So It’s Come To This: Things We Found On YouTube Part 7

Posted on March 27, 2015 by James Knight in Opinion

 

When we embarked on this series a few months ago we churned out installments with the ruthless regularity of the Reichsheer sweeping through Belgium. Now, worn down by the inexorable march of a World Cup group stage, we’ve descended into an homage to the Italians, randomly lobbing out articles and generally fleeing at the first sign of trouble.

With the Carnival of Cricket, as literally nobody calls it, winding down and three weeks to go before we have to start pretending to know who Mark Wood is, we’ve managed to find time to once again doss around on YouTube for a bit. As ever, we’d much rather you did the ‘work’ for us next time, so send us some videos either in the comments or on Twitter.

Cricketers’ Catching Challenge | Access All Areas

This video sees handsome Nick Compton, James Hildreth and Zafar Ansari take a break from playing for the MCC/absolutely pissing themselves at Alastair Cook’s batting to do a catching challenge in Abu Dhabi. We’re all encouraged to try it ourselves and send in the video, but apparently one catch in a row “isn’t enough” to make us Internet sensations. Back to the video, and the banter flying about is lukewarm at best, with only Hildreth attempting any, and not a single person threatens to break anyone else’s arm. We like Compton here at 51allout (have we mentioned how handsome he is?) but even in this fun little catching game his rugged, chiseled demeanor (phwoar) is slightly tinged by overwhelming intensity and determination to win it. We can’t help but feel a bit worried that the extended highlights to this fade out with him beating the living crap out of the other two while shouting something about Test centuries.

Amazing cricket catches by Trent Boult

Trent Boult is an easy guy to like; he’s great bowler and, unusually for a paceman, doesn’t appear to be a monumental wazzock. That said, we were a little sceptical when we found this video. Was it going to be like those videos of that new Azerbaijani striker your club’s just signed which ends up being twenty minutes of the same penalty shown from different angles? It turns out it isn’t. These are all actually brilliant. The first one, in particular, is reminiscent of one SPD Smith in its ball-bursting beauty.

Sad South Africa Players Cry after Losing To New Zealand In Cricket World Cup 2015 Semi Final

Exactly what it says on the tin: 51 seconds of South African players crying after being knocked out of the World Cup, set to a slightly haunting soundtrack. Most of the 51 seconds are taken up by the same clips of Morne Morkel played over and over again, including one where he seems to be in the process of gobbing and it’s got stuck on his chin. We’re also immediately prompted to “click here for full footage” (Curiosity got the better of us. It’s just over two minutes of the same thing). Look, this is weird. It’s probably best not to delve into any deep questions about it, we’ve just got to accept that someone’s first reaction to one of the greatest games in World Cup history was to make a 51 second video of players crying. And that said video has 39000 views.

Samit slips over!

You might be experiencing many emotions after that last clip; confusion and anger presumably being the main ones. Luckily neither sport nor the Internet will ever keep you down for long. In humanity’s darkest moments there’s always the faintest glimmer of light. In this case, it’s Samit Patel falling over and getting run out.