A Bad Break
‘DAVID Beckham is a great example to the nation’s youth. Soon, courtesy of the England captain, they will be able to name all 216 bones in the human body.
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| ”Ahh! Not me scaphoid!” |
Last summer, Becks introduced us all to the metatarsal after contriving to break one of his and almost missing the World Cup.
Last night against South Africa, he broke his scaphoid, a bone located between his thumb and forefinger.
Even England manager Sven Goran Eriksson, who must be bright because he speaks at least two languages, learnt something.
”I fell very sorry for him,” said the Swede. ”If you gave me a million dollars, I don’t think I could have named the bone.”
A couple of coughs from a Welsh lecturer and all of us could probably have got that one right.
England won last night’s match – described in the Telegraph as ”a sparky friendly” – 2-1, but the injury count could be more important than the result.
Rio Ferdinand also had a scan on his knee and, says the Telegraph, with Chelsea’s John Terry also struggling with a thigh strain, Jamie Carragher has been called up.
While England’s footballers were beating one southern African team, England’s cricketers were playing themselves into a good position against another southern African side.
On a difficult pitch and a predictably rainy day, they had got themselves to 184-3 before rain bad light stopped play, with Marcus Trescothick and Mark Butcher both passing 50.
In the Times, Christopher Martin-Jenkins calls that a ”very respectable” start to the season, for which they can thank ”the experience of their first five batsmen and a fair amount of luck besides”.
But they were aided, he says, by the Zimbabwean bowlers’ inability to find the right line and length on a pitch offering considerable help.
”The consequence was that England did not so much wriggle off the hook as avoid it altogether,” he writes.
And finally to golf where Annika Sorenstam opened up as the first woman to play in a men’s PGA tournament for 58 years with a very respectable 71.
And had she putted better, it might have been a 66, says Martin Johnson in the Telegraph.
”She actually appeared to thrive in this claustrophobic environment,” he says, ”and broke into a warm smile at the first of many inevitable shouts of ‘Yo the woman’.”
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Posted: 23rd, May 2003 | In: Back pages Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
