shelving and fast bowling

Due to having 8 days off with no special plans, I emailed Adrian and Symons to assign me some sort of writing task to amuse me. The following is my completion of Mr McGruther's task.

Stay tuned for photos from my break including, new years temples, mt fuji and nude japanese women*

tttim

*not true


The government has introduced a new criminal punishment programme often involving cruel and unusual varieties. After being charged with harrassment resulting from several reported incidents of stalking Japanese locals with excessive and unnecessary photographic portraiture, you are faced with the choice of two punishments:
1. Consume precisely 26 bars of soap (one of which must be 'shelved') each and every day for the remainder of your time on this farcical planet; or
2. Every single morning you wake up, within the first 10 minutes of consciousness, you must face 1 over, unprotected, from each of Curtly Ambrose, Malcolm Marshall, Courtney Walsh and Patrick Patterson, each over consisting of a barrage of skull-shattering bouncers and fatherhood-terminating mid-length off-cutters.

Make your selected form of punishment and discuss your decision, weighing up the advantages and disadvantages of each.

Now, go forth...

Firstly, I must commend Adrian on this most original and unusual writing task. It is only a mind of an insane lunatic that could suggest such an outrageous assignment. But like all geniuses, Adrian’s task is flawed. And now, dear readers, I will present to you a convincing argument that will eliminate any sinew of doubt which is the most preferable of Adrian’s preposterous punishments.

Firstly, let’s look at punishment number two. Not only do these four gentlemen boast impressive cricketing statistics (although Mr Patterson’s record can hardly be compared to the other three) they boast careers that were built on terrorizing oppositions batsmen. Who could forget Curtly Ambrose’s glares when Dean Jones asked him to remove his sweatband? And, if you have forgotten, Greg is all too willing to recount this dramatic moment from Deano’s perspective. Just give him a flagon of port and he will be slurring the story of Deano’s cheekiness for hours.

Now, if you are Steve Waugh, the prospect of waking up and facing this quartet of fast bowlers daily, whilst most probably unpleasant, would hardly rate on the top echelon of possible punishments for him. I think a small part of him would relish the chance to have one more crack at them. But, for those who haven’t noticed, I am not Steve Waugh. I’m not even Dean Waugh for crissakes. I’m a very average cricketer who flinched when Brown ripped the hardened plastic “Incrediball” at me in the cricket nets one Bathurst afternoon. How I would manage against such fast bowling luminaries (again, Mr Patterson is not a luminary, but rather than separate them each time, he will, for the purposes of this essay be called a “luminary”) is a worry. Plus, I am an absolutely appalling player of short bowling. I recall one Armidale summer when I was called in to open the batting in a grade higher than I should’ve been. Basically, we had to survive 30 odd overs to avoid an outright defeat. I was the “ball-softener,” asked to face the openers to wear the shine off the new ball. I survived about six overs by leaving good length balls outside off stump until one of the bowlers rammed in a short ball that made me jump all over the place. They were onto something. The next five overs were the most terrifying thirty balls of my life. I didn’t have a helmet, so I was ducking and cowardly dangling my bat in front of my head for protection. I remember getting hit three or four times on the body and trying not to wince to show them I was hurt. Mercifully, I had to go to work after about eleven overs and retired on a glorious score of 2. I mean it was hardly Steve Waugh in the West Indies but it was a little cricketing triumph for me. But, the main point is, I fucking hate short pitched bowling and don’t know how I would cope if the four luminaries got stuck in. Especially unprotected. I really cant imagine how I would survive four overs from these guys. Especially if they were mad.

Which brings me to the first of my reasons why I would clearly choose punishment number two. These guys aren’t mad anymore. I mean, they are not trying to take off Allan Border’s head, they are bowling to a podgy gimp who has just woken up. Surely, they would struggle to find motivation to tear in and try to ruin my fatherhood. Plus, I’m sure their tearing in wouldn’t quite be what it used to be. I think Curtly and Co would be more then happy to deliver their overs wide of off stump, take the significant sum of money that they would need to be offered to even consider such an outrageous proposal of employment and most likely go back home and wonder why they agreed to leave their homes in the West Indies to move to a backwater suburb in Japan to roll their aching shoulders over at me each morning. How long could this go on? I mean, I wake up every morning which means that the West Indians would have to be there every morning, waiting impatiently at the artificial cricket nets I suppose that would have to be built, twiddling their thumbs and probably planning ways to kill me to avoid having to ever undertake their absurd daily chore again. I mean, these poor bastards won’t get another day off for decades (hopefully). There is no mention of substitute bowlers for when Mr Marshall gets the flu or when Patrick fancies a holiday. I guess those days would be some of my worst.

And what would the Japs think? I mean they tend to get a bit excited when a foreigner is strolling down the street and when someone like Johnny Depp visits the country the poor bastards completely lose their shit. What would they think when four giant West Indians move in next door? And what about when these four big pricks start throwing a hard red ball at a petrified white guy in pyjamas each morning?

Also, I think after a couple of months, my ability to evade a cricket ball would be quite acute. At first, I envisage mass bruising and the occasional fractured limb, but after a while I think I could avoid most of what they throw at me. And, if Courtney was in a bad mood and decided to bowl an over of bouncers at me, I’m confident that after a couple of life-threatening headaches and hospitalizations I could avoid his headhunters. Hell, I might even try a Richie Richardson style hook from in front of my schnoz.

Now, let’s look at soap. Soap, being soap, is generally used for cleansing and is rarely (as far as I know) used as an essential part of ones diet. But, Adrian, in all his creativity has suggested eating not only one, but 25 (plus the ‘shelving’ of one) bars of soap. No matter how innovative I could become with soap cuisine, I think my poor body would eventually give in. One can take a couple of knocks to the head with a cricket ball, but no one can consume 26 cakes of soap daily and survive. So let’s revise a little. Let’s say one cake per day, plus a designated day weekly where an additional cake must be ‘shelved.’ Now, the decision between the two punishments isn’t so clear. Obviously, eating a cake of soap each day isn’t exactly going to send the dieticians crazy with praise, but my research (which involved asking my flatmate if eating a cake of soap daily would kill you, to which he replied ‘it would probably make you sick but you could live for 2-3 months’) suggests that it is physically possible to consume a cake daily and survive. However, he is definitely right about it making you sick. After a couple of weeks it would be absolute torture to force yourself to eat it. I’d imagine it would make you throw up violently and would thus destroy your appetite. And I bloody love eating. Comparatively, after a couple of weeks with the West Indians, one could potentially strike up a bit of camaraderie with the lads and perhaps ask them nicely to slip in a couple of split-fingered slower balls, (or the off-cutter types, either is fine) for a bit of relief.

If eating soap isn’t bad enough for you, I can’t imagine what ‘shelving’ a bar would be like. Essentially, that is inserting a cake of soap in your bowels. I’m no doctor, but I’m pretty sure that bowels are for shit and not soap. Plus, bottoms aren’t designed for sticking things up (stop sniggering you immature bastards).



But eating soap has its fans. The website http://www.zug.com/pranks/natural/ is about someone taste-testing three different types of soap. He muses “Is it a soap…or a salad?” and whilst he says the aroma and the presentation of the products is admirable, the taste, sadly, is not. He describes one bar as, “akin to eating a box of Oreo cookies and having the creamy filling pack itself into your rear molars like spackling compound ... but much, much soapier.”

Another website shows another soap-eating devotee. “sweet” from the website http://www.zroorz.com/allabout.php?query=soap. says “i love eating soap..i can't live without eating soap..do u know any1 who eats soap..is it bad 4 my health?
i have been eating soap 4 the last 5 years..it tast so good that i can't stop.i love eating parmolive soap..soap is everything 2 me..i would 2 meet people who eat soap..”

Despite these compelling arguments, the idea of eating a bar of soap every day, plus a weekly ‘shelving,’ is just too sickening and unhealthy to consider. I’d rather wake up every morning to an onslaught of fast bowling. Who knows, one day I might even be able to play the short ball.