Better than the Ashes
QUOD quemadmodum est – howzat! The Vatican has taken up cricket and plans to send a side to play at Lord's, possibly against the Church of England. This could build up into something better than the Ashes.
About 300 Catholic priests and students at colleges attached to the Holy See - most of them from the Indian sub-continent, Australia and New Zealand and the West Indies - have signed up to play for St Peter's Cricket Club.
It's all very pukka. At a launch event this week the Vatican's culture ministry marked the occasion by serving tea and the traditional cucumber sandwiches.
The plan is to start an inter-college league, from which the best players will be selected to play for a Vatican side.
Australia's ambassador to the Holy See, John McCarthy, says he hopes the St Peter's Cricket Club will field a team to play the Church of England next autumn.
Alfonso Jayarajah, a Sri Lankan who was the first captain of the Italian national team and is now a board member of St Peter's Cricket Club, says: "The Vatican team will be able to play anybody in the world. We hope to see a Vatican team playing at Lord's."
Ad hoc matches have previously taken place against such obscure teams as the Dutch Fellowship of Fairly Odd Places Cricket Club. But things are now getting organised.
Ambassador McCarthy says the cricket league will be something like the Clericus Cup, a football tournament involving the various religious colleges in Rome.
But he dismisses the idea that umpires might have to give their decisions in Latin. "English is the language of cricket and will remain the language of cricket."
Vae! (Alas!) But who are we Latinists to make the rules?
Vatican culture ministry spokesman Richard Rouse says: "The Holy See has representatives from more than 180 countries around the world. People come to us from all corners of the globe. When they return to their homelands, we hope some will be able to use cricket to foster good relations with their community and with other religions."
Hey, great things. Archbishop Tutu as a neutral umpire? The Ashes has nothing on this.
Close of play score: St Peters CCLXVI nam VI (renuntio).
Goodies v Baddies
ALL OF WHICH recalls that sketch in Monty Python's Flying Circus where the Goodies play cricket against the Baddies.
St Luke and Mahatma Gandhi open the batting for the Goodies. Hitler opens the bowling for the Baddies. Stalin is wicketkeeper.
Hitler has a long run-up, all of it goose-stepped. Then he bowls a hand grenade.
Wonderful stuff. I think rain washed out play in the end.
See ya later …
AN ALLIGATOR wandered into a Walmart supermarket in Florida the other day, causing some consternation. The 1.8m 'gator stopped off near the automatic front doors, causing them to keep opening and closing.
Then he got bored and wandered off again into some nearby woods.
Judging from the photographs one sees of Walmart shoppers – hugely fat people in skimpy clothes – this must rate as one of the group's more elegant customers.
Magic machine
OVERHEARD at the Street Shelter for the Over-Forties: "They've got this new machine at the gym. It's wonderful. But you have you be careful not to overdo it. After about an hour I felt sick. It's got Mars Bars, Kitkats, Crunchies, crisps, everything …"
Poetry corner
THE BARDS wax lyrical on JZ's latest faux pas. They express sympathy for poor old Mac Maharaj.
Here is Ian Gibson, poet laureate of Hillcrest:
Spare a thought for Mac Maharaj;
Even with three mercs in his ga-haraj,
When his boss opens his mouth
His fervent hopes go south,
Of preventing a voters' haemorrhage!
Then Stanley Fraser:
President Bush really knew how to blunder
But now our president has stolen his thunder.
Comparing Gauteng to Malawi
Means we're better than them; are we?
Did he say, We can't think like an African?
But to own a dog is unAfrican?
Poor old Mac
Having to explain such twak.
Tailpiece
"My husband's so fat, I bet if he fell in the Grand Canyon he'd get stuck."
"I wouldn't dare say that to my husband. He'd eat me."
Last word
I wonder if other dogs think poodles are members of a weird religious cult.
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