Sunday, 22 November 2009

Colly: Englishman

It's entirely appropriate that Paul Collingwood is England's most capped ODI player. He embodies all of the virtues and all the vices of England in the format. Even the number of appearances [171] tells the story in miniature. 

But more than that, he seems the perfect channel for England's narrative in ODIs: he's probably the team's most totemic member. If any opposing coach is giving a talk about playing England and he has to describe both their strengths and their weaknesses, he should probably just display a picture of the man. Everyone would get what he meant. 

In that spirit, I closed my eyes, thought of each of the other major ODI nations, and wrote down the first player that came to mind:

India: Sachin Tendulkar
Sri Lanka: Sanath Jayasuriya
Pakistan: Shahid Afridi
West Indies: Chris Gayle
Australia: Ricky Ponting
South Africa: Mark Boucher
New Zealand: Scott Styris [weird, I know]
Bangladesh: Mashrafe Mortaza

Strange, but it kind of works...
at

2 comments:

  1. Brit23 November 2009 at 01:11

    This is very good, OB. A sort of personification word-association.

    Could we also describe them with 7 dwarf-type names? eg.
    Sri Lanka: Loopy
    West Indies: Sloppy
    Australia: Flinty
    South Africa: Flaky
    New Zealand: Ballsy
    Pakistan: Schizo
    England: Plodder

    ReplyDelete
  2. Cricket Betting Blog26 November 2009 at 16:56

    Kind of agree with that theory. Not a player to have opposition coaches trembling with fear, honest, hard working, can do the business on his day, but ultimately not fit to drink at the top table - as just five centuries in 171 ODI's would testify.

    It does kind of sum up the England ODI team.

    ReplyDelete