Vintage Whine: Yorkshire Players

Darren Gough:

(Modesty Personified)
“… there’s a lot of people out there under the impression that Darren likes to blow his own trumpet. Personally I think that’s a bit unfair on the lad, as he’s more than happy to take a back seat whilst someone else tells you how brilliant he is. Although having said that, if the club ever agrees to his suggestion that the tannoy system plays Hail to the Chief every time he crosses the boundary rope, he’ll be in and out of the dressing room all day like a wooden bird on a cuckoo clock.“

“…Goughies late innings blitz against Dominic Cork (is) likely to be talked about for the rest of the season. Not least by Goughie himself who’s got the radio commentary of his winning runs as his current mobile phone ring tone.“

(Vanity thy name is Darren)
“I don’t think I’ve seen Darren look so happy since he realised dance rehearsal rooms have wall to wall mirrors.“

“…asking Darren if he minds having his photo taken is as pointless as putting a tyre swing in a gorilla enclosure to see if they’ll use it or not.“

(Batting Prowess)
“Gough waltzed his way out to the middle, to give us a master class in how fast bowlers should bat. Play and miss, play and miss, four. Play and miss, four, four. Not so much a captain’s innings as a description of how Stevie Wonder plays golf.“

(The day after appearing on TV’s ‘Beat the Star’)
“Come the following morning, with the massed ranks of piss-takers in the Yorkshire squad ready to pounce, Darren showed the one true gift he wasn’t tested on. His ability to steer every conversation towards the hole-in-one he scored during a pre-season golf tournament. It’s a topic he never seems to tire of and a victory that his beaten golf partners of that day will hear about all season.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m happy for the lad and it’s great our captain has such a competitive streak. But you’ve got to ask. Would it have done any harm to let his kids win at crazy golf?“

Jason Gillespie

(Man and bat in perfect harmony)
“‘Dizzy’ Gillespie, possessor of arguably the ugliest batting stance in world cricket. It doesn’t so much suggest a test match double ton, as hint at a bad case of rickets. He proceeded to be stuck on zero for about the same amount of time it would take Gough to translate Bleak House into Japanese, but with far less entertaining results.“

Craig White:

(Fashion sense during pre-season tour of Abu Dhabi)
“If Chalky keeps wearing his training shorts that high he might need a comb for the first time in years“

Matthew Hoggard:

(Dog lover)
“Matthew’s only really interested in something if it can wag it’s tail when he calls its name or fetch a ball for him. I can assure you, the first of those is something beyond the gift of any Yorkshire player I know and quite frankly you’d get mixed results if they tried the later as well.“

“I’ll admit that this particular partnership was a tough watch, as they limped along at less than two runs an over. At one point I couldn’t take it any more and retreated back into the dressing room where Hoggy was holding court to anyone who’d listen, about the best way to check your dog for worms. I was drifting in and out of the conversation somewhat, but even overhearing the phrase ‘magnifying glass and tweezers’ couldn’t tempt me back out onto the balcony…“

(Dog Lover – consequences of)
“How Hoggy made sixty I’ll never know, especially given the ease with which he seemed to be playing Warne. Young Sayers, with that fancy education of his, could probably use one of Zeno’s paradoxes to prove it never happened, but I saw it with my own eyes. After this, it’ll be a long time before I join in the complaints that he smells of dog biscuits when it rains.“

(Smarter than the average bear)
“…it seems to be Matthew’s lot in life to be one of the most underrated and patronised cricketers of his generation. Seemingly forever running into bowl on a wave of “stout yeomen” style journalistic cliché. The underlying implication is clear: he’s a bowler who busts a gut every day, so must be a bit thick, certainly not someone who should be mentioned in captaincy discussions with the clever dicks in the top five. Well here’s an equation he understands: three outswingers + one inswinger = one stump knocked out of the ground and one smartypants batsman trudging back to the pavilion with the sudden realisation that going to school till you’re twenty two doesn’t mean you’ve got an once of cricket sense rattling round in your head.“

Adil Rashid:

(origin of nickname)
“a few of you have been asking me why I sometimes refer to Adil as ‘Young Skywalker’. Despite what some people think, it’s not because he can feel a disturbance in the ‘force’ whenever the Chief Exec visits the dressing room. Although occupying the peg nearest to the door, he is closest to the accompanying cloud of Hai Karate, which produces a similar invisible chokehold as Darth Vader.

No, Adil has got himself into the habit of making light-sabre noises whenever he plays a shot. He does it under his breath and thinks no one has noticed, but with ears the size of mine I can almost hear what people are thinking in the nets. I’ve not mentioned it to the other lads yet, as they’ll just rib him for being nerdy. Even Joe Sayers would. And he’s got a degree in physics…“

Jacques Rudolph:

(On bending the Kolpak rules to breaking point)
“As a traditionalist I wasn’t overly impressed with us taking this particular path – I’d rather have seen Jacques come over as an overseas pro – but I could at least come down from my high horse long enough to understand the set of circumstances that forced Yorkshire’s hand. Others however, were enjoying themselves far too much in the saddle to remember players in their own ranks qualified to play on the basis of a Grandmothers passport, a shopping trip to Dublin or having once slept with an Estonian hooker in Dubai. For that alone, I hope the lad shoves a hat full of runs down their throat.“

Simon Guy:

(International Tourist & Crap Mask wearer)
“Come the morning and I was still a little worse of wear and spent much of the Lancashire game snoring loudly from my position behind the Yorkshire seating area. Not that I was the only one missing the game, as Simon Guy was still being held by UEA customs. Apparently they took one look at that stupid wicketkeeping mask he’s been promoting and pulled him to one side as a suspected S&M sex tourist. We did tell him ordering one in black was a mistake.“

(Something missing)
“He could walk out to the middle with a line of toilet paper trailing from the back of his trousers and it wouldn’t phase him. Even if it knocked a bail off before he faced a ball. That’s one of Simon’s great strengths – he’s missing the gene that causes embarrassment.“

(Top Ten Yorkshire fielding errors during 20/20 games, so far)
“#5 Simon Guy – Fielded at Old Trafford with eyes closed as he was recording the match on Sky+ and didn’t want to know the result.“

(Grasp on reality)
“…Don’t ask me why Adam (Lyth) is an “insane genius”; I don’t know, but Simon Guy keeps telling everyone he is. Of course, Simon also tells everyone he used to own a hamster with stigmata, so he might not be the most reliable character witness at the club.“

(Sanity questioned)
“… even after all that, Deon swears blind that he’s “as sane as the next man”. Unfortunately he was standing next to Simon Guy when he said that, which to my mind makes it evidence for the prosecution.“

Michael Vaughan:

(How he’s matured)
“It’s strange seeing how much he’s changed and matured over the years. When he’s back with us now, I see the England Captain, a leader, a businessman and a father. Yet it only seems like the other day when he was in his first year at the academy, sitting quietly in a corner of the dressing room, picking his nose till he got a headache.“

(Batting flaw against ‘genus Panthera’)
“For a talented lad, Michael seems to pick up more than his fair share of injuries, to go with his ever-increasing list of daft ways to get dismissed. At some point the two will combine and he’ll be timed out after being mauled on the way to the wicket by an escaped tiger.“

(Chance of interaction with celebrity armpits)
“It’s always good to see him (Vaughan) back playing for us, giving the local kids, armed with paper and pen, a chance to pester him on the boundary with that most familiar of questions, “Can you get me Darren Gough’s autograph?” Bit of a lesson in the nature of modern celebrity, is that for Michael. As even if you are the England cricket captain, there’s only one member of the White Rose squad destined to appear on ‘I’m a celebrity get me out of here’ picking leeches out of June Sarpong’s armpit hair. That’s a level of fame you just can’t expect to compete with.“

(New business venture)
“(rain breaks meant we had) plenty of time to speculate who Virgil was talking too on the phone when he thanked them for “neutralising the rival Georgian pipeline”.

He has some strange business contacts that boy. Mind you, we’ve still got to play Chris Adams down at Hove this season. I wonder if Michael has time to get his hands on some Polonium-210?“

(Way to ease him back into form)
“With another batsman you might be tempted to drop him into the seconds to find form against lesser bowling. Fortunately he’s got a test match coming up against New Zealand, which amounts to pretty much the same thing.“

Tim Bresnan:

(Diet)
“got a sneak look at the weekly dietary report he hands in to the physio and somehow the KFC bargain bucket he shared with a couple of the Lancashire lads on Friday night had transformed itself into “chicken with some vegetables”. He’s got a rather naughty sense of humour, that young man.“

(A thoughtful Tim, considers one of life’s great mysteries… )
“…why does Simon Guy always pat himself on the head three times before eating cheese?“

(Summer hobbies)
“Incidentally, I know what you’re thinking. Brezzie comes from the Pontefract/Castleford area, so his activities during the summer will mainly revolve around Rugby League and illegal fly-tipping. Well shame on you, that’s terrible stereotyping of the good people of Pontefract and Castleford, not all of who like Rugby League.“

Steve Patterson:

(Backpacker supreme)
“Patto is very much my opposite when it comes to travel. Yorkshire’s answer to Bruce Parry if you like, although Steve’s about a foot taller and I’ve yet to see him dancing naked in front of a herd of cows. But given how often some of the younger lads used to go to the Majestyk, anything’s possible I suppose.“

“But delightful as the chance was to watch Patto’s ‘South America 06’ side show once again, given the delicate nature of my stomach after the flight, I didn’t think I could cope with the accompanying ‘tales from the restaurant at the edge of civilisation’. If Steve’s managed to get the better of a pickled guinea pig or a water buffalo’s left buttock, then fair play to him, but I don’t need to know about it.“

Deon Kruis:

(Attempts to break into the world of cricket commentry)
“Equally perturbing has been the behaviour of Deon Kruis since returning from his latest stint with the Sky Sports cricket team. With the season fast coming to a close and still no sign of a new contract for 2009, Deon has been throwing himself wholeheartedly into his end of career escape route: commentating.

Fair enough you’d think, but is it really necessary to practise 24/7? It’s bad enough that his ongoing dressing room commentary makes him speak in the third person more often than Michael Vaughan, but it can’t help the concentration levels of the next batsman in, to have to listen to the distant, muffled, sound of Deon narrating his own bowl movements.“

“I’m beginning to worry about Deon Kruis. Actually, we’re all beginning to worry about him, as the commentary practise I mentioned in my report on the Hampshire game, is gradually getting more extreme. As well as driving everyone nuts with his none stop dressing room version of Test Match Special, his hairbrush interviews with recently dismissed batsmen are threatening to get out of hand.

Case in point during this game was his ill advised interception of Mags, after Anthony had been given out lbw for 99 in our first innings. Anyone in their right mind could see it was best to give the guy a little space once he made it back to the pavilion. It certainly wasn’t the time to wave a crudely drawn approximation of Hawkeye under his nose and tell him his footwork was “schoolboy”.

As Mags chased him through the door, down the stairs and out into the Old Trafford car park, I remember thinking to myself, “I’m sure Hutton and Appleyard never used to do this”.“

Joe Sayers:

(The burden of being team intellectual)
“Much as night follows day and an uncomfortable silence follows Joe Sayers suggesting we watch a subtitled film on the team coach, so preparations for the return of cricket follow the mid June break for the group stages of the 20/20 cup“

(Ability to work out run rates)
“With that physics degree of his, he could work stuff like this out in his head. But then he can also do that trick where you throw a box full of matches on the floor and he counts them really quickly. Although all Yorkshiremen can do that – not because we’re autistic, just really careful with our property.“

Andy Gale:

““There is nothing like A.Gale,
Nothing in the world.
No longer bats like a snail,
And his name is Andy Gale

Nobody looks like A.Gale (1),
Ooh-ahh
Nobody hooks like A.Gale,
Ooh-ahh
Avoids getting ducks like A.Gale,
Ooh-ahh
Etc, etc, etc…”

(Origin of the species)
“…this was an impressive innings and so different to what we’d seen from the lad before, it reminded you of the opening scene from 2001. The one where man first learns to fashion rudimentary weapons from the objects around him and so enters a different stage of his evolution. Not that Andy lives in a barren Neolithic wilderness, of course. He’s actually from Dewsbury.“

(Ginger on ginger puzzle)
“Why do our players keep getting injured like this? It’s one of the mysteries of Yorkshire’s season, along with why can’t we get a first wicket partnership to last more than half a dozen overs and why does Andy Gale dye his hair so it looks even more ginger?“

Rana Naved:

(Try not to stare at it)
“…with the weight of injuries suffered leading to first class debuts for Oliver Hannon-Dalby and Henry, Rana Naved’s tame toupee. You can imagine how delighted I was to see his arrival – as if I don’t have enough things to iron overnight…“

“…when it comes to Rana’s bowling, I’m beginning to wonder if he’s suffering from a reverse Samson effect; as now he’s got his hair back he seems to have lost all his powers.“

Ajmal Shahzad:

(The Pete Tong of Headingley)
“I’ve been left with a constant ringing in my ears ever since I was daft enough to accept a lift in with young Ajmal this morning.

What a nightmare journey that was. For a start, if God had wanted me to speed round corners on two wheels he’d have given me a backside small enough to fit on a motorcycle. Secondly, most people recognise bleeding ears as a sign to turn down the car stereo. I can’t get the damn tune that was playing, out of my head now – I say tune in its broadest possible sense. I can’t remember what Ajmal called it, DJ Anonymous featuring MC ‘You’ll never hear of him again’, or some such. I can’t be more specific I’m afraid, as I rather lost contact with modern music when skiffle started to get a bit boisterous.“

(After crop circles appeared above the nape of his neck)
“For those of you interested in politics, wondering what happened to David Blunkett, it turns out he now works in a barbers, as witnessed by Ajmal Shahzad who is currently sporting his own haircut plus half of somebody else’s.“

(Batting style)
“Ajmal showed more improvisation, and movement, at the crease. With one back cut to the boundry in particular looking like it came from the MCC coaching manual for sufferers of Saint Vitus Dance.“

Anthony ‘Mags’ McGrath:

(On Mags’ change of heart after David Byas left the club)
“(he) returned to the fold after realising that under the new Gough/Moxon regime written permission would no longer be required before using the toilet.“

(The practical joker)
“And no matter how many times someone tries it, slipping a red sock into a pile of someone else’s whites never seems to get old. You’d of thought the person responsible would have learnt his lesson a season or two back when I confiscated his scissors, but no, he’s still at it. It’s not for me to name name’s of course, but lets just say, if he thinks no one notices when he’s pretending not to read the Advanced Hair Studio ads in the newspapers, he needs to think again.“

Morne Morkel:

(The strange tale of Morne Mrokel’s recruitment)
“What the heck is going on with Morne Morkel?

First it seemed as if we’d captured the services of one of the coming men of South African cricket. Then it’s reported that he’d signed to play for ICI in India at the same time. Now today we learn he’s been selected to tour India with the South African test team during the run up to the English season. Unless he’s one of highly talented triplets or Doctor Who’s new regeneration, then someone’s kippers will go cold waiting for him to turn up to the team breakfast.“

Oliver Hannon-Dalby:

(Graceful mover)
“(he) showed a glimpse of the future with some excellent deliveries as well as a distinctive upright running style that reminds you of John Cleese doing an impression of Michael Johnson.“

The Academy Lads:

(Skill at one handed typing)
“…a number of the junior pro’s use facebook to download images from locally based student nurses. Although why they can’t collect their X-rays from the hospital I don’t know. Sometimes I find modern life very confusing.“

(Preparing to tour the UAE)
“a forklift truck turned up and the lads tried to load the coach with several pallets of car Sat Nav systems labelled ‘Michael Vaughan – Import/Export inc’.

This raised a number of questions: Did the committee know the academy lads were being used for purposes other than playing in the Yorkshire Central League and machine finishing the clothing lines for the club shop? How had Vaughanie managed to sell Sat Nav systems to the UAE that were only programmed with a map of the Benelux countries? And most puzzling of all, how had Azeem Rafiq got himself a certificate to drive forklift trucks when the club couldn’t manage to register him to play cricket?

It was all very odd, and we had quite a stand off for a while, with the coaching staff finally forcing the forklift to back off, despite protestations from the lads that “we’ve already signed the contract” and “Virgil will have our legs broken”.

It was a worried looking group of young cricketers that finally boarded the coach and set off for Leeds/Bradford airport, I can tell you.“

(Washing away the season)
“It’s those same health and safety guidelines that force us to line the academy boys up against the back of one of the stands and hose them down before they’re sent home for the winter. (That’s why ‘The Winter Shed’ was originally called ‘The Winter Shower’). Now I know being hosed down naked in pubic doesn’t sound much fun, and indeed there tends to be a degree of reluctance, if not outright bitterness, from the lads towards the process. But looking at it from everyone else’s point of view, it’s one of the highlights of the season. In fact it’s the only day of the year that Mrs Len joins me at work. Sometimes she brings her local WI branch with her too.“

(Learning harsh lessons about marketing)
“they don’t call Ian Bishop’s desk ‘The Bunko Booth’ for nothing. That’s why, after loosing a game of ‘find the lady’, the academy lads have had to spend all this season with ‘Finger of Fudge’ shaved into their heads. The money from Cadbury’s may well be an additional revenue stream, but apparently they’ve been getting some very odd looks at night in town.“