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    Steve Harmison feels strongly about suggestions that he came out of one-day retirement in order to play the Stanford Twenty20 for 20

    Sep 7, 2008

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    Bunch of choking bottlers

    By Will last year, mid-September Leave a comment on this post

    South Africa really are a most monumental, unabashed, incomparable Eddie[1] of winning bottlers ever conceived. You have to laugh, really. I’m assuming they’ve lost, having only just been informed by a surprisingly demure text message which read: the boks have done it again.

    Bless ‘em.

    [1] My suggestion for the collective noun of losers: an Eddie (the Eagle) of losers

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    8 Responses to “Bunch of choking bottlers”

  • Rusty wrote:
    September 21st, 2007 at 1.34 am

    Not sure of the analogy, Will,

    After all, Eddie the Eagle was a self-admitted loser in the first place, and the Saffers have a more reliable record than many of the teams - like England (who live in a perpetual state of over-confidence fortified by feel-good platitudes) or Pakistan (depends on whether they are having a bad hair day or not). :-)

    One thing that is emerging is there is far more variability in Twenty20 from match to match, than the longer forms of the game. Look at Sri Lanka and Australia- brilliant one day, the pits the next. YOu could just say that SA’s off day came at the wrong moment.

    One error and there is no time to recover and rebuild. I don’t think the players are enjoying all this as much as the organizers are.

  • Michael wrote:
    September 21st, 2007 at 1.45 am

    That’s the thing. Australia more often than not finds the goods at the right moment. South Africa is the epitome of crashing at precisely the wrong moment.

  • James wrote:
    September 21st, 2007 at 3.40 am

    I think an ‘Eddie’ is a bad term for a bunch of cricketers who choke. An ‘Eddie’ is the exact opposite - a bunch who seem completely harmless, look like hamsters and are selected at random at an advanced age to the derision of everyone on all sides, and who then flog you to bits. In honour, of course, of Eddie Hemmings and that 95 he got as a nightwatchman in Oz back in the eighties. We tried to get him out every way short of bribing the umpires, and he just stuck there.

    The collective noun for a bunch of cricketers who choke is surely a ‘Protea’. This also has nice adjectival possibilities, as in: ‘They played with Protean force in the ICC demonstration game against an Uzbekistan nine, winning handily until informed that by local custom this was in fact a cup final.’

    The awkward bit is what you call someone who doesn’t choke. A ’swallower’? Please no.

  • Chris wrote:
    September 21st, 2007 at 4.28 am

    And there I was thinking that SA could have finally won a tournament, being that there is barely time to choke in a game of T20. They were looking good until last night.

  • Spidey wrote:
    September 21st, 2007 at 7.01 am

    Oh well… 153 was always going to be a competitive target to chase… But 126 in 120 balls? !!@#!@%#&*

    And how well did India bowl? Lets exclude the wides here. The bowlers are a bunch of kids who spray the ball like faultily constructed deodrant nozzle. And Joginder Sharma was bowling nice slow dollies… They really know how to choke.

    What am I complaining for? We are in the semis… And as such SA has been scratchy in all matches except against WI, where WI fielded like they had to catch a burning coal. I say NZ do deserve to be in semis more than SA…

  • Soulberry wrote:
    September 21st, 2007 at 9.13 am

    In T20, it is even more important to time your adrenaline rush. Because it is so brief in duration, a mistimed dose could be mortal, for there just isn’t enough time to wait for the next one. South Africa used up their entire ration of adrenaline doses in the first half while India was batting.

    In a running discussion at 606, I did feel India was de-fanging the South African Cobra in the first half. India is after all, a land of snake-charmers.

    Of course, these rules do not apply to Australia even though they have had two off days and perhaps looking forward to one more. :)

    ( C’mon Oz, you don’t like this T20 anyway - give the others a shot at some silwerware! )

  • ac wrote:
    September 21st, 2007 at 12.27 pm

    Spidey…right said about wides…
    this format not so easy as we all were thinking that any XYZ batsman will come and score big runs ..it is difficult..because of the pressure of hitting from word GO..fielders all spread out..so many great batsman failing in this tournament..
    Collingwood/ and almost entire english middle order/jaya/sangakara/jayawardhne/Butt/pollok/smith/..
    compared to batsmen no body raised fingers on the bowlers seems this game is more unforgiving to the batsmen .

  • Theena wrote:
    September 21st, 2007 at 3.37 pm

    The highlight of every major tournament for me, besides seeing Sri Lanka do well, is to see the Saffers screw up at the most critical of times. The Inevitable Screw Up comes after constant denials of them being chokers and how they are going to get the better of Australia. Hilarious.

    Bunch of clowns.

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