to ever since I first heard he was writing it. I always liked Fletch and I think that he’s going to be exposing an awful lot about the state of English cricket in his book.
However, in typical British tabloid tradition, the one thing that the newspapers have focused on in their reviews is not the rise of England from the also rans to Ashes winners nor the introduction of central contracts or the fact that cricket has become popular once more. No. They want to focus on the important things in life. The stuff that sells newspapers.
According to the exclusive abridged version of Behind The Shades being published in the Daily Mail, and naturally the rest of the world within seconds of the ink drying, the most important thing to come out of Duncan Fletchers tenure as England coach is this.
