Soon after England’s latest second third successive test defeat in India, Michael Vaughan, the legendary former England cricket captain, launched a blistering attack on the Indian cricketing establishment. In an interview with London-based Excuses Today, Vaughan asserted that the England cricket team’s diabolical match results in India had nothing to do with the fact that England played woefully:
It is completely wrong to claim that England played badly. Shoddy batting, poor fielding and a stupefying absence of common cricketing sense have absolutely nothing to do with these losses. These are red herrings propagated by the Indians, most rational commentators, former cricketers including legends such as Sir Viv Richards and Shane Warne, true cricket lovers virtually everywhere, and people with an innate sense of fair play, generally.
Michael Vaughan, Ungracious Loser.
Upon being told that the Indian team, fans and media graciously congratulated England when they admirably won their first test in the series, as well as previous matches and series against India in England, Vaughan sneezed, and said “excuse me, wha’, sorry” ? He then proceeded to explain the conspiracy further:
Look. There is a huge difference between England preparing pitches which would naturally suit English players and conditions, and Indians preparing pitches that would naturally suit Indian players and conditions. That difference is that we can’t deal with Indian conditions, whereas the Indians can largely deal with ours. That has nothing to do with our ill-preparedness or incompetence. And my outrage at this is not at all nauseatingly hypocritical, ungracious or fundamentally irrational. I mean why can’t the Indians just provide us with seaming English conditions in India ?
At this point, Vaughan, who was conducting his interview over the phone whilst travelling in a London taxi, dropped his phone into the vehicle’s footwell. The taxi had driven over yet another pothole. Upon picking up the phone, Vaughan said:
Sorry about that. I dropped my phone. Indian companies employ so many Brits these days, and contribute 3x their population to British GDP, that the weight of their additional presence is creating so many potholes here. It has nothing to do with the fact that we are pants at keeping our roads maintained.
In other news, The Foreign & Commonwealth Office has instituted an enquiry titled “A Nation of Sore Losers ?”, to investigate why Britain is so unpopular around the world.
