Muller Award For The Week Ended 26 April, 2024
Highlights from the last week of cricket
Something new I’m trialling during this period of no Test cricket. The Muller Award has been a long-running segment on Can’t Bowl, Can’t Throw, the cricket podcast I co-host with Cat Jones. It celebrates the career of Scott Muller, and rewards the great and stupid moments in cricket.
Nominee - The Dukes Ball
After two county cricket rounds of the cruel Kookaburra ball laughing merrily at English bowlers’ sad and clueless attempts to take wickets, the grand old Dukes ball made its triumphant return, marching to the top of the bowler’s mark and back down again, before moving preposterously off its proud seam to leave batters looking like the addled idiots they fundamentally are.
Here’s a demonstration by a Mr. Jayden Seales of Sussex, England:
It all seems somewhat of an overcorrection to me. Why not a hybrid ball - half Dukes, half Kookaburra - a dukeaburra? Now you’ve got people sitting up and saying ‘hello, what’s this?’. Get on it, ICC.
Nominee - Virat Kohli’s Waist
Where, exactly, is Virat Kohli’s waist? The IPL knows and it’s unafraid to share the previously verboten information.
The answer? It’s above the projected tracking of this delivery from Harshit Rana in yet another of RCB’s doomed run chases for this season.
Thrillingly, all players in the IPL have been measured by sanctioned BCCI tailors with their waist heights locked into the Hawkeye computers for precisely this moment (and/or the procurement of an extra pair of slacks).
Should a golden belt be awarded for the player with the highest waist of the season? I think it would make Cameron Green look very sharp.
No word, alas, on whether the side on which a player dresses will be taken into consideration for LBW decisions. (No, I will not be making a ball-tracking joke at this time. I reserve the right to add one in at a later date, if this newsletter proves to be insufficiently viral.)
Nominee - Jake Fraser-McGurk
Australia’s hottest hyphenated cricketer since Nathan Coulter-Nile and Allan Border-Medal has supplanted David Warner in Ricky Ponting’s Delhi Capitals team, just hours out from the first of 2024’s T20 World Cups. (About 850 or so hours, yes, but still…)
A blow for Warner, but perhaps also a lesson that time has passed him by.
For the modern fan, it boils down to one simple question: Who would you rather see open the batting for Australia in a T20 World Cup?
A man who has been scratched by a monkey, perhaps giving him superhuman abilities.
A man who has not.
Nominee - Ben Stokes
Perhaps if Warner is insufficiently courageous or stylish to allow a wild primate to scratch him in the face, he could follow the lead of Ben Stokes and rule himself out of the World Cup before the selectors get to him.
The now-purposeless Stokes was spotted by the good folk at Daisy Cutter roaming aimlessly around Manchester looking for his VISA.
How many laps of Manchester does he have to do, ECB, before you get off your tired backsides and give the man his visa!? Your grandparents didn’t Brexit for this, surely?
Winner - A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Moments of Utter, Deafening Silence
Elsewhere on social media, a photo by Mahesh Kumar from last year’s ODI World Cup final was shared widely.
Tag yourself: I’m the India supporter who can’t believe that Virat Kohli (and his waist) is out.
It would never have happened with a dukeaburra ball.
Will I repeat this exercise next week? Maybe? Let’s see how this one is received.
Plugs
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Cricket
Can’t Bowl, Can’t Throw - Subscribe to this podcast, damn your eyes!
Lots of good suggestions have come in for highly ridiculous moments in Ashes cricket over the years, but we’re still looking for more women’s moments and more from the 1970s and 1980s. If you have any, let us know. (Also, are you a UK publisher? Let us know that too.)
Non-Cricket
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