Confronting My Known Unknown's

The month of June is principally a holiday month here at BtC. Suffice to say that not much gets done when one of our writers is on a well-deserved holiday, chasing the sun in exotic lands, and the other has just finished working God knows how many days in a row in a demeaning 'job' and has just mustered the effort to write something tonight. I'm sure you won't need too much help working out who is the happier of the two of us just now.

(To give you an insight into the immediate future of the blog, after a brief holiday of my own in July, Ryan and myself will both be back at the helm together, ready to once again give our usual combined 200% committment to Beyond The Cliche.)

This blog prides itself on consistantly covering as many sports as possible, and while Ryan and I can both write copiously about some things, there are a few topics that one of us clearly knows more about than the other.

This would be fine for 90% of the year, when we are both around to cover for each other. Sadly, as mentioned, we are currently in the 10% of the year that leaves me attempting to write about motor sport and (deep inhalation of breath) cricket.

So Sebastien Vettel has shown up the doubters who had started to predict the end to his dominant form with a strong win in Valencia. Other words to describe his performance would be canny, controlled and well thought-out. In other words, boring. To be truthful, it wasn't much of a watch, and I couldn't stay with it until the end.

The finishes of Mark Webber and Jenson Button were more interesting though. webber's 3rd place puts him equal to Button points-wise, and these two will be the closest challengers to Vettel from here on out. Not that this challenge will be particularly fruitful though; the German's 77 point lead equates to a lofty lead. Vettel will have to screw up at least two races and watch Webber or Button claim back to back wins to be in any way anxious.

On to cricketing matters. This will actually be the first time I have ever written about the sport in any capacity, so I am as interested as you about how this will pan out! Let's enter the Twilight Zone...

I've been given an easy topic with which to debut my cricket journalism; England's T20 performance against Sri Lanka. Ryan has already talked about the Sri Lankan's visit; this game in Bristol was a stand alone 20 over outing which seems to me to be no more than padding for the tour.

The main point of interest here was the captaincy of Stuart Broad, leading England's T20 side for the first time. Basically, he didn't do that well. I should probably write a bit more than that, shouldn't I?

The 9 wicket loss can certainly be described as a hiding. It really demonstrated the weakness of the English batting order. Broad's deployment of Craig Kieswetter and Michael Lumb to open things up, ignoring the better form of Ian Bell, failed when both men were retired quickly. Kevn Pietersen and Eoin Morgan worked out well together, punishing some shit bowling from Suringa Lakmal and Thisara Perera, but their dismissal led to the prompt collapse of English resistance. Bell in the middle order could have prevented this, but Broad chose to fit more options with the ball into the side. This didn't really help much though.

Chris Woakes and Jade 'Why mum, why' Dernbach were beaten up, and Broad failed to lead by example. With everyone else failing to threaten, Graeme Swann stayed on trend and contributed nothing either. Jayawardene and Kumar Sangakkara easily led the Sri Lankan's to their modest target.

This loss was partly down to bad luck; Kieswetter and Lumb leaving the party so quickly pretty much screwed up England's mindset, but their selections were both probably justifiable given their County form. The capitulation of the middle and lower order is of more concern though, and needs to be analysed by someone who knows more about cricket than I do. All I can say with certainty is that it really didn't work.

But hey, it was only one meaningless game, just as this is the only one time I'll need to write about cricket this year. It was just there to fill the void.

GM