Jaapies. Get Over It

The Bangladesh ODI series has been a constant source of entertainment for Wickman. Not because he's been watching it. Oh no. He's been hard at work pumping out hot air. The few snatched minutes in the boozer he's managed while nursing a pint of Old Jockstrap have mostly centred on uninspiring passages of middle over nurdling or crops of wickets falling to lookalikey left arm round spinners.

What has been keeping Wickman glued to a screen is forums and microblogs. There have been two themes emerging from the rich world of content that is Cricinfo and Twitter. Firstly Bangladesh feel hard done by. Their supporters claim that there is a global conspiracy at ICC level to keep them downnnn in the basement of cricket. So the Rod Tucker failure to trigger Eion Morgan early on for two marginal LBs is represented as a national scandal. Tucker it is claimed is a poor umpire foisted on the Banglas because they are a bottom tier side.

Tucker they opine would not give out a world class bat but would have the trigger finger out quicker than the time it takes to build an Austrian cellar in which to imprison your children faced with a Bangla batter. In fact all umpires other than Dar and Taufel are not good enough to officiate but they are never booked becuase Bangladesh is a rubbish assignment and ICC won't book the best.

Which is probably true. NOT. Why appoint your best umpires to a two-bit series between two very average one day sides? Keep 'em fresh for something enormous like West Indies vs Zimbabwe where Taufel actually is. Really. There are some serious chips out there on those Bangla shoulders...

The second major theme that has emerged is whigeing and moaning about the make up of the England team. The percentage of South African born players coupled with the emergence of Eoin "that'sll be a pint of Guinness to be sure" Morgan at the same time has cricket fans the world over frothing away indignantly.

Now Wickman gets it of course. The underlying criticism is that our English and Welsh (and dammit) Scottish players just aren't getting enough of a look in. And if you live outside our fair shores you can use it taunt us. Wickman isn't going to debate the individual cases here but merely point you in a couple of directions. 1. Backwards. Robin Smith. Robin Jackman. Graham Hick. Allan Lamb. The Nawab of Pataudi. And countless others have all played for England down the years. Yes we have a few more fellows at the moment who have one English parent not two playing for us. But tough. Wickman loved watching Trotty kiss the badge in the Ashes. Deal with it.

2. Sideways. West Indies. Look it up on the map. Find The West Indies' parliament or legal structure. Check them out at the Olympics. Find them in The Hague. Doesn't exist. Not a place. Guyana is in South America. Etc etc. It's cricket. It works. The ECB spent most of the 1980s and 1990s touring South London trying to find some second generation West Indian Holdings and Garners to terrorize them back. We came up with Devon Malcolm and that drug smuggler. *sigh*

3. And here's a distraction technique. New Zealand rugby. It doesn't bother a Kiwi when he's watching the Haka and half the monsters on show are from Islands not currently sovereign territory. You only have to look at the limp wristed sides of the middle of the last century nancying about and patting their thighs like children playing pat-a-cake in the playground to realise why someone decided to pop out in a motor boat to look for some big lads to beef things up. It doesn't seem as though they've found any cricketers on their travels though...

So enough. These Jaapies are our Jaapies. Eoin is our Irishman. Our Queen is German. The PM is Scottish. The Duke of Edinburgh is Greek. Wickman could go on. But he was born in Chile.