Tuesday 6 March 2007

Wickman Caught With Last Poster Tube

Wickman is in trouble. A colleague of Wickman's needed urgently to send a poster or other artwork out to a client. Wickman finds it necessary to earn money to pay for new edges for bats, whitener for his pads (LBW evidence) and other cricket related expenditure like Club Dinner Tickets. Wickman is forced to do this in an office. Wickman has, as a result, colleagues, many of whom do not understand cricket.
It irritates Wickman that he has never had the courage to take an old bat into the office (there's surely room for a mother-in-law joke here but Wickman passes up the opportunity, scorning such easy open goals) so, when the need arises to play the perfect forward defensive, imaginary off drive or flashing square cut (any batsman who has not been overcome by this urgent need in an office environment must surely be only pretending to be a batsman) Wickman must use the most bat-like thing available. Occasionally there is nothing to hand so he must only cock a wrist at an unnatural angle to indicate the presence of a bat.
Sadly for the colleague, now irate, Wickman works near the stationery cupboard. Here there used to be a ready supply of poster tubes. Poster tubes are almost perfect for the mimicing of cricket shots. Sure there are only a few batsmen (Fudgey is one) who would have so many rubbers on their bat that the grip would be that wide, but there is something about the pick-up on a poster tube, the wind resistance, the length, that almost perfectly mimics a 2lb 9oz Newbery or similar.
Which is why there are no poster tubes. Wickman has used them all to play crunching square cuts and off drives, delicate late cuts and has pulled a number of imaginary short balls. In his enthusiasm he has, more than once, clipped a desk or chair back, taking huge lumps out of his "bat" and rendering them unfit for purpose. So when the colleague was asking why there were no poster tubes left it probably didn't help that Wickman was flashing a square drive past an imaginary Outerbridge and jogging off down the office for a single to win an (imaginary match). The tube was in a sorry state and the bottom six inches was hanging off. Oh dear.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Unfortunately I don’t have room in my cubicle to swing a bat. I do however have a fresh cricket ball on my desk. Giving it a tweak while at work seems acceptable, when people ask why I have cricket ball I tell them it’s an executive toy. BALL TOUCHERS

Anonymous said...

word has it that new signing Kam keeps his ball from nets with him in his car, working on it throughout the week to achieve unnatural swing.

Anonymous said...

Rubbing the ball with Magic Tree can create reverse swing whilst keeping the ball pine fresh.

Gate Hopper said...

That doesn't surprise me - have you seen what he bowls with? The swing looks pretty natural though to me. Prefer that to the new cherry that Doddy and Jimmy C use.

WickWAG said...

am catching up with a back-blog, and have just wet self with laughter in office(surrounded by non-cricketing colleagues)when reading this. Am off to stationery cupboard to find other suitable ball and bat substitutes for desktop nets.