The New Year is full of good intentions…
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The little Kebab shop of horrors…
I’m always relieved when the New Year arrives, as it means that thoughts and preparations are gearing up for the coming season. I know you’ve probably read interviews with players and coaching staff, from up and down the country, talking about ‘taking October off, before starting up with pre-season training’, but that’s just them trying to convince you cricket is a full time job. Do me a favour; timing your twice-weekly visits to the gym so they coincide with the Bradford Bulls cheerleaders isn’t work, and telling people you’re improving your hand-eye co-ordination in the process is a half-truth at best.
But then cricketers will tell you no end of guff about the off-season. For a start they’d have you believe they struggle through the whole year on the diet of a professional jockey – they don’t. You know how magician’s can pass their hand slowly over the top of a coin, and without seeming to touch it, make it disappear? Well our middle order can do the same thing with a cheese and ham sandwich. Back in the day, Mike Gatting could do it with a leg of lamb or a family-sized pack of Doritos’s.
That’s why, in terms of accuracy, the diet sheet of your average county cricketer between the end of the season and the end of the year, makes Lord of the Rings look like a documentary. They’ve got a brass neck just handing them in, which is what they need to hold up the double chins they pile on during the back end of the year.
That’s why I’m glad I got one of those mobile phones fitted with a camera for Christmas. I’ll be taking that with me next Monday when the squad turns out for the first pre-season session with the club physio. As last year Scott McAllister was almost in tears when he saw what state they were in.
“Len,” he said, “the dressing room has been lost to trans-fats and there’s no getting it back again.”
If he’s like that again, I want it recording, ready to be played back at the end of season do. That’ll teach him to make sarcy comments about the height of my waistband.
Scott McAllister: Introduction of customer loyalty cards at the Shai Nan Kebab House, has made his job an absolute nightmare.
Promotion for Young Skywalker…
One player who won’t be spending much of the pre-season with us, is young skywalker himself, Adil Rashid. Last week, Adil was called up to the England party touring the West Indies during February and March; which means his Calvin Klein’s will be temporarily moving from my ironing pile, to that of my nephew, KentheEnglandKitMan.
It’s always a sad day this; when you wave off a young Yorkshire lad as they begin the journey of having their confidence and technique destroyed by the idiots in charge of the national team. I wonder if they’ll do as good a job as they managed with Richard Dawson? By the time Billy Dog got back off his first test tour, he couldn’t turn the key in his own car ignition. It was a sad sight, watching him just sitting there in the Headingley car park, staring at his steering wheel, wondering what to do with it.
It’s a good job Adil’s mum always comes and picks him up after work, otherwise that could be very embarrassing…
Si’thee later,
Len
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