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It was with trepidation that I switched on the highlights of the ultimate day of the Oval Check on the BBC. Might England chase down a difficult goal or would we be skittled? As you understand, it didn’t end well. However my nervousness rapidly modified to annoyance. As Jasprit Bumrah and co despatched the stumps spinning, Phil Tufnell and his fellow commentators repeatedly shrieked: “He’s gotta go!”
That is the type of language you count on from the extra hysterical soccer pundits, however cricket? What’s unsuitable with “And that’s definitely out” or “bowled neck and crop”? I’m sure that the commentators of yesteryear – Christopher-Martin Jenkins, John Arlott – would deprecate such vulgarity.
There’s been a lot discuss lately on the demise of the go well with and the necktie. Necktie? You wouldn’t put on one spherical your ankle, would you? It jogs my memory of a colleague who would insist on utilizing the phrase “headbutt”. I stated to him as soon as that you simply wouldn’t say footkick or fistpunch – head is otiose. I used to be mightily tempted when he left the constructing to offer him a footkick up the bottom, however wiser counsel prevailed.
You may at all times depend on the Telegraph’s Ambrose Evans-Pritchard to widen your vocabulary. Final week was no exception: “But that doesn’t preclude a slow-motion dégringolade that ends illusions of Chinese language financial exceptionalism.” What a splendid phrase and so significantly better than speedy decline. I defy you to slide it into dialog in your native.
Lastly, I’ve to move on this gem, an outdated Afghan proverb, from Patrick Kidd’s Occasions diary: “My enemy’s enemy’s good friend’s enemy, who was my good friend, is my enemy, till he isn’t.” Actually Rumsfeldian. Little marvel Dominic Raab stayed on his pedalo.
