ORAM – THE BFG TURNS INTO GOLIATH

Jacob Oram, New Zealand’s answer to the big friendly giant, has cast aside his friendly demeanor and gone all nasty against South Africa, helping the Black Caps record a stunning quarter final victory. South Africa went into the match roaring favourites with a batting line up as long as the great wall of China and bowling resources as long as Oram’s inner thigh. But depth counts for little in tournament play, as any All Black fan will tell you, and this was the case as the Black Caps outplayed the fancied Proteas in all aspects of the game.

Superb batting from Ryder and Taylor steady the Black caps ship after a difficult start. This proved to be the foundation for the lower order as Williamson and co gave New Zealand glimmer of hope with a total of 221. In the bowling department it was Oram to the fore as he sneered four wickets and a superb running boundary catch to almost single handedly beat the South Africans.

Oram has been affectionately known as the BFG in cricketing circles due to his recent inability to dictate terms to the opposition. He is a monster of a man, who posses all the tricks in the bag but he has constantly been sidelined by injury and misfortune. However, since returning from injury his form has returned has shown that he wants to get rid of the friendly BFG facade. Thankfully for New Zealand the BFG is gone and we now have a Goliath in our ranks.

JOHN WRIGHT'S MASTER PLAN FOR THE BLACK CAPS

John Wright has finally shown his coaching skills by purposefully guiding the Black Caps to a sensational 100 run demolition job of Pakistan. Having looked at his resources when he took over the team it is believed he deliberately continued this poor form in a bid to develop overconfidence amongst the opposition. It certainly worked in this last game.

A number of Black caps players have been so faithful to this ‘game plan’ that they had followed Wrighty’s lead and preformed so poorly, even they didn’t know where a good performance could come from. And boy did this coaching technique work.

After McCullum got a good nut early, Jamie How came in and played like a man who has never played cricket before. In the past I would have slammed his inability to play anything off the square but now I can actually see that this is all part of Wright’s master plan. Jamie How was instrumental in giving the Pakistan team confidence as his strike rate start at 10 and went down hill from there. His 3 runs off about 90 balls gave the Pakistan team so much confidence they gave the completely out of form Ross Taylor two early lives, as they actually started to feel sorry for us.

But then with a flick of the switch, things turned on their head. Taylor snapped out of his prodding and pushing with a well executed drop kick over midwicket and then it was all over red rover. Pakistan were taken to the cleaners as the Black Caps produced a sublime display. Martin Guptil was superb as he played straight and forcefully for a well complied half century while Jacob Oram showed how dangerous this team could be with him coming in at nine and make our batting order longer than a giant python.

John Wright was full of praise for the efforts of How, who plays an important role in Wright’s strategy. “I thought How was superb today. It is not easy to scratch your way to a strike rate of 4.726 while hitting the middle of the bat with every ball. But he managed to do that today and that was the foundation for our victory. This gave Pakistan all the confidence they needed today once they had made a little coin on the side through strange overthrows, no-balls and poor fielding we were always on top. Bennett had been doing this role for us in previous games, but How took it to a new level today.”

KEN RING PREDICTS BLACK CAPS WORLD CUP RESULTS

New Zealand Cricket has employed the services of prediction guru Ken Ring to predict the Black Caps next cricket match against Zimbabwe. New Zealand CEO Justin Vaughan hired the services of the weather guru in an attempt to see how his troops will fair at the up coming World Cup.

Using a complicated formula of measuring the position of Saturn and Mars in relation to the Moon, Ring has been able to predict every Black Caps batting collapse and poor bowling performance dating back to World War II.

Ozy Mandias has managed to obtain a couple of paragraphs of his report to New Zealand Cricket through the official information act.

“We think the Black Caps batting collapses have a timeline. It started 7 years ago, has begun to slow down and should cease altogether  after April 2014. By March of this year, where we are now, the batting collapse frequency should be moving back to its normal  pattern of about 1 per calendar year.

The current pattern of unusually high number batting collapses that occurred this summer was due to the alignment of the Moon, Saturn and Mars. This event happened on the 30th Dec when we were rolled for 80 against Pakistan in the 20/20.  The following month, on 9th Jan, new moon in perigee developed just before 3am. This resulted in  the collapse of the test series with New Zealand rolled and diced for 110.”

Pleasingly the next phase for the alignment of the Moon, Mars and Saturn shows that the tide may have turned for the Black Caps.  According to Ring the chances of a batting collapse from now on in the Cricket World Cup are low although he can’t rule out something strange happening on the 18th when the Black Caps play Sri Lanka. This is exciting news for the black Caps as they build towards the business end of the tournament.

So in conclusion Ring is predicting Black caps victories against Zimbabwe, Pakistan, Canada and a close one against Sri Lanka. From then on even the mighty Ken Ring and his weather chart are even flying in the dark.

HAMISH BENNETS NEW CONFECTIONERY – BOWLING ALLSORTS

New Zealand Cricket has endorsed Black Caps bowler Hamish Bennett in his bid to open a sideline confectionery business. His confectionery will be known as ‘Bennett’s Bowling Allsorts’, and will be based loosely around his bowling style. Buyers of the confectionery won’t know what they are getting until they put their hand into the bag and pull out something. The idea, just like his bowling, is that what comes out of the hand will be a total surprise to everyone.

Bennett said that the inspiration for the ‘bowling allsorts’ came from watching himself bowl in the recent World Cup clash against Australia. “We were watching and analysing our bowling after the match and it came around to looking at my bowling. I thought I was just watching a highlights package and when Wrighty commented on my bowling resembling a 50 cent mixture I had the confectionery brain wave.” Bennet has said that the interest in his new product has been excellent, with even Aussie fast bowler Mitchel Johnson asking to buy 40% of the business.

This is not the first time that New Zealand Cricket has attempted to make money on the side. Last year they introduced ‘no run’ pantyhose, which has been extremely popular with the female market. Rumours that other Black Caps are thinking of going into the confectionery market have not been confirmed, however, insiders believe that Jacob Oram was thinking about opening a ‘jaffa’ styled lolly. However, it is believed he has had trouble producing one for the last three seasons.

SOUTH AFRICA RUN THEMSELVES OUT

With the Cricket World Cup getting into full swing it would be remiss of me not to put in a couple of World Cup videos. Today we see the South Africans give the World Cup to the Aussies.

BLACK CAPS REJECT KENYANS 5000m RACE

The Black Caps have rejected a request from the Kenyan Federation for Cricket ( KFC for short) to have a 5000m running relay race instead of the scheduled One Day Cricket International on Sunday evening. The Kenyans, who have a strong background in running, apparently believe their best chance of victory comes on the running track and not the cricket pitch in this important World Cup game. They KFC had envisaged a ten man relay race with each competitor running 500m and then tagging their partner.

Insiders say that some of the Black caps were actually keen to race the Kenyans and tackle them at their point of strength. In particular running whippets Martin Guptil and Ross Taylor were both keen to take on the Kenyans on a steeplechase course. However, sanity prevailed, when it was realised that the Black Caps would have to wear the same lycra outfits that Mark Richardson made famous a few years back.