Commiserations to the English Football Team - At least some of the team have a film deal

via auldreekierants.blogspot.com

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KP blasts the Aussies out of the Ashes 2005

I can remember watching this in the middle of the night, with England all but out of Ashes contention. I had forgotten just how many chances Australia dropped. Quite incredible counter attacking innings. It was a huge anti climax when Hayden and Langer were sent in to finish the day, with no chance to win.

Ponting Spits Blood

as the Poms grab the Ashes.

That's all

Braveheart versus The Ego and Friends

Image via Wikipedia The Scottish Nation stands as one as the Scottish Cricket Team takes on the Auld Enemy for the first time in a Cricket One Day International in Edinburgh. As always, the weather looks like it will be the winner.

Scotland are good at this, with an honorable rain assisted no score draw against the Indians in the Twenty20 World Cup in Durban and in a One Day International against the Aussies in Edinburgh in 2005, notable examples of the fortuitous intervention of the elements and a lot better than the humiliations of the like of Argentina 1978. Better an honourable rain assisted draw than a shellacking I say.

That said, I was intrigued by the weather in Adelaide, mid winter and Scotland mid summer.

Come on Down. At least we can count on playing cricket in the summer.

See what I mean.

10.45am So we were meant to get underway at 10.45am, but obviously this isn't going to happen. There's more chance of a nuclear-free world than getting any play here at the Grange. But we have some parachutists landing on the ground - I presume they're part of the entertainment and not part of a foreign coup to overthrow the country - and plumes of orange smoke drift across the ground. More news when we get it.

10.40am We have news: it's still raining, and a little harder too. Super bagpipes, though. There's a thought, however vain, that it might clear up at 1.00pm for a brief while. So it's not a complete washout just yet.

10.30am The rain's falling I'm afraid, and more covers are being dragged onto the pitch. This is not good news at all - the clouds are heavy and dark, and it looks thoroughly miserable.

 Catch more commentators misery here.

South African Boy Makes Good

Ego Pietersen has been crowned King by the England and Wales Cricket Board.

Lke a city whizkid or a great captain of industry, Pietersen is ambitious for ambition's sake, which does not sit easily with those who misconstrue his motives. Englishmen in particular, with their ingrained love of the underdog, find it hard to accept those who aren't content merely to bumble along in life and settle for second-best. And yet, the basic premise of sport is the quest to be the best, a challenge that Pietersen has embraced as if he were Roger Federer or Tiger Woods. He has no interest in being anything less than the greatest player who has ever lived, but unlike so many wannabes who mouth off and then vanish, he has consistently shown the talent, chutzpah and audacity to back up his promises with deeds.

Doesn't sound too English and it certainly seems very radical for such a stuffy organisation like the ECB. They are only slightly more progressive than the International Cricket Board and there must have been some tortuous discussions as the prince was coronated.

I wonder if that will be enough to get Shane Warne to come out of retirement for the Ashes next year?

Eddie the Eagle debuts for England

Dave Darren Pattinson (who?) debuted for England today at Headingley against the South Africans and is at the batting crease as I write. He must be good, since he moved Monty, who makes Glenn McGrath look like a top order batsman up the batting order. Batted behind Monty is hardly a ringing endorsement, but then he is there to bowl.

He was optimistically announced by the Cricinfo Commentary team. They obviously have high hopes for him as England offer up a sorry excuse for a cricket team yet again.

It's a procession, and now, into the fray comes the debutant Grimsby-born roof-tiling medium-pacer from Melbourne. The Chris Powell of England cricket selection? It's not tea after all, incidentally.

Who are those guys who are playing a test at Cardiff next year? Perhaps they are looking for his Aussie sledging experience to unhinge Rickie and the boys when they show up this time next year.

And why do I still support them?

Update: Two slogs and he is out. Eight more than the Captain and Monty combined. England all out for 203. Time to go to work Mr Pattinson (and Mr Flintoff).

Ra Ra The Brits

This kind of nationalistic sports guff reminds me of BBC Olympic coverage in the 1970s with television cameras covering British runners at the back of the field while the race was ending. How can The Telegraph put a young 14 year old girl winning the girls championship above Venus Williams winning Wimbledon, which gets a little link heading underneath.

With honorary Englishman and Great White Hope, Andy Murray pooping out earlier, I suppose there has to be something that that you can close your eyes and think of England about. There is always next year......

Well done all the same Laura Robinson. No doubt she is a prohibitive favourite for Wimbledon next year in the parochial UK sports journalists minds.

And well done to Venus Williams.

The Great Kilt Conspiracy Debunked

Lord Dacre, esteemed authenticator of the Hitler Diaries, debunks Scottish Myths in his book The Invention of Scotland: Myth and History to be published five years after his death. Sounds like a policy paper for an English Nationalist party.

“In Scotland, it seems to me, myth has played a far more important part in history than it has in England.

“Indeed, I believe the whole history of Scotland has been coloured by myth; and that myth, in Scotland, is never driven out by reality, or by reason, but lingers on until another myth has been discovered to replace it.”

He claims that the “myth” of the ancient Highland dress was perpetuated by historians to provide a symbol by which Scots could be universally identified, as well as to support the country’s textile industry.

The traditional dress of the Highlanders was in fact a long Irish shirt and a cloak or plaid, he states, and only the higher classes had woven in stripes and colours creating tartan.

How will Alex and the boys be able to perpetuate the myth of the Scottish Nation after this mean spirited nibbling stinging indictment of Scottish Kitsch Origins. Will all the tourist ask for their money back? Is this another nasty trick by the English Establishment to undermine Scottish claims to independence, neuter Scottish nationalism, silence the Tartan Army and the like.

In reality most of the myths in Scotland are conjured in the pub after about 10 beers.

Scotland Dies Laughing

Most would have been dead within minutes TRIBUTES are being paid to Scotland this morning after the entire country laughed itself to death.


The alarm was first raised at around 10pm last night as thousands of phone calls and text messages went unanswered.

Small groups of volunteers from Berwick-Upon-Tweed and Carlisle ventured north just after midnight only to find houses full of dead people gathered around still blaring television sets.

By dawn, as RAF helicopters flew over deserted city streets, it was clear that the whole country had suffered a catastrophic abdominal rupture. Wayne Hayes, a special constable from Northumberland, said: "We went into one house in Dunbar and found three men sitting on the sofa with huge smiles on their faces, still holding cans of 70 shilling. They seemed to be at peace."

He added: "In a house near Edinburgh we found a man face down on the living room floor with his trousers and pants round his knees. "It seems he may have been showing his bare buttocks to the television when he keeled over."

Roy Hobbs, a civil engineer from Northampton, said: "I got a call from my friend Ian in Stirling at about 9.50pm. "He was already laughing when I answered the phone, but after about 25 minutes of the most vigorous and uncontrollable hilarity, everything suddenly went very quiet."

Moving tributes are already being placed along the Scotland-England border with many mourners opting to leave a simple bag of chips or a deep fried bunch of flowers.

From The Daily Mash

Antipodes in Mourning

Singh's Six Six Slogs Singes and Subdues England in World Twenty20

Englands Twenty20 World Championships ended in a blaze of glory (for the other guys), when Yujraj Singh blasted six sixes in an over from Stewart Broad at the same time setting a world record with a 50 in 12 balls.

Yuvraj is the fourth man to complete the perfect over, after Garry Sobers, Ravi Shastri and Herschelle Gibbs. The first two instances came in domestic first-class matches; the most recent was in South Africa's World Cup game against Holland in March. But no one had previously achieved the feat against a Test-playing nation. Yuvraj's barrage – which also took him to 50 in an international record of 12 balls – was the final insult in England's execrable Twenty20 campaign.


Yet again, we English have given the world a new game – or at least a new refinement of an old game – and watched our sportsmen lose at it. Ten days ago, Paul Collingwood was predicting that the domestic experience of the team's Twenty20 specialists would give them an edge. Now his team have slunk shamefully out of the tournament. They remain the only major country not to have won a world one-day competition of any kind.

He must have been using some of this to enhance his performance.

England will have to invent another game that they can be good at.

Thanks for the Good News Telegraph Online

Statements of the Bleedin' Obvious

Mea Culpa Time. Pass the Sword.

Fletcher's future as coach is set to be discussed at the end of the tournament and former England allrounder Ian Botham said it was time for a change.

``We've got some good cricketers but they need a new direction,'' Botham said on Sky Sports. ``Duncan Fletcher has done some great things for England over the years but everyone has a shelf life and I'm sorry, his has expired.''

Allow me to add Michael Vaughan and a few others.

Well hello. These guys get paid a fortune and have not delivered. Goodbye, Adios.....

Hampden Heaven and IsraeHell

The new Scottish Manager Alex McLeish and the boys squeezed out a last gasp win in Glasgow against Georgia in the Euro 2008 qualifier, and in the process retained the Unofficial Football World Championship, closely modelled on boxing championships. Next up the defence in Italy on Wednesday night. The winner takes the title for a while.

Steve McLaren on the other hand, looks like he is on his last gasp as England Manager after a pathetic scoreless draw in Tel Aviv. The Sun must be baying for blood this morning.

The pictures tell the story. Most Scottish people will take as much pleasure in the English result as the Scottish one as described by the ever so eloquent Flying Rodent.