An Epidemic of Not Scoring

Watching Andy Coulson answer the Leveson inquiry’s questions with a dead bat yesterday, the likes of Robert Shrimsley and Tim Montgomerie tweeted that viewing Coulson testify was akin to watching Chris Tavaré bat. Those of you who remember Tavaré will appreciate that this was not meant altogether kindly.

This will not do. I concede that as a child no cricketer infuriated me more than Tavaré. He seemed to me, then, to be some kind of anti-cricketer, forever forgetting that scoring runs – preferably with style – was a batsman’s chief objective. I fear I disliked poor Tavaré as keenly as ever any gum-chewing Australian did. There was, after all, so much to dislike.

He appeared to bat under the impression that there was something mildly distasteful about scoring runs. His hangdog countenance contrived, unusually, to seem both lugubrious and mildly prissy. Then he had this habit – vexing in the extreme – of sauntering halfway to square leg between deliveries, ensuring that, in every bleedin’ respect, the game would proceed at a sub-funeral pace for as long as Tavaré was at the wicket.