In the latest of a long line of hype threads, here's a thread rating each team by whether their players are cult heroes or cunts. And then to round it all off, an arbitrary coolness rating. ---- Athlai You see, Athers has committed a rookie sin in selecting his team. He's tried so hard to obtain some kind of cult status, that he's undermined the coolness of the team making it quite lame from this perspective. Captain Pick of this type has to be James Franklin. Once cult, now cunt he's going to ensure a low rating for Team Athers. Tim Southee - Showed some early cult promise with that 50 against England, but has actually shown himself to be quite adept in recent years thus undermining his cult rating. His batting is best described as mercurial, and the frustration that Kiwis get from his hot/cold batting displays gives him a marginal cultishness. +1 Darren Bravo - a try hard pick. Dances a lot, grooves around a bit but is the very definition of T20. Athers has got this one wrong, thinking that cutting a few shapes on the dancefloor ensures cult status. Wrong. -4 Daniel Vettori - Yes. Good pick this one. The beard, the doing every job under the sun for the Kiwis and a relentless focus on not scoring any runs in front of square. A spinner who can't turn the ball and relies on changes of release and speed. Not averse to having a flare up either. Must be the Italian blood. +8 Quinton Friend - No, no, no. His name is Quinton, he isn't particularly great. Giving up your round 4 pick for a no-name of cultishness is a fail. -3 Brendan Taylor - Reasonable pick this one. Has a growing reputation on the cult circuit for his perseverence with Zimbabwe. Definitely a better pick than Friend, could easily have been taken a couple of rounds earlier. Benefit of the doubt. +1 Thilan Samaraweera - That surname alone secures him some cult status. Rather than the mainstream Jayawardene or Sangakkara, the fact that Samaraweera flies relatively under the radar, looks like he could substitute for a huge sphere of rock tumbling down a tomb corridor in an Indiana Jones film and the fact that he often fools n00bs with his bowling stats. Good pick. +8 Mushfiqur Rahim - Should be a cult hero, but that annoying yelping from behind the stumps cost him big time. Goooooo shakiiiiiiiii. Piss off. -3 Kirk Edwards - Not particularly good, has a name like a 1950s Hollywood Western star. This should amount to Good Things, but he's actually a bit dull. Scores a round 0 Ravi Rampaul - The name Ravi doesn't count for much round here. It invites comparison with proven failure and Pilsbury Doughboy Ravi Bopara. Should sport a Lou Bega moustache for greater cult status. -1 James Franklin - No, no, no. Back in the day, this would have been a great cult pick. Those facial expressions of delight or abject failure. Franklin could do it all, the Cult World was at his feet. Successive reinventions as a top order batsman/dobber, middle order batsman/occasional bowler and finally some kind of batsman/pleasedon'tbowlme has eroded his cult status like acid rain on limestone. To add insult to injury, he even won a trophy with Wellington this year. The final nail in his Cult Coffin. -9 Martin Guptill - Much better selection. Missing toes, a propensity to take stunning catches despite continual failure with the bat. The sort of guy that after the inevitable failure of another Kiwi opener will always get mentioned in despatches. "How's about Guptill?" "Yeah, he can field!!!1!!" etc. +7 VVS Laxman - Too mainstream to be really cult. Some cool factor rendered by the fact he goes by initials, not his first name. Adds an air of mystery. Offset by the fact he succeeded against Australia and thus certain Australians rate him. Never a cult thing if you're foreign and Australians rate you - the very definition of success. -1 Pankaj Singh - Many Indian fans rate Pankaj. This does not do his cult status any good. -2 Luis Reece - Plays for the Lancastrians. So therefore the Northern contingents will be calling his for the Test team before too long, and if he doesn't get a run, it'll be because of the age old Surrey bias. Sports bumfluff on his top lip on occasions. Not cool ever. -1 Chamara Silva - Yeah, I can get behind this pick. Intersperses quality first class innings with a liberal sprinkling of ducks. Scored big in New Zealand and nowhere else. A surprisingly small number of initials for a Sri Lankan undermines him somewhat, but a solid pick at this late stage. +2 Jeetan Patel - Very tough one. Cult or cunt? Even Jeets doesn't know. A couple of well publicised meltdowns, making it into the CW Top 15 Worst Test players of All Time, cowardice in South Africa. But somehow people keep coming back for more. An enigma wrapped up in a mystery and smothered with lashings of dijon mustard. This week +5, but who knows next week? Fidel Edwards - Looks a bit like Tracy Chapman. Doesn't sing as well. Gives bizarre send offs to batsman as if he was fanning himself. Bowls kinda funny. +4 Devon Smith - Rubbish in every sense of the word. Boring surname. Doesn't get less Cult than this. -7 Cult Rating: 5. Poor effort. Must try less hard. Coolness Rating: Tepid
Eds - Yes, you see what Eds has done here is make a fatal mistake. He's decided that he could select a cool team just by ensuring that 90% of the team have funny names (i.e. majority Sri Lankan). This only gets you so far m'laddo. Mitchell Johnson - A man with two surnames, one of which is a euphemism for cock. Which is quite appropriate. More tattoo than man, his only redeeming feature was deliberately sporting a retro moustache. To add to this, apparently he makes a mean ham & cheese sandwich and holds the piccalilli. +2 Misbah-ul-Haq - Shares a surname with the cult figure of potato lover Inzamam. Thereafter the similarity ends. Kudos to the guy for making himself a success at test level despite being older than Fiery and I combined, but kudos only gets you so far. +3 Steve Magoffin - Not a great pick for cult status. When I pick a fast bowler, I want them to bowl fast and bat like a fucktard. Courtney Walsh - cult. Magoffin has numerable admirable qualities as a cricketer. Cult hero isn't one of them. -3 Kaushal Silva - Another Sri Lankan who can keep wicket. Doesn't even have an entertaining surname. FAIL. -4 Rishi Dhawan - His first name makes him sound like the character that Nintendo rejected when they created Super Mario Bros. His face also looks like the character that Nintendo rejected when they created Super Mario Bros. -5 Manoj Tiwary - Oh lordy yes. Do a google image search for Manoj Tiwari (note the I) and you will find the most glorious mo committed to celluloid. The cricketer on the other hand has a head like a microphone boom only slightly less fluffy. -2 Nikita Miller - Oh Nikita you will never know. Oh never know anything about my home. You'll never know how good it feels to hold you (hold you). Nikita I need you so. The only name that could be less cool is Chiqitita. +4 Sadaf Hussain - Sounds a bit like Sadaam Hussain, but doesn't have a weird little sidekick to deny that the Americans are at the airport. No those explosion sounds are not explosions, that's just the flatulence of Tariq Aziz. 0 Kusal Perera - Another Sri Lankan. Another wannabe wicketkeeper. Stat fiend. No no no. The only thing cultish about him is that Athlai misspelt his name "Kusal Peera" in his thread which made him sound like some pervert who sneaks a look under toilet doors. -3 Ankit Bawne - Aurangabad. De de dede de. Aurangabad de dede de. Aurangabad. De de de dede de dede dede de d. d. d. d. And that's all I have to say about the war in Vietnam. -5 Harshad Khadiwale - The runs he scores are often scoffed on because they're made in a tournament where captains field a very defensive mindset. He scored a ton this year in the first innings where the captain had 8 fielders on the boundary in the first session. I can't get behind that and I blame Khadiwale. -2 Dilhara Lokuhettige - Wonderful name. Played the role of BA Baracus in the made-for-TV Sri Lankan film version of the A Team. That certainly gives him some cult status, as does having a square head. Offset somewhat by thieving his name from Dilhara Fernando. Can you hear the drums Fernando? +7 Steve Harmer - Harmer's got a lot going for him. Only his name isn't Steve. It is actually Simon. Anyway, I like a bowler whose name threatens you with some kind of physical assault. Sadly, Harmer is a spinner so he'll have to do it with cheeky beamers. Would rate Kevin Selfabuser slightly higher, but he still rates a +4 Shaminda Eranga - His cricinfo profile photo makes him look as if he's just gone 5 rounds with Barry McGuigan. Either that or he spent most of the prior evening drinking meths. +1 Mithun Manhas - Oh Eds you wag. You're just making these names up now, aren't you. This chap sounds like something that JRR Tolkien shat out one afternoon in a particularly bored frame of mind. -4 Atif Maqbool - Oh come on. What next? Kuresh Mahboob? Plays for Karachi Harbour, Pakistan Customs, Pakistan International Airlines, Public Works Department and for the Karachi Zebras. I wonder what type of public service the Zebras provide? Manure on demand, perhaps? +2 Upul Tharanga - There's a lot to like about Upul. A proven test failure and a man even more adept at using the eyebrow raise than Roger Moore. Should use his real first name more often. I'd love to hear Danny Morrison pronounce "Warushavithana" (hint: he'd call him Waru or Warrars and then black himself up with boot polish and bonobo excrement and do some kind of racist dance) +3 Divan van Wyk - Named after a bed and there's a photo of him on google with one side of his shirt collar up and looking decidedly pissed. What's not to love? +6 Cult Rating: 4. Threw all his eggs in one basket. Needed a curly haired twat. Coolness Rating: Warm. Almost hot.
God I was disappointed when googling Dilhara Lokuhettige A-Team didn't turn up to be a literal thing.
Was relying on a +9 from Dilly. I feel as if you've overlooked the fact his name is actually Loku Hettige but he gets called Lokuhettige. Just because.
Says it all. Not even a week has passed and Jeets' rating has already changed after 'wimping out' of international cricket today. Jeets' outlook is poor; sell. Downgrading to a Cult rating of +2.
Really? According to stuff: And yes, I realise the delicious irony of using a Millmow quote, but fuck it I selected Hamish Marshall FFS.
