I have him as organized, a toaster who makes waffles, a spy, and probably other terms I have forgotten now.

Right now, I think he is a cockroach.

They say cockroaches would survive an apocalypse; well Marcus North would survive the entirety of Earth being burnt for a 100 years straight.  He’d start slow, and at times it would look like he wasn’t going to make it because of nerves and his backlift.  If you checked about 70 years into the fire you’d see he was now well set, and just living an unassuming yet fully functional life as others around him had crashed and burned.  His bowling would be more handy than you’d think in a fire.

Ofcourse, he has better timing than that of a cockroach, he has the timing of a Paul Collingwood.  That sort of annoying probot timing that starts to ring alarm bells in their head when they realise the selectors are about to drop them.

You can’t blame them, too many cricketers slip out of test cricket without even a whimper, North clearly does not want to go.

What you do wish is that instead of saving this freakish desperation for the test before they are dropped, they’d just do it all the time.

North averages 35 in test cricket, if that desperation to not be the car that gets scrapped could be harnessed into every innings, he would average 45 and wouldn’t be on the chopping block.

Collingwood and North have gone about these career saving knocks quite differently.

When Collingwood plays for his career, before he goes out to bat he chisels an expression of angst onto his face and goes out there to score enough joyless runs to save his career.

North smiles.  It is almost like he has already decided he will be dropped and this is his last hurrah, so he might as well have fun.  Usually he looks like a tour guide who has turned down the wrong street.

This carefree North looks like a test cricketer.  Today he came out and just scored, when a ball beat him, he laughed it off, when something happened that he didn’t expect he smiled and generally he looked like he belonged out on the field.

It doesn’t bother me that North isn’t that good, as long as he makes runs.  I don’t care that he isn’t in the most talented ten batsmen in the country, just that he makes consistent runs.  With consistent runs I will shut up, but if all he can do is cheap runs and the odd career saver, well then, I have a problem.

I don’t care that he is a toaster/cockroach/Collingwood hybrid, I just want some consistent runs, or for him to get the ass.  It is the in-between times that bother me.

Striker

Sachin– sure he is not gifted with the most athletic frame, but like a non mental Diego Maradonna more than makes up with it with the ability to score at will and carry a team.  Has had some pretty handy world cups already.

Striker

Pollard – big strong and has great club form, picked for his ability to turn only a few opportunities into goals.  People worry that he has never done anything at international level to justify his millionaire status.  He doesn’t seem to mind.  Probably not adverse to the odd dive and handy with headers.

Left Midfield

Sulieman Benn – Occasional brilliance is often overshadowed by talk of his height and temper.  Only player to be sent off by his own captain after a bad tackle and bad attitude.  It is never clear if he ever tries to actually hit the ball in a tackle.

Centre Midfield

Ponting– Scores more than most, but is still a very heavy handed defender.  Is quick, plays well of both feet, is a winner, but can lose his temper at times. Has won at the top level a few times before. Doesn’t like being substituted.

Centre Midfield

Mark Boucher – A tough team player.  Like a rugged family sedan, once you have him there you’d know that spot was well taken care of.  Yet you’d still drop him from time to time to see if you have someone younger or flashier.  He might misread how much injury time is left in big games.

Right Midfield

Paul Collingwood – Often thought of as nothing more than a defender who plays midfield, yet he can score on occasions and is always important at the end of matches.  Only has a right foot, and this often makes his ungainly style look even uglier than it would normally.

Left Back

Ray Price – Hard as nails, ready to hack you just for fun, always slower than the men he is defending.  No one ever gets past him with the ball and their shins.

Centre Back

Charl Langeveldt – Steady, consistent, easily droppable, and dependable.  He will have been in and out of the team for years.  The sort of defender that gets no headlines but does the job when you can’t find anyone better.

Centre Back

Kumar – Silky smooth defender that makes the opposition strikers feel ungainly in comparison.  Always takes a piece of the ball, is the captain, penalty taker, and pin up boy of the team.  Also the most likely to put off the opposition when they’re taking a penalty.

Right Back

Harbhajan Singh – An attacking insane defender who loves to take free kicks from 40 yards believing that he can score a goal.  Mostly he’ll miss by a mile, but every now and then he’ll score.  Will also be red carded for the occasional slap.

Keeper

Rahul Dravid – Nothing gets past Rahul.  Sure there are times he is less animated than an East German goal keeper, but would you ever back yourself to get through him?

Manager

Jamie Siddons – All the best managers have trouble keeping their emotions in check, Siddonds fits  this well.  With him in full view of the cameras you can really see the veins almost explode in his head as the other team score.

That is unfair, and funny.

Their trip to South Africa is about their love of draws.

And not just any draws, but four and a half days of lifeless cricket, and then a final afternoon that wakes up anyone who has accidentally left the TV on.

This is the 4th test of 09 that England has produced a thrilling end after days of wrist slicing tedium.

4 times have we said, fuck the win, what a draw. And 4 times have we fallen asleep earlier in the match.

We have to thank England for exciting us.

Whether it is with a collapse like the last two, or by not getting out Fidel Edwards they know how to draw.

Most teams just play shitty draws that people hate.

Not England, they are the kings of the crowd pleasing draws.

In the future English fans might boo victories, wishing for the rush from that plucky draw with the classic not quite complete collapse or the moral indignation that comes with not getting the tenth wicket because of a bad declaration.

Looking at South Africa’s run rate in the first dig, and England’s ability to lose 6 wickets in a session today, this series could keep all these English draw enthusiasts happy for a while yet.

If it means seeing the Bruce Willis of Nudgers, Collingwood, doing his batting impression of dragging himself through the remains of his dead comrades as mortar drops around him and a tailender batting better than Ian Bell, I will tune in for it.

Viva la draw.

There is more than a little about England’s nail biting draw in this book.

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.

But I refuse to talk about a game to so ugly that Paul Collingwood turns into Andrew Flintoff (the good one, not the new one) and strangles the game to death.

3/16 and a 50.

Come on, that is obscene.

I hope no children saw it.

It was the choice you make when all other choices seem hard.

Strauss and the ECB didn’t seem keen on the shortest of short formats.

KP simply refused to be considered, which on his Bangalore form was the best thing that has ever happened to English cricket.

Rob Key would have required some sort of courage, but since he was named in the squad anyway, surely the decision was made easier.

Dimi Mascarenhas would have been another gutsy choice, he made the squad as well, and not even his accent could get him over the line.

Graham Napier was over looked, and he has his own website.

The rest of the squad looks like this.

England Twenty20 squad: Paul Collingwood (captain), James Anderson, Ravi Bopara, Stuart Broad, Andrew Flintoff, James Foster, Robert Key, Dimitri Mascarenhas, Eoin Morgan, Graham Napier, Kevin Pietersen, Owais Shah, Ryan Sidebottom, Graeme Swann, Luke Wright.

Weird decisions are raft in this line up.

Prior and Davies miss out for Foster, who is a great keeper, but has been picked from no where. Davies opened in 2020 against the Windies, and now can’t make the top 15 No idea where Prior is.

Eoin Morgan? Average of 23 and strike rate of 130…

Did they have to dig up Ryan Sidebottom?

Graham Napier made it, as a bowler I guess.

This is a completely different looking line up than their last 2020 International, Batty, Strauss, Khan, and Davies were all in that side, but none are in the top 15.

But the weirdest decision of all is to name Collingwood as captain when only months ago he said he didn’t want the job.

Especially when there are two county captains who want the job in the squad…

2 players have said they wont.

KP because of the obvious recent history.

Collingwood because he did it for a year before, and has had enough.

So i hereby apply for the position.

I know it is a step down from blogging, but i really want some of this IPL cash, and i think my best chance is to play for a 2020 minnow on the world stage.

I am not English, so that must take me to the head of the queue.

With two players pulling out, Andrew Strauss being Andrew Strauss and Alistair Cook being unofficial i would suggest my only real threat is Robert Key.

There is little between us, so the only fair way to decide would be a pie eating contest.

If England regulary had pie eatcing contests to decide their captaincy, they would be a better team.

True story.

Pathetic.

He should be dropped, and perhaps stoned.

If you’re English, you should agree with me.

Because Paul Collingwood needs you.

Once he feels safe in this side, he will be useless.

There is something inherintly wrong with his wiring, but you can route around with good old fashioned English negativity.

And asking English people to be negative is like asking Mel Gibson to be a christian/racist/overactor.

That said, it may be tough, as the more you call for him to be dropped/stoned, the more runs he will make.

He may even end up with a batting averaged that is respectable in this day and age, you know, like Matt Prior’s is.

But you have to stand tough English fan.

Collingwood must be drowned in negativity, it is the only way he works.

Make him bleed with your cutting remarks.

I know you have it in you.