A gradual but inevitable descent into cricket-based loathing and bile.

So It’s Come To This: Things We Found On YouTube Part 16

Posted on June 28, 2016 by in Opinion

“You know that feeling you get?

You feel you’re older than time?

You ain’t exactly sure if you’ve been away a while”

Like Noel Gallagher circa 2000, 51allout has been going through a creative dry spell. Inspiration has been even thinner on the ground than normal. Luckily for us though, Editor Steve is currently on a month long jolly around France, taking the opportunity to indulge his own variety of gas panic, leaving us free to sit around and complain about the county schedule and the lyrics to I Can See A Liar. A couple of days ago however, our lazy afternoon of listening to early Oasis B-sides was interrupted by the telltale ‘you’ve got mail!’ sound effect. Was it Editor Steve checking up on us? Or yet more rubbish attempts to get us to open a zip file and install Cryptolocker onto the work computers?

Nope, it was neither of those. It was actually from a very nice man named Will who wanted us to plug a video on YouTube. So, with literally nothing better to do, here is said video. Remember, other shaving options are available, even if they are probably inferior.

Any chance you could keep the hair and send it to us when you're finished? Because, you know.

Any chance you could keep the hair and send it to us when you’re finished? Because, you know, we’d like that.

Big Hitting with the West Indies Cricket Team | Gillette World Sport

Well, it’s pretty clear to us why the West Indies aren’t very good at Test cricket – their batting practice seems to consist of trying to hit every single delivery into downtown Antigua. That and doing press ups, which unsurprisingly helps create boundary hitting monsters who go to pieces every time there’s a hint of swing.

Beyond that, there isn’t much to get excited about in the video, unless you’re into the sort of timber that Phil Simmons is carrying around these days. But we said we’d feature it and now we have. So in return, all we ask is some of that Gillette goodness, in the form of at least two Fusion® Proglide® Silvertouch Power Razors with Flexiball™ Technology, one Proglide® Styler™ Beard Trimmer and Power Razor and as many Mach3® razor blades as you can fit into a very large box. Fair’s fair.

Mark Butcher Cricket Singing

Mark Butcher has a few strings to his bow:  a pretty average batsman for England (apart from that innings against Australia), an occasionally useful bowler and a relentlessly miserable contributor to the Switch Hit podcast. But beyond that he can also play the guitar and appear in horrible, horrible adverts for T20 games at Surrey.

This one is the definition of ‘no expense spared’, with Surrey not even bothering to move the big covers off the square before starting filming. And then there’s the drummer. Oh God! The drummer! We thought Alan White was rubbish (and he was, apart from on (What’s The Story) Morning Glory where his deft drumming on Cast No Shadow adds greatly to the band’s sonic palette) but this is something else. It’s like watching Mitch Mitchell having electro-shock therapy.

Anyway, here’s the clip. Bonus points for featuring 51allout favourite Mark Ramprakash, the Liam Plunkett of his day (in that his handsomeness rather outweighed his effectiveness).

Batsmens face smashed by Malcolm Marshall 1984

Poor old Andy Lloyd. The story of his Test career has long since gone down in legend, consisting of one innings and 17 deliveries, the last of which is here in all its (morning) glory. It’s a great example for all youngsters watching of how not to play the short ball (i.e. mainly using your face).

As well as the obvious appeal of the crunch itself, we particularly enjoyed the way standing umpire Dickie Bird strolls down to the prone batsman as if he was taking his whippet for a casual walk across the Pennines. Basically it’s a fun day out for all concerned, apart from Lloyd, who probably still has nightmares in which he’s chained to all the places that he never wished to stay while Malcolm Marshall charges towards him, before waking up screaming, his forehead covered in sweat. That and a large bump.

51allout favourite Robelinda2 loses a point for his horrific grammar and punctuation in the video title though.

What if Chris Gayle bats right handed ?

Now we’ve seen some seriously pointless things in our time: the entirety of Heathen Chemistry for a start. But even Andy Bell’s most tepid songwriting efforts aren’t a patch on this. Somebody has actually taken some Big Bash footage and reversed the whole thing so that it looks like Chris Gayle is batting right handed. Like we said: whole new levels of pointless. And we thought we were the ones lacking in inspiration.

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Tim Bresnan’s Heavy Ball

28 Jun 2016 17:37

If only there were some youtube videos of Steve “Little” James batting.