During a time when one of the most anticipated (and potentially anti-climax) Ashes series is on, a gentleman called Simon Briggs has brought out a book called 'Still Upper Lips and Baggy Green Caps'. The book is a tongue-in-cheek look at cricket's oldest and longest running rivalry.Below are listed the ten top sledges from the Ashes, as reported in the book and as enlisted by cricinfo:
1. Mark Waugh to Jimmy Ormond on his Test debut, 2001: “Mate, what are you doing out here? There's no way you're good enough to play for England.”
Ormond: “Maybe not, but at least I'm the best player in my own family.”
2. Merv Hughes to Graeme Hick: “Mate, if you just turn the bat over you'll find the instructions on the other side.”
3. Hughes again: “Does your husband play cricket as well?”
4. Mike Atherton, on Merv Hughes: “I couldn't work out what he was saying, except that every sledge ended with ‘arsewipe’.”
5. Dennis Lillee to Mike Gatting, 1994: “Hell, Gatt, move out of the way. I can't see the stumps.”
6. Derek Randall to Lillee, after taking a glancing blow to the head: “No good hitting me there, mate, nothing to damage.”
7. Ian Healy, placing a fielder yards away at cover when Nasser Hussain was batting: “Let's have you right under Nasser's nose.”
8. Tony Greig, England’s South African-born captain, to the young David Hookes, 1977: “When are your balls going to drop, Sonny?”
Hookes: “I don't know, but at least I'm playing cricket for my own country.” Hookes hit Greig for five consecutive fours.
9. Rod Marsh, late Seventies: “How's your wife and my kids?”
Ian Botham: “The wife's fine – the kids are retarded.”
10. Bill Woodfull, Australia’s captain in the Bodyline series of 1932-33, responding to Douglas Jardine's complaint that a slip fielder had sworn at him: “All right, which one of you bastards called this bastard a bastard?”
4 comments:
extremely entertaining
I wanted to take your butt for ignoring the grand time we are having in South Africa while discussing Ashes, but reading the post, of course I did change my mind.
This was fun....what do the Indians say when they sledge, I am so keen to know.
But I am so keen to know whats happening with our good old boys in blue.
The key question being as a Pepsi commercial states, The Blue Rises or the Blue Loses!
Is this the death of foreign tour analysis? I mean fast tracks for how many years will we hear new excuses. I want new ones...something bloodier, juicier...
Come on give us the dope on that
Well you guessed right..Am absolutely in no frame of mind to discuss Indian cricket. The wheel has turned a full circle I guess..Under Ganguly, we were blessed to have a skipper who somehow inspired his wards, and much more importantly, was blessed with a middle-order in the form of their lives, something which we may never witness again.
Indians have been known to be smart sledgers, especially the Indo-Pak stuff. Obviously, much of it will be in local lingo, so nobody has managed to reproduce it. But I know for sure, in the superb 2000-01 (Laxman one), the Aussies kept getting quieter by the day. If only Sachin had ever shut up Gleen McGrath!!!
Nowadays, serious cricket analysis turns me off..so i keep looking for such posts, tucked deep in the archives! Good ones, though quite a few seem to be created by some journalists rather than cricketers
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