SPORTRITE - I say, you chaps, this simply isn't cricket

With Tim Eves
Having an Englishman in the newsroom has its hazards.
Getting assailed with intimate details of the Rugby World Cup (drop-kick) triumph in Sydney, the merits of various English Premiership soccer teams (whoops, we mean football of course) and reasons why rugby is only a meaningless minority sport played by ignorant boofheads in desolate outposts of the world can be tiresome.
Not as tiresome as the ongoing celebrations of England's soccer World Cup victory in 1966 or Will Carling's rugby draw with the All Blacks at Twickenham in 1997.
These burdens are carried on your behalf with all the grace you might expect. The foibles of the English gentry are very hard to determine, let alone understand.
Today, though, is indeed a day to be savoured.
Today we review the latest efforts of England's opulent wardrobe of sporting superstars against the boofheads of antipodean rugby and the ramshackle techniques of the country hick cricketers from New Zealand. But where to start?
On the seventh floor of the Hilton Hotel in Auckland? On the bonnet of a car outside a pub in Ashburton in 1971? (Don't worry we will explain.) On the field at AMI Stadium in Christchurch? Or maybe on the pitch at The Brit Oval in Kennington?
Anyway you look at these events, the blokes with the plum in their mouths don't look too sharp. Credit where it's due though, the British are taking novel approaches to their sport that some are claiming as revolutionary.
First there's switch hitting, then there's herding up all the good-looking sheilas wandering the streets of Auckland, piling the cream of the crop into a minivan and transporting them for "selection" at the hotel reception as a novel way to avoid headlines in The News of the World.
The English management in Auckland were obviously trying to avoid another repeat of the ``Sandy Carmichael Incident' from the Lions tour of 1971.
Carmichael was invalidated out of the 1971 tour with two black eyes and a suspected broken jaw after an unsubstantiated dalliance with a Kiwi lass on the aforementioned car bonnet. The dalliance never happened though, just like the "event" at the Hilton two weeks ago. So big ups to the management team for the attempt at drafting out the bad eggs.
Pity that it turned out to be a cabbage game plan though, especially when the score busted out past 40 again when the whistle went for the second test, and raucous headlines next day.
And so to The Brit Oval where Ryan Sidebottom floored Black Caps batsman Grant Elliott with a well-timed shoulder charge then ran him out while he lay prone on the wicket. Finally an Englishman makes a tackle substantial enough to floor a Kiwi sportsman.
Pity that, despite the English captain ignoring all the traditions of the game of cricket to ensure Elliott's dismissal, his decision resulted in steeling the New Zealand cricket team for victory, a team that only 14 days beforehand had been labelled "incompetent".
Perhaps the two English teams can collude, the cricketers to give the rugby players a few tips on tackling and the rugby players a few tips on how to maintain a healthy strike rate on tour using minivans and strict selection standards.
Either way, it's a one-way conversation round these parts these days.