Antony N Britt – Author

Let’s talk about cricket.

No … not that type of cricket. I meant the sport.

Yay! It’s the cricket season and with England currently number one team in the world, I shall take this opportunity to have a rare boast about it.

I know you lot overseas in America and beyond do not understand what cricket is all about. Don’t worry, you’re not alone. Most people in the UK haven’t a clue, either.

Picture the conversation I had some years back when queried as to why a test match of cricket, lasted more than an hour or so.

‘But, why do they play for so long?’

‘It’s just the amount of time needed to come to a successful conclusion,’ I answered. ‘You know, best team over a five-day period.’

‘Five … days?’

‘Er, yes.’

‘But how can they play for so long each day?’

‘They go in for lunch and tea.’ I replied, then put hands across my ears to drown out the laughing. I was then asked to explain the rules. Easy.

Cricket, is a straightforward game played by two teams on a field. One team – out, the other one – in. The team that’s out, tries to get the team that’s in … out. When a player of the team who’s in, gets out, then another player comes in. This happens until all of the team who are in – are out. Then the team that was out, goes in and the team that was in, go out and tries to get the team in … out again. This goes on until both sets of players have been in and out twice, including those, not out. Simple really.

You have bowlers who can spin their balls all day long while others prefer to pound them with speed. Some will turn their googlies while slip fielders stand with open legs waiting for the batsmen to give the bowler’s balls a little tickle. There is also a variation on this unorthodox delivery which goes by the name of bowling a Chinaman.

Nooooo! That’s not what I meant. It’s just a phrase which came about due to the ethnicity of the bowler who first used the method. Sorry about that. Anyway, there are boundaries however in cricket, but one must not overstep them while touching the balls. Bowlers can rub and polish their balls, but are not allowed to scratch them to excess or they will face the wrath of an umpire.

The batsmen can use all sorts of stroke play to despatch their balls. This includes hooking them, cutting them past a fine leg or even sending them through the covers. These covers, are in fact, a fielding position and not the covers that are placed on the pitch overnight. You couldn’t have them on the field while play was underway because that would just be silly.

And talking of silly … Silly mid-off and silly mid-on, are in fact fielding positions and not a reference to the assorted headgear worn by the players.

And on the subject of gear, players are advised to wear protection in the form of helmets, pads and a box to protect the nether regions, just in case a delivery gets though and the batsmen get a little bit more than a slight tickle.

Ouch! I felt that.

And this week’s search terms …

Yes. It’s an ongoing theme – the weird things some people are searching for on Google, then ending up with me. Still the most popular is Jeremy Kyle Teeth followed by that bloody film that I wont even mention. You know, the one about some ship sinking. Well it stops … here! No more.

However, in looking at my stats, I found what has to be the number one now in terms of the oddest search used which resulted in somebody getting to me. It was this … روز فى فيلم تايتنك

???

Okay … Strange, and now I was curious. I mean, what could this possibly be in order to lead some folk to me? So … Cut and paste the phrase, do an image search. Let’s see what we’ve got.

Arrrgghh!

Anchorman II?

Dear God! As if the first one wasn’t bad enough, they’ve only gone and made a sequel.

Anchorman was one of the few films this particular OCD guy was not able to see through to the bitter end. My obsessiveness usually means I have to grit my teeth and plod on, no matter how bad. However, even I gave up on the first film. Badly written bilge, with not one funny line.

The legend continues? Not in this household.

Fashion Disaster Alert!

Karaoke singer, Cheryl Cole tried to take centre stage at the Cannes Film festival this week by wearing a dress that matched the red carpet, perfectly.

Yes, very clever, but do you realise it looks as if you are wearing a huge red foot? Also, even though the paparazzi were ejaculating themselves to death at the outfit, you’d look bloody stupid wearing it on a cricket pitch or anything else that’s not red.

Talking of Karaoke singers …

Nob, Will.i.am, invited criticism this week for carrying the Olympic torch all the while, tweeting away to the social networking site.

As ever, full of his own importance, the star tapped away at how excited he was, but failed to notice he’d misspelled the name of the the town, Taunton, he was running through. Silly Billy has also confessed that despite being a superstar in the music business, he can’t actually sing.

Nooooo! Next you’ll be telling me Robert Mugabe is a murderer.

Still. I suppose he’s just a normal guy at the end of the day, caught up in all the passion of the event. An every day Joe. I mean – Will.i.am? Nothing at all pretentious about calling yourself that.

The truce is over.

Last week, I promised my local Walsall Council to leave them alone after they re-tweeted something for me. I said a week, or until they did something stupid. Well, it’s been about twelve days, so they did well in the end.

I read, yesterday, work on the playground lido pool at the local arboretum has been delayed, despite the work being announced last year. It now won’t be ready until the end of August. Does this mean it is going to be a building site all through summer?

I took that photo today and as you can see in this heatwave, it would be really good to have the water pool for the kids to use. As it happens, it is empty but never mind, come September as the summer is over, the council promise it will be rebuilt and working. Not only that, another couple of months later, you’ll be able to ice-skate on it.

Walsall Council … You have excelled yourselves this time.

It’s blooming hot out there.

I don’t know about you, but I’m going to pour myself a glass of juice and settle down to watch the cricket. See you in a week. Literally if I’m watching cricket.

Cheers

Nick