How Sex Should Be More Like Cricket

So this afternoon the Brat and I were discussing sex and cricket, as you do, and we came to the conclusion that sex should be more like cricket.

Yes, you heard me. Sex should be more like cricket.

And here's a few reasons why:

Five days, with breaks for drinks and dinner
Lots of ball polishing
Changing ends to avoid undue wear on the run-up to the creases
New balls every four innings
Teams of eleven with substitution allowed in the event of injury
An umpire to make sure everybody plays fair, with video adjudication for borderline cases
Proper use of protective equipment
Highlights on the big screen during drinks
Penalties for using the incorrect action
Bowling maidens over (you get to decide what constitutes "a maiden" in this case)
Practice time in the nets
Whites (the clothes)
Switching bowlers
Only playing in the sun
Shorter forms played under floodlights (prevents problems with bad light stopping play)
Hotspots, Hawkeye and ultra slow-motion replays
Commentators

Any additions/suggestions? Leave us a comment!

Posted on behalf of the Brat

Dear Daniel Flynn,

You are not supposed to be attractive. That I find you so is weirding me out. Please cease immediately.

The Brat

If I didnt want to do Tim Southee before, I totally do now.

A socially conforming experience?

Dear Otago Cricket,

Yes, I understand that you are excited that you get to have a real test at the frankly gorgeous University Oval, but I believe your public relations crew need to wake up a bit. The phrase "Dunedin - It's All White Here" might not be the best choice of slogan given the test we are playing there is against the West Indies. I'm just saying.

Besides, what's wrong with "Dunedin - Enjoy your stay and have a riot?"

Yours,

Brat.

And in other news, going into the final day of the State Champs...

Sexual have surprised us all and gotten up and are now looking much like beating Auckland thanks to a century by Brad Patton.

Otago are still playing poorly and another of Northern's 19 year old whiz-kids has taken five wickets.

And Wellington are looking to have Canterbury all wrapped up after Matty Bell scored a century and Canterbury had to follow on.

And in other other news... Let's not mention the test, shall we?

History Repeating?

Munster, that most unsexy of club sides, are up 16-10 over the All Blacks. We've been in this postion before, only that time the Munster side was made up of actual Limerickmen, rather than half the Auckland Blues.

Updates as they occour.

ETA1: Stephen Donald needs to start learning how to kick in the quiet or Im going to go over there and kick him myself. 16-13.

ETA2: And it would be nice if we could, you know, actually pass to people rather than space.

ETA3: Woo Hoo go Smokin' Joe! And youll never see a test team celebrate a try as much as they celebrated that one. 16-18.

I've just had a horrible idea

Following on from the Nightwatchgirl's lament that England could not come up with a naked cricket calender, due to having a team full of fugly players, I thought about the idea of having The Black Caps get their kit off and pose for the camera.

Cue the mental floss.

Aaron Redmond, cute but bald.
Iain O'Brien, best described as having a face akin to a Hitler weasel.
Chris Martin (though I think he's gorgeous) looking like gristle held together with packing twine.
Jesse Ryder... I'm sorry I can't keep a straight face when I picture him pouting for the camera.

Sure, Danny and Baz would definitely look nice in the buff, but by then you would likely have dug out your own eyes with a spoon.

So while our new uniforms may be hideous, at least we should be grateful that they are wearing them.

The All Blacks, on the other hand, should never put their clothes on. It would raise the aesthetic levels of the general environment to have Richard Kahui's muscular backside on display 24/7.

...

I'm sorry, I went to a very happy place there. Ahem.

In actual cricket news, the State Championship has started!

Bloody Auckland beat Canterbury last week, and they're on their way to beating Sexual this week. CD are 191/6.

In Wellington we welcomed the new cricket season by having a massive fucking storm, but Wellington and Canterbury managed to get out onto the Basin and Wellington are 155/2.

And Otago are doing what they do best, which is playing poorly. Northern are now 223/7.

Sadly my need for gainful employment is truncating my ability to watch cricket this summer. Someone should pay me to blog. (that sounds so dirty.)

Oh noes!

There's something very wrong with Dan Carter.

He's missed two kicks, one of which I could have gotten. Two!

Oh shit. Is he wearing silver undies?

Oh, there we go, he's finally gotten one. Thank fuck.

Right... Sure.

Anyone still think we can beat Australia?

Anyone?

*crickets chirping*

Yeah. My thoughts as well. Of course I wasn't delusional enough to think we could ever beat them, not after our dismal display against Bangladesh. But we are of course looking much like we are about to lose to New South Wales.

NSW without their top-tier bowlers.

And we are about to face those top-tier bowlers, at the GABBA, a place which we have historically sucked the big fat one. Those bowlers will be threatened on pain of death to get through their overs within the allotted time. That's a lot of very good bowling coming very fast. Probably at the helmets of our batsmen, who all seem to be a bit short. (Big Jake not being there.)

To add to our problems, Jesse Ryder is quarantined in the hotel with a "Mystery Bug" ("Massive Hangover" is our bet, but what would we know?)

And Baz the superhero is spasming. Which would leave the gloves with Gareth Hopkins, the saddest old man this side of anywhere.

Seems we can't catch a break.

Or the ball.

And in more positive cricket news, Hamish Marshall is returning to play for the Northern Knights. We in the Cheap Seats heartily approve, because we think the twins are cute.

Further Insight...

I was going to say something really funny and clever about England losing a warm up game.

Then I saw this. And all words went out of my head.

Okay, so he's not quite Mitchell Johnson, but there's less photoshop and spray tan involved in this pic.

I need something to blog about before this becomes just a spankier version of my case files...

Insight...

I was going to say something coherant and insightful about India beating Australia...

Then I saw this. And now I think I need some time alone.



Ahem. So, yes... Carry on...

This is how I express my expressions

I watched (in the vaguest sense of "watching") the All Blacks play Scotland.

We won, which we should have, even with 'The R Word' back in full force.

And Corey Jane got to play for a whole half. (I like Corey Jane.)

The ref, for all his fondness for whipping out his cards, was distressingly good-looking. I'm sure there should be some law against refs other than Steve Walsh being attractive.

But there was one thing that really really stunned me, and it came after the game was over. Jamie Macintosh was asked what the coaches told him before he went onto the field. Apparently Jamie was told to "go out there and express himself."

WHAT THE FUCK?

Who in their right mind expresses themselves on a rugby field? (apart from Jerry Collins, and he got in trouble for that) Do you think any of the great teams of old were told to go out there and "express themselves"? If you want to express yourself - write poetry. Or whatever it is hippies do. But don't do it on a rugby field. It makes a mess.

I can imagine Colin Meads turning in his grave. I don't care that he's not dead yet. He's still turning.

A couple of things

Firstly, you will notice that neither the Brat nor myself has said anything about the actual outcome of the Air NZ Cup final, after both of us posted our predictions.  

That's because the Brat watched the game and said it wasn't so much that Canterbury won (the final score was 7-6 in their favour), but more that they failed to lose.  C'mon, guys.  That's not cool.  Not sucking quite as much as your opposition?  That's not victory. It's the absence of defeat.

Secondly, tomorrow is the Melbourne Cup.  This is the one race a year I bet on, mainly because it's the one race a year I can bring myself to give a shit about.  I love horses, but the sport of racing just doesn't do it for me.  

Chances are I won't win anything, but I can't say I really care.  There's just something about the Melbourne Cup that has captured my imagination since I first heard about Phar Lap (who, despite what the Aussies might say, was a New Zealand horse).  

The whole of Australia screeches to a halt for this race. Melbourne Cup Day is a public holiday in the state of Victoria, in which the race is run. Most of New Zealand takes five minutes to watch the race (at 5pm our time). I'm no different. I'll be stopping in at my local TAB to watch the race on my way home from work.

So I did my standard "$2 each way on these three horses, please", with the following picks:

Septimus -- a likely favourite. Carrying lots of weight, decent barrier draw, like his form.

Nom de Jeu -- another front-runner. Stupid barrier draw (one! FFS, talk about trapped against the rail!), but nice form. Also like the name.

Newport -- chosen because I always pick a long shot and, well, Newport's just up the road from Cardiff and I'm a big ol' Torchwood fan. Yes, I usually have at least one pick in the Melbourne Cup that is for reasons this sad.

So yeah, the horses I pick will probably all have three legs and/or fall over and need to be shot. Then again, once every five years or so I'll have one come in and win me about half my stake back. Who cares -- this is the one race I just love. Bring it on.

In which I sound like a bitter old man

I watched England play Middlsesex in the Stanford 20/20 the other day. As I type I'm watching the farcical $20 million dollar match. Now ignoring Alan Stanford's antics with the England WAG's which, to be frank, amused the shit out of me (notes on that later), that game epitomised the worst of cricket. A couple of half-decent teams playing bloody average cricket in the pursuit of a few big slog. Texan oil money funding cricket? Wasn't this once a game for gentlemen?

But the worst thing was the colours. Middlesex were in pink, England were in red, the umpires were in a migraine inducing shade of purple and even the commentators had been kitted out in canary yellow.
Add in the floodlit green grass and the whole thing was like a very bad acid trip. No wonder England were dropping catches. And no where to be found was the glorious, traditional white.

Also missing was the decent cricket. Half-arsed and sloppy, like twenty20 itself, funded with megabucks to impersonate baseball and treat the bowlers as machines. The pitch is terrible. The money seems to be a substitute for class, tradition and quality.

Now, I'll admit when it comes to cricket I am something of a troglodyte. Give me men in whites, five days of hard slog in the sun, where plans are laid sessions in advance and heroes are made through tenacity and talent - not wild slogging. I LOVE test cricket. It annoys the hell out of me to see these hit and giggle games take more importance as they rake in more cash.
You may say that twenty20 is the future of cricket and sad old (young!) bastards like me should recognise it. But I ask you, how many of these English players with their WAG's in tow would swap the chance of a million dollar paycheck for winning the next Ashes series in Australia? I'd bet every single one.

Of course now that's a moot point. The English have CHOKED. Really really hard. These young "Stanford Superstars" have just become very rich men. I can't help but wonder how many of them will go off the rails with this new money?

And now for something completely different, yet sadly the same...

For all my posturing about rugby this year, a game against Australia in Hong Kong, in late spring... Totally didn't inspire me. The Bledisloe was ours already, we had played Aus three times already, and once again it seemed like nothing more than lining the coffers of the respective rugby unions. Average game too.

Money and sport... Fuck that.