There are 1% of the world’s cricket fans that have never bagged Paul Collingwood.
These are sick people, a lot of them ginger and/or from the north of England, while the others who like batsman who struggle like hell so much they want him elected.
I am not one of those 1%, I often bag him, I love it.
He is an easy target with the MBE, ginger hair and that face.
And his batting, oh my fucking god.
He makes the prettiest shots look like car wrecks.
He does it for hours too, sometimes never making for than a handful of runs, but all the while looking scratchy, while we scratch out our eyes.
But when I was doing my podcast at the end of day 4, he was the player I thought could stick around and piss off Australia.
Exactly what he did.
It was a tough proper test batsman innings.
Holding up his team without ever looking that in himself.
Watching the flashy and well regarded fall away as he fought like hell to keep his head above water.
For most of his innings he looked like going out way more than Jimmy or Montybot did, but he was the reason England didn’t lose.
You could argue, rather successfully, that on pure natural talent there are 8 batsmen in the English line up better than him. And Jimmy might be pissed I left him off that list.
But the little bastard just tries harder than people with 4 times the natural ability that he has.
He is never going to be a free flowing batsman, but as a determined fighting son of a bitch, he has few peers.
If you are a batsman like him, like say Brendan Nash, he would be your idol.
He really is the Bruce Willis of nudgers. The Clint Eastwood of nurdlers. The Toshirō Mifune of batting ugly.
Ofcourse all these guys would never have been anything like Paul Collingwood, if he was a character in a film it would be Louis Dega from Papillion.
Throughout the whole movie you wanna punch him in the head, but without him it wouldn’t have been much of a film.
He’d made a great England captain ;-)
The Village Cricketer’s last blog post..Intellectual T-shirts of cricketing distinction
I foolishly look at the “Collingwood for PM” FB page to see that it was set up by the hack and author Nigel Henderson, who wrote a book called The Worst of Cricket. The other bloke on it is a professional charity fundraiser.
So the first bloke has already written Collingwood’s biography and the second bloke must be Collingwood’s agent.
Quite possibly the funniest FB group of all time
I am ginger, from the North of England and constantly think he should be dropped.
Don’t you dare think I’d be in that 1%.
D Charlton, I thought you were Paul Collingwood.
He’s like a ranga Bruce Laird, but with more shots and red hair.
Hehe, I’m glad I’ve already written on this blog that I rate Colywobbles
Ooh, I’m part of the 1% and am neither ginger* nor northern. I just like me a tryer.
Am not sure whether have actually articulated my esteem, as Matt suggests is necessary, but have never allowed a negative thought to cross my mind (except slight nipple repulsion during Atheist’s Man Boob compo).
*Although there was an unfortunate henna incident at school
Have to say would have watched more of the Die Hard series if Colly was starring rather that that smirking old poop Bruce W and have always been loud and proud in praise of the Ginja Ninja. (D Charlton is a charlatan btw and probably a smirking old poop too)
Poopsie
Hack? I haven’t been called that for years. And the charity fundraiser is the man who set up Third Man, a short-lived but still entertaining cricket mag from the 90s. Who did you think would’ve set up the FB group – Mrs Collingwood!
reverse sweep’s last blog post..It’s not all about me, me, me (part two)
Hi Lisa not necessary I don’t reckon. I’m just a bit shy of being acused of being bandwagonesque, largely because I am,. In these instances I too have indeed been accused of ‘articulating the steam’ and offered other, less savoury analogies. So nice for once to be able demonstrate conistency!
allow me to pose a hypothetical. If collingwood and katich were batting in some sort of Barbarians type team, which eyeball would you gouge out first???