Gay cricket widow

I have a problem with cricket. It’s not so much that the sport is swarming with peroxided wankers parading their smug grins and racist attitudes; it’s because I love my boyfriend.

My boyfriend loves cricket.

I am, to my knowledge, the world’s only gay cricket widow. I suppose I should feel special, but once again I’m facing hour upon hour of this wretched sport. Where do they find these athletes anyway? Personally, I’m concerned about cricket’s new golden boy, Michael Clarke. At first he seemed like a perfectly nice young man; now he’s sporting a spiky, frosted-tipped hairdo and diamond-stud earring. Did he undergo some sort of initiation rite? Perhaps it was a Queer Eye-style makeover, only without the culture guy. Whatever, the sport is producing a singularly unattractive mutant form of metrosexual.

It’s the hair that gets me. It’s exactly the sort of hair worn by that boy I accidentally knocked off the dancefloor at the Exchange Hotel in 1987 -“ it’s formerly gay hair. Perhaps this is an issue I should workshop, but it makes me wonder how these men can be considered idols or (even more galling) legends. To whom, Limahl?

Cricket does occasionally bring back sweet, early-childhood memories. I remember -“ and keep in mind this was before toddlers were routinely medicated -“ happily spending hours running back and forth between the living room and bedroom. Touch the couch; touch the bed. Touch the couch; touch the bed.

Essentially, this is cricket, with a bat and ball thrown in for variety. Okay, you’d have to add a bunch of people standing around with apparently nothing to do (and picture me in white pyjamas), but otherwise the two activities are indistinguishable. Cricket, of course, also has a lot of statistics. Scads of them. As in baseball, these primarily serve to distract fans from the fact that the sport is paralysingly dull.

Every now and then there’s a controversy -“ sledging, match-fixing, weight gain -“ and the latest is the doosra, which sounds like a two-door hatchback but is actually an Indian ball-throwing technique. The Aussies (you have to call them Aussies) think it’s cheating.

I could go on, but I sense waning interest. Good for you!