Too Fast to Tax

Fantasy Bob is pleased to note that the UK Government has confirmed that non resident athletes coming to the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow will benefit form the same tax exemption that has applied to athletes at the Olympic Games.

Under UK tax rules, any non-resident athlete is subject to income tax on their appearance fee and any associated worldwide endorsement payments. But the Government waived the rule to attract the best talent to the Olympics and has revealed the tax break will be available for Commonwealth Games competitors and those taking part in the World Championships in London in 2017.

Treasury Secretary Danny Alexander said: "Everyone wants to see the best athletes compete at Glasgow 2014 and this exemption will make that more likely."

Fantasy Bob is not a resident of Glasgow therefore he is pleased that this exemption will mean that he is now able to make himself available for the 2014 event.  Of course, like all other elite performers money is not his primary motivation, he is concerned only about performance.  Unlike some stars, such as Usain Bolt, he has never missed an athletics meeting in London because of tax laws his advisers believed were too restrictive.

Too fast to tax

Commentators have said that it is essential that FB appears at the Commonwealth Games to inspire a generation of children.  A spokesperson for the Games said 'There is so much he can show them about eating empire biscuits.  It will be an essential part of the legacy.'

Fantasy Bob understands that there has been some confusion as to whether these tax breaks apply in the Ibrox area of Glasgow.  Some commentators contend that no tax law was ever intended to apply in this area.

Call Off

Anton Late Call-off

Perhaps it is the fact that at this time in the season the Edinburgh Festival is about to get under way and Auld Reekie’s atmosphere is heavy with anticipation of the international drama programme. Perhaps it is the fact that at this time in the season Fantasy Bob is growing weary of the Friday night scramble to complete the line up for the pressing weekend fixtures. This year, many players seem to have been lost in the floods of the wettest summer on record and rescue parties have yet to reach them.  There is no more telling expression of the human condition than to believe at 6pm that he has a full team to receive at 10pm texts from 2 players saying that they are no longer available.

Whatever the reason, it is at this time of the season that FB seeks inspiration in the works of the great Russian dramatist Anton Late Call-off.

Call-off is frequently confused with his great contemporary Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860-1904), perhaps FB’s all time favourite playwright even though cricket is not featured in his work. But Call-off’s work, if less well known than Chekhov's, is worthy of a cricketer’s attention. His plays are tragic and comic, stuffed with character studies and redolent with descriptions of societies in transition. They provide profound insights into the human condition and the circumstances facing every cricket club. Here is a summary of his greatest plays:

The Three Sisters – The sisters are bored in a provincial town and dream of life elsewhere where they will be fulfilled. ‘Next year Moscow’ they say to each other at various points throughout the play as the everyday reality of their situation and the social nexus in which they live conspires to make escape impossible. Their house is mortgaged by their brother and his wife asserts domination of the home. The officers and soldiers who made their lives entertaining leave, there is a fire in the town. At repeated points in the action the sisters receive texts from friends and possible lovers to tell them that they are no longer available and have to call off from tomorrow’s fixture.

The Cherry Orchard - The play concerns an aristocratic Russian woman and her family as they return to the family's estate (which includes a large and well-known cherry orchard) just before it is auctioned to pay the mortgage. While presented with options to save the estate, the family does nothing for reasons of misplaced pride in their status or apathetic procrastination. The play ends with the estate being sold to the son of a former serf, but just as he is about to chop the cherry orchard down he texts them say he is no longer available and has to call-off from tomorrow’s fixture.

The Seagull  - Why is it you always wear black? - I’m in mourning for my life. I’m unhappy.

Perhaps the greatest opening lines in drama, but they were discarded by Call-off who revised them to say Why is it you always wear pads? – I want to bat number 3 but am always 11. I’m unhappy.
In this play Constantine Treplef, seeks new forms of expression. He is tired of the old academic ways, dismissive of convention and despairs that no one apparently capable of an original thought. He has written a play; the principal part is to be acted by Nina, a beautiful girl with whom he is in love. He arranges the first performance to take place on the occasion of his mother's, a famous actress, holiday in the country. There is tension between her superficiality and Constantine’s earnest vision. At the climax of the drama just as his play is about to get underway, Constantine receives a text from Nina in which she says she is no longer available and has to call-off from tomorrow’s fixture.

Anton Late Call-off – Test Match Quality

Bolt

The race for the coolest man on the planet was won in style last night by Usain Bolt.  He won by a significant margin from Chris Gayle with Fantasy Bob a distant third.  A fantastic performance (Bolt's that is not FB's).

Both Bolt and Gayle come from Jamaica.  Fantasy Bob visited Jamaica some years ago, but very little of the coolness rubbed off on him.

It is well known that Bolt showed promise as a teenage cricketer, before his huge potential at coolness was discovered.  Indeed Bolt has the distinction of dismissing Chris Gayle in  a charity match in Jamaica.  However Chris Gayle has never managed to beat Bolt in a footrace.

An all time Jamaican XI could well be the coolest team ever:

Chris Gayle
Lawrence Rowe
George Headley
Marlon Samuels
Jeff Dujon
Wavell Hinds
Jackie Hendricks
Michael Holding
Jerome Taylor
Alf Valentine
Courtney Walsh

Cool enough not to need Usain Bolt as a runner.

Jamaica - one love.

Larrikins

Philip Larkin

Philip Larkin was born 90 years ago today, 9 August.  In 2008, The Times identified him as Britain’s greatest post war writer.  (Fantasy Bob’s career was still dormant at that time which gave them a restricted choice of nomination).  He died in 1985.

Larkin’s most celebrated works are 2 collections of poems, The Whitsun Wedding and High Windows which speak with a distinct voice of nostalgia and disappointment, identifying the everyday through a distinct gaze of pessimism.  His most famous verse is found in a poem called Annus Mirabilis published in 1967

Sexual intercourse began

In nineteen sixty-three

(which was rather late for me) -

Between the end of the Chatterley ban

And the Beatles' first LP.

Given his poetic voice it is a surprise that cricket, redolent as it is with nostalgia and disappointment, did not feature as a subject in his poetry.  Fantasy Bob is aware of only two cricketing references in his work. The first comes in To the Sea, a poem in the High Windows collection.  In this poem he describes his idealised memories of being on the beach as a child and comparing them with the less idealised beach he encounters now. Among the childhood memories he records ‘As when, happy at being on my own,/I searched the sand for Famous Cricketers,’ a reference to finding cigarette cards discarded on the beach by careless adults. (Litter was an issue even as he recalls it. ) Famous Cricketers cards originated in the late 1890s and different series ran up until the Second World War when they were discontinued to save paper and were never reintroduced.  Valued then, they are highly collectable items now but for Larkin a symbol of a past disappeared.

The other cricketing reference in Larkin’s work that FB is aware of is in his poem MCMXIV which describes a photograph of a scene on the outbreak of the First World War with the men waiting to sign up for the Forces ‘Standing as patiently/As if they were stretched outside/The Oval or Villa Park’ What they were about to encounter was no sporting activity, they were embarking on.  As the poem’s devastating last line says ‘Never such innocence again.’

Larkin’s reputation remains a subject of disagreement. Some find his poems too downbeat and too conventional in form. Others objected to the racism seen in the post-mortem publication of his letters (though not evident in his poems). More information about his serial womanising also came to light and put the lie to the claim in his most famous lines quoted above that ‘it was too late for me’, for he had been at it since well before 1963 in a manner that would have left him little time for net practice. But he remains a great writer – even though having little to interest cricketers.

Wayne Larkins meanwhile is not a poet of any merit, but a fine cricketer. The former Northants opening batsman is another player of the 1980-90s who might have achieved more than he did.  His Test call ups came at the wrong time.  In all he had 13 Test matches scoring a modest 493 runs at 20.54, and 25 ODIs. In his First Class career he scored 27,142 runs in 482 matches, with 59 centuries and a highest score of 252. His first spell in the Test side ended when he ill advisedly went on a rebel tour to South Africa. He was brought back in 1990-91 to partner Graham Gooch in the West Indies and Australia but with limited success. But Larkins could demolish any attack - he was Sehwag before Sehwag had been invented. His nick name was Ned and county bowlers of the period referred to being Nedded when he took them apart - as he frequently did.

Always a bit of a lad, a smoker and bar room stalwart throughout his career, Larkins' post cricket life is not particularly edifying as he was convicted of illegally gaining a mortgage for which he received a suspended sentence.

Larkin and Larkins – in many ways a couple of Larrikins.

The difficulty of being FB

Fantasy Bob could have written his last match report for go ahead Edinburgh cricket club Carlton.

"I can't give any assurances that the next match report won't be my last," he said. "I'd like to carry on but there are obstacles that need to be worked out.'

While there has been speculation for some time that FB has found the demands of the Carlton schedule unsettling, particularly the expectation that he completes a match report for matches that are not played or are abandoned. But with vital match reports coming up, Carlton's management have stood firm and said that he cannot pick and choose what match reports to complete.   There are unconfirmed reports that disciplinary measures are being considered which would see FB deprived of empire biscuits for the rest of the season.

Views are divided in the cricket world on this issue. Many think that this is just another temperamental outburst by FB, drawing attention to himself at a time when the Carlton 4th XI should be working together for the vital last matches of the season. They consider that no one match reporter is bigger than the team.  They suggest that FB's endless variations on the joke of how little, or great, was the margin of his winning, or losing, the toss, or his speculation about Gustav Mahler's bowling action does nothing for team morale.   Others have noted his world class match report for Saturday's cancelled fixture confirmed his true class. Not only was the match cancelled, but FB was not in Edinburgh and he still completed a stunning match report - after a quiet paragraph, FB upped the jokes to words ratio and was totally dominant at the close.  To them his joke about the toss is critical to the team's performance.

Carlton's management were mystified by this latest controversy concerning their blogging superstar.  A spokesman for the club said, 'Who does he think he is?  Kevin Pietersen?' 

Who does he think he is?  Fantasy Bob

FB was unavailable for comment last night.

Monte Cassino

Monte Cassino after a bombing raid

Fantasy Bob notes with interest that a feature film based on the Second World War battle of Monte Cassino is about to enter production. The film will be directed by John Irvin who has previously directed a number of action and war films including Hamburger Hill and The Dogs of War, although FB mostly remembers him for the excellent TV adaptation of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy in the 1970s.

Monte Cassino is considered to be one of the bloodiest battles of the war.  It took place in 1944 when the Allies were moving through Italy pushing the Germans back. They held the hilltop Abbey against repeated assaults and bombing for almost 6 months. In the course of the battle there were 20,000 German and 55,000 Allied casualties. It still raises controversy today - particlarly about the Allied decision to bomb what was regarded as a jewel of architectural heritage and the extent of casualties attributable to friendly fire. FB is only glad he was not called to upon to bat on such a wicket.

Reports suggest that the film will be based on the story of an American soldier who survived the battle and the nurse who cared for him. Some displays of emotion can therefore be expected unlike the stiff upper lip approach preferred in British war films of the middle of the last century.  Where is Jack Hawkins when you need him?

Cricketers may regret that the producers of the film seem to have fallen for the need for romantic and sentimental interests in this way. For there is a side to Monte Cassino which is of interest to the cricketer.

There is a long list of Test and First class Cricketrs who fell during the Second World War. A number of those fell in the Italian campaign of whom the most reknowned is the Yorkshire and England slow bowler Hedley Verity. No First Class Cricketer fell at Monte Cassino, but cricketers were involved in the battle.

Alexander Wilkinson DSO, MC and Bar, GM was born in 1892. He had a long and productive cricket career. While he never played county cricket, he played 89 First Class matches scoring 4785 runs at 31.48. His last First Class match was for MCC against Oxford University in 1939. He was a career soldier and served in the First World War gaining the Military Cross in 1917. He was also shot in the hand, narrowly avoiding having it amputated. Although it remained greatly weakened subsequently he could still hold a bat and limited his fielding on his right side. The vast majority of his First Class appearances were subsequent to his injury.

The Distinguished Service Order

He had retired in 1933 but was called up again at the beginning of the war with the rank of Lt Colonel. He gained the George Medal for rescuing an injured man from a mine field. At Monte Cassino he gained the
Distinguished Service Order for singlehandledly restoring a smoke screen across a bridge being used by the attacking forces. He was then aged 50. He finally retired from the military in 1947 and died in 1983.

He sounds to FB like a bit of a hero - and a decent bat.  Just the subject for a blockbuster.

Tattoos

Nick Symmonds

Fantasy Bob is not a great fan of tattoos.  In fact he generally recoils from the thought or sight of them.  Participants in many sports seem to take a different view and heavily inked bodies and limbs are continually on display. During the recent Euro 12 football tournament, he supported the less tattooed team playing in any particular match, and there seemed some correlation between success and level of tattooing, for the eventual winners Spain were one of the teams with cleaner skin.  He expects managers to take account of this in future selections.

Cricket too is infested with this peculiar taste.  Dale Steyn too sports some peculiar design on his upper arm and KP's art work has been on display for some time.  The arms of Jade Dernbach or Mitchell  Johnston really shouldn't be shown on prime time TV.  In FB's view things would be a lot better if they were required to play in long sleeves and it si about time the ICC acted o this issue.

Repelled as he is by the practice, FB nevertheless notes the approach of US 800 metre runner Nick Symmonds who auctioned space on his left arm for a temporary tattoo to advertise a sponsor.  The winning bidder was a Milwaukee advertising agency, which paid $11,000 for the space to advertise its Twitter handle.  Symmonds will be competing in London - he reached the semi final in Beijing - will his sponsorship assist him in getting a stage further this time round?  The heavy branding restrictions of the Olympic Games mean that he has to tape over the tattoo but it has been seen at other events where Symmonds has run this season.

Having considered the matter carefully, FB thinks Symmonds may be on to something and has decided to auction space on his body to a commercial sponsor in a similar manner.  With the cricket season rapidly reaching its final stages, there are limited opportunities to exploit FB's exposure to the vast crowds who follow the fortunes of his Carlton All Star 4th XI, so he expects competition to be keen to secure this prestigious.  There are no branding restrictions at Grange Loan or other grounds that FB can be expected to play.  FB would particularly welcome bids from manufacturers and purveyors of empire biscuits.  There is a natural partnership which will be to mutual benefit.  For the information of bidders, FB is willing to accept payment in empire biscuits.