So much at
stake – dare
we watch?
DARE we switch on our TV sets tomorrow? Our up-and-down Sharks play the Stormers away at Newlands. Away? That means we should win. Except it didn't work against the Jaguares last weekend – and how it didn't work!
Can we bounce back after that walloping? Winners tomorrow go through to the playoffs? Oh boy – anything could happen.
And in England the Proteas take on Afghanistan. Cricket's Khyber Pass awaits. But it could be weather conditions to wash out the game again, as against the West Indies, or even – horrors! – expose us to the Duckworth-Lewis curse, that can leave you needing 22-runs off one ball, as happened to us that time in India.
Can we get to the World Cup play-offs by way of a succession of wash-outs? One imagines not, but in these days of complication anything seems possible. Sport can be so nerve-wracking.
The damsels of the Street Shelter for the Over-Forties are nevertheless strumming at their knicker elastic in anticipation of a fashioning of catapults for the traditional celebratory feu de joie in which the streetlights are shot out – and this could even happen twice, in celebration of two successes, the Sharks and the Proteas.
But there's uncertainty, there's tension in the air. One senses that with adverse results the gals – already restive - could become demonstrative in the most negative and alarming way. Sport is not for the faint-hearted. Nor is the Street Shelter.
Mystery challenge
WHATEVER could have possessed youthful songster Justin Bieber to challenge Hollywood star Tom Cruise to a UFC cage fight – that's the Ultimate Fighting Championship, mixed martial arts, anything goes.
While most of us can probably think of a few Hollywood starlets with whom we'd risk grappling a few rounds in the UFC ring, why Bieber should have challenged Cruise is a mystery.
It came in a tweet, according to the BBC. "I wanna challenge Tom Cruise to fight in the octagon. Tom if you dont take this fight your scared and you will never live it down. Who is willing to put on the fight?"
At which UFC superstar Conor McGregor tweeted that he was willing to stage the fight and offered to himself fight another Hollywood actor, Mark Wahlberg, on the same card.
"I challenge Mark Walhberg on the very same card. Back when mark wahlberg was marky mark, I'd've still slapped the ears off him and took my ufc shares back."
Huh? But these things can escalate fast. At time of writing, neither Cruise nor Wahlberg had responded to the challenges.
The reason for this outbreak of hostility toward Hollywood is entirely unclear. But it could serve the salutary purpose of a distraction from such tedious issues as the tariff war against China, Brexit and the British prime ministership.
Should the UFC bouts actually come to pass, they might prove entertainment of an order not yet imagined. They could even suggest alternative methods of swiftly deciding those other weighty issues mentioned, that are so dominating attention.
Tailpiece
She: "You think of nothing but cricket. I bet you can't even remember the day we were married."
He: "Of course I do. It was the day Graeme Pollock made 114 in a 165 partnership with Gary Sobers at the Oval in England, the world's two leading left-handed batsmen."
Last word
Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day; wisdom consists of not exceeding the limit. - Elbert Hubbard
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