Why is playing cricket left handed even allowed? It’s a pain in the arse for all concerned. But especially for fast bowlers.
You spend your whole life perfecting the art of probing the off stump of right handed batsmen. Learning to break and swing the ball left to catch an edge or right to slip through the gate and send the bails flying.
Then along comes a lefty, and your whole world is turned inside out and upside down. Left is right, right is left, off is on, on is off, over is around and around is over.
Every time the strike changes there are adjustments to make. Fields are disrupted, rhythm is disrupted. Everyone has to get used to different angles of trajectory. Then, just when we all get comfortable, another single…
Or worse, a three! Kick it over the boundary will ya? Better to concede one extra run than have to rejig everything again…
And while all that may constitute a hardship more tedious than a day spent watching England play, there is one thing in the world that’s even more annoying than a left handed batsman on the other team – a dratted lefty on your own bloody team!
Because, as a lower order batsman, guess who gets stiffed with sightscreen duty?
That’s right, a poor, beleaguered fast bowler who just wants to relax while he’s not out in the field. This should be a time of contemplation, mental preparation, visualising what has to be done with the ball during that all-important opening spell.
Line and length, line and length, line and length, rhythm, swing, corridor of uncertainty…
“HEY OI SIGHTSCREEN GUY!! LEFT A BIT!!!”
This is why left handers used to get persecuted by teachers, knuckles smacked raw with rulers, and dragooned into writing with their right. It’s one of the great tragedies of the modern world that visionary schooling practices like these have been lost in this pinko liberal namby-pamby snowflake politically correct world…
Anyway, this bowler has been bowling around the wicket to the left hander for the last three overs, there haven’t been any singles. I don’t reckon anyone would notice if I just quietly slip away…
“HEY OI WHERE ARE YOU GOING??? RIGHT A BIT!!!”
I mean, the world has quite rightly been biassed against left-handed people since ancient times! Gods and prophets give blessings with their right hand and smite with their left. In the East, the left is known as “the unclean hand”.
In the Bible, Matthew 25:41 shows us the way, the truth and the light:
Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.’
Oh yes, the rot well and truly set in when the world turned woke and we started treating lefties like people. If it wasn’t for that, I would be up on the balcony with my mates instead of stuck down here getting treated like a lackey.
“HOWAZAAAAAAAAT!!!?”
HE’S OUT! Thank fuck for that! I’ve never felt such sweet, glorious relief! Order is restored to the galaxy! Everything is right with the world once again. Disregard everything you’ve just read. I love everyone really!!
Except… argh, hang on… you’ve got to be kidding me…
Is that another lefty strutting out to the wicket?
And so it continues…
Parnell 285/9, East Coast Bays 282/9 in reply.
The Fox and the Crow 