Rain Jealous As Covid Stops Play During England-South Africa Series

Here’s new writer Dan Flanagan, aka Professor Mohammed Hafeez and Sir Gary Vallance, with his report on the abandonment of England’s recent ODI series.

Cricket’s oldest bedfellow was left distraught in Cape Town on Monday evening after the ongoing ODI series between England and South Africa was abandoned due to concerns over coronavirus – rather than the traditional torrential downpour ten minutes before the toss.

“I’ve been waterlogging pitches and ruining summer afternoons for years,” said the rain, through floods of tears, or possibly just floods, “and this is the thanks I get? Covid might be young and sexy, but nothing beats experience. Cricket wouldn’t be the same without me, and it would do well to remember that.”

“All those interminable rain delays during test matches; the inexplicable damp squibs in mid-July; the agony of scraping together an XI on the morning of the game, travelling an hour and a half to Slagheap CC in blazing sunshine to take on their 4th XI, only for the game to be abandoned before a ball could be bowled: all my work! Can a flash in the pan like coronavirus replicate a system honed to perfection over two hundred years? I think not.”

The rain was joined in its condemnation by Messrs. Duckworth, Lewis and latterly, Stern. The statistical triumvirate fumed that their system could not be applied to Covid-affected games in the same way as rain-affected ones, since everyone would be at home self-isolating and there would be no one at the ground to read their charts.

“Nothing says cricket like all 15 men hurtling off the pitch to make it to the clubhouse before getting drenched,” continued the torrent. “And where would the gentleman’s game be without the pitch inspection? Two sodden umpires with one striped umbrella between them prodding at a puddle in the lightest of drizzle is what makes our game laughable – I mean, great.”

As the rain, wracked with envy, ruminated on what went wrong in its relationship with the sport, CSA and the ECB were disputing who should take the blame for this month’s debacle in the bubble. Things started smoothly enough with two South Africans testing positive before the series began, and momentum gathered apace with hotel workers inside the secure bubble also contracting the virus. After the first ODI was postponed ten minutes before the toss last week as an outbreak spread to the England camp, experts agreed the tour was progressing swimmingly.

“We never saw this coming,” said the ECB in a statement. “When we agreed to lock the touring party in a hotel alongside a SA squad riddled with Covid, we never for a second thought that any of our players might contract it too.”

“Well, we won’t accept one iota of culpability either,” responded CSA. “We tried everything to ensure the England side’s defeat – I mean, safety – throughout the tour. We gave them substandard nets, we hid their bats and we pumped heavy metal into their hotel rooms in the middle of the night. If this wasn’t enough to keep them healthy, then sorreeeeeee.”

Said young Sam Curran, “While it’s not ideal to have to isolate for two weeks when we get home from the tour, I am at least used to home-schooling now and won’t miss prep too much.”

“Dumped without so much as a ‘we need to talk’,” reflected the rain. “I’ll have to console myself by spoiling rounds of golf instead.”

Dan Flanagan

5 comments

  • If the tour of India goes ahead there remains the issue of TV coverage in the UK. Those two fine pillars of public service, the BCCI and Sky, are apparently at loggerheads.

  • Covid Covers 1. Rain Mops 0. Well written young Dan .. good ole British humour is safe in your pen .

  • Another utterly gutless, utterly clueless away performance from moneybags India.

    “if this is Test cricket it isn’t worth saving” is the obvious conclusion we’re meant to draw.

    • Really? That doesn’t seem to be what the reports on Cricinfo are saying. They make it look more like a largely closely-fought game whose closeness was abruptly destroyed by a 15-over batting collapse mainly caused by superlative bowling by the world’s no.1 bowler, an Australian all-time great, and possibly the world’s most in-form bowler.

      That’s a little different from utterly gutless and clueless–which I didn’t see them suggest at all. It didn’t sound in the same league as, say, England at Kingston in 2009, in Dhaka in 2016 or in the first innings against Ireland last year, where the collapse was against relatively (or in one case absolutely!) run-of-the-mill bowling attacks.

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