Round 1, Battle 16 (last of the first round)
This one has an aura of 'too soon' about it, but I suspect the great man wouldn't have it any other way. In any case, we'll round things off with three South Africans.
Tony Greig (England)
Crimes:
- Attempting and surpassing the broadcasting record for parroting
'right off the meat of the bat'
-
Hit Graeme Watson with a beamer to the face; Watson required
20 litres of blood to dodge the reaper
- Worldwide recruiter and arguably most crucial of the WSC Packerlytes
- Does not follow through with making teams grovel
-
Ultra-mankading Alvin Kallicharan
"Have your balls dropped yet?" - Greig to David Hookes, who promptly hit him for five fours in a row
"During an interview on the eve of the match, he 'promised' a century to the audience. He fell short by exactly 100 runs." - Wisden on the last Supertest
"You must remember that the West Indians, these guys, if they get on top are magnificent cricketers. But if they're down, they grovel, and I intend, with the help of Closey and a few others, to make them grovel." - Greig starts a decade of blackwashes
"Do you think she's been flown in?" - Greig at the wedding of an Australian cricketer and his Filipino partner
"Life is too short to endure Mr. Greig at any hour, much less before breakfast." - Telford Vice on the tyranny of timezones
Kevin Pietersen (England)
Crimes:
- A consummate douchecanoe, consistently performing in all conditions
- Too crap to make South African team under the quota system
-
The Internet's most comprehensive chronology of Textgate
-
I don't need no England
-
No, wait, I do
-
Sued Notts after Jason Gallian tossed his team kit from the pavilion for crossing the arseclown threshold
"There's your ****ing dressing room!" - Gallian to Pietersen after heaving his kit over the seats
"[Flintoff is] an old allrounder who can't bat and too unfit to bowl." - KP on the man who got him an MBE
"Pietersen is never more self-absorbed, never less empathetic to his colleagues, than when he is in prime form." - Mike Atherton
“My affiliation is with England. In fact, I'm starting to speak too much like Darren Gough. I'm going to get one of Gough's tattoos with three lions and my number underneath. No one can say I'm not English then.” - KP
"At the moment, being part of the England squad is a pretty damn lonely place to be ... the only game we've won this winter was down to the fact the West Indies couldn't add up properly." - KP on the price of patriotism
"I’d love to be playing, but it’s not to be, so the next best thing is to be sitting here talking about it." - In the analyst room with Sourav Ganguly
Herschelle Gibbs (South Africa)
Crimes:
-
Almost complicit in Cronje's master plan; redeemed by excessive narking on others
-
Dropping the World Cup
- A litany of ratting on his mates, see below:
Look, there's no point in digging for defamatory quotes when he does it for me in a single book, so I'm just going to cite extracts.
While prowling a high school formal after-party in Australia:
I spotted one particularly gorgeous girl, obviously dressed to the nines, walking around the hotel lobby. After a few drinks and a few words, she came upstairs with me to my room and gave me a little dance of another kind.
On whom he's banged:
A good number, yes. Definitely a multiple of 10 but not a hundred.
One at a time, lads:
I’ve tried buzz, scag, woop, pla, e, weed, 7, acid, purple drank, shrooms, S, charlie, ploppa, angel, sunshine, pebbles, kicker and zoom. Not all at once. That is an important lesson for all kids out there.
And
easily my fave part:
One day I was pissed out of my mind, so I thought it would be cool to ask Graeme and Mark if I could join the leadership group. They said I had to go through an initiation. I thought it’d be fun, like paddles and ****. It started with me holding these two metal things E-somethings, and then they all yelled at me, pointing out all the mistakes I’d made, like not buying a copy of AB’s album, it took forever. The next part was me being locked in a room while they treated me like a dog. It was ok, until Jacques put a collar on me. That was weird. But then they asked me to watch Battlefield Earth, that film is seriously ****, so I decided to just forget about it.
)
