Jeremy Coney: Axiomatic

Further to the post below, Sky scheduled an entire one hour build-up to the big New Zealand versus West Indies clash in Dunedin. The mad bastards. It turned out to be an inspired call: a  rollicking 60 minutes ensued, during which one former Test captain proved once again he's well worth the screentime.

But then Jeremy Coney is much more than just an ex-cricketer. The Playing Mantis is a musician, Shakespearean scholar and all-round raconteur, too. Last night, he described Jesse Ryder as "a rolling maul of anarchy", and used the word 'axiomatic'. Twice.

In partnership with Colin Croft, whose eyes were aglint with mischief throughout, JC ran through the failings of Test cricket's two worst big-time teams in high style. Great hilarity ensued when, having spent half an hour on New Zealand's godawful batting and the West Indies ineffectual bowling, they cut from studio to the toss, where Vettori won and chose to bat, and Chris Gayle admitted he wanted to bowl anyway.

Coney and Crofty's appetites where whetted at the thought of a team whose batsmen have the averages of good bowlers facing off against another whose bowlers have the averages of good batsmen. They were having such a good time they almost missed the first ball of the match. 

We only crashed back to earth when the trailer package for England versus India came on. Above it came the Nasser Hussain monotone: 'Yuvraj Singh... he just loves hitting sixes...' That, Nasser old chum, is axiomatic.