Members End: Silly buggers and circus clowns

This week's Sunday Times funnies.

TELFORD VICE

Sometimes you have to read between the lines, even on scorecards. Or should that be between the Lions? Two weeks ago at Newlands, Alviro Petersen was run out while he was batting with Gulam Bodi. So what? Stuff happens. Except that, on Wednesday, also at Newlands, Bodi was run out while he was batting with Petersen. Hmmm ... And that in the midst of all sorts of fuss about Petersen resigning the Lions captaincy and apparently wanting Bodi out of the team. What might we see next on a scorecard? “Retired, hurt feelings”?

All of which prompted this exchange between Greg Fredericks, a straightforward son of the Eastern Cape as well as the new Lions chief executive, and another native of the province where the pitches are at least as flat as the vowels: “Welcome to Gauteng cricket, Greg,” said the other Eascaper. Fredericks replied: “I thought you were my friend! Why didn’t you warn me?”

Doubts about the humanity of those who play cricket for a living instead of holding down a proper job arise easily. All that money. All those groupies. All their equipment and travel costs taken care of by others. Are players real people people at all? Ease your concerns, dear reader, with a glance at Dale Steyn’s Twitter account. It’s all there in messy detail - photographs of Steyn with his nieces, gone fishing and admiring the sunset abound. Even he needs help: “Anyone know of a place in Cape Town that can convert VHS videos to DVD?”

Sometimes Steyn’s account is a little too real. “Can’t fish the farm today,” he wrote in a picture caption. “See those cattle in the background, well they made a nice meal for some lions last night!”

And sometimes he can take things a little too seriously, like he did when he went to the trouble of posting a photo of a letter in a newspaper castigating him for pulling a face that “makes him look terrible” after he takes a wicket and labelling Graeme Smith “the world’s most expensive spectator in the field”. Steyn made his opinion of that plain: “Haters will always hate! These are the best in the world we talking about.” Ah. You’re only human after all. Don’t forget that, Dale.

Not that Steyn is alone in taking notice of what is written about him. “My unicycle has broken down and I’ve left my red nose in the box,” England’s Ally Brown said after scoring an ODI century against India at Old Trafford in 1996. Eh? The day before at Headingley, Brown had been dismissed for a duck - an effort that had prompted Simon Wilde to compare him to Coco the clown in the Times.