Dan's Year of Sport: A puck-ing enjoyable night with the Basingstoke Bison

Before last night, the full extent of my ice hockey experience was playing NHL 95 on the Sega Megadrive a lot when I was about seven-years-old, playing almost exclusively as Long Island for no fathomable reason.
However, last night, as part of my New Year's Resolution, I rocked up at the Basingstoke Ice Arena to see Basingstoke Bison take on the Guildford Flames with a mind full of cliches about what I was going to witness.
NHL 95 told me to expect blokes knocking seven bells out of each other, common-sense dictated pucks flying at a million miles per hour with the crowd taking evasive action regularly and my girlfriend told me that when she bought tickets she was told we were in the 'rowdy' part. I decided to leave my purple v-neck t-shirt at home.
However, the first thing that struck me when turning up was the amount of women, teenagers and kids at the arena - being used to the exclusively white, male, middle-aged, homogenised experience that is professional football, this came as something of a surprise.

After a fight broke out about ten minutes in to the game and lasted a good minute, I thought we were back on track to fulfilling what I thought ice hockey was all about. But the very friendly and informative man sat next to us explained it is something of a rarity to have brawls in ice hockey this side of the pond - apparently our uncouth North American cousins encourage the practice - and this fight was a bit of a hangover from the last time the two sides played.
So we settled into the match which seems to consist of two separate events - the on-field game itself and the atmosphere created partly by the fans and partly by the announcer.
Sporting-wise, the sheer speed of what happens is mindboggling. The programme has in it a safety-first, "you-can't-sue-us-now" disclaimer saying to watch the puck at all times which is decidedly easier said than done considering it is a black object on white ice.
But the players must have the same frames per minute eyesight as pigeons to react as quickly as they do to the puck flying about the place and the reflexes of hares to actually control it when it comes to them whether it be with stick or skate. Add to that the skill to be get the thing to go where you want it to go and the thought process to decide what you are going to do with it. They seem to be in complete control and have all the time in the world. And that's before we get into how skilled as skaters they are - coming from a man who falls arse over head when skating, even when clutching the edge of the rink for dear life, this is both a point of huge jealousy and admiration.

Rolling substitutes keep the action flowing though, as a layman, the amount of stoppages in play did grate but that might be down to not knowing why fouls were called rather than breaks themselves.
Now, off-ice, like any sport, there is the fan-created atmosphere of singing, clapping and instruments, but, and I think I'm right in saying this is the norm across all ice hockey and not just at Basingstoke, the announcer plays a huge role in creating the spectacle.
Acting as kind of a cheerleader/pisstaker/commentator, this witty, pithy individual interacts with the crowd - wishing people happy birthday, letting people (crucially) know WHY a player has been sin-binned and not just who it is and, presumably with a sidekick, interspersing a combination of 90s club classics and sound effects in to breaks in play. A particular favourite was the use of the series of "D'ohs" as Homer Simpson falls down Springfield Gorge a second time when Guildford fans thought they had scored.
The appeal of the announcer ties in to a clear wider point which I felt from last night of a sporting club genuinely appreciating its fanbase and treating them as supporters, not cash cow customers. While I assume money is quite tight at this level of ice hockey, it might even be better that way, without the dispiriting and disruptive influence that is billions of cash of investment in sport. Apples and oranges, but I can't imagine football clubs allowing their fans on the pitch to have a kickabout at the end of a match like Bisons allow their fans to have a skate, for free I think, afterwards.
Speaking of price, we certainly got our money's worth - £12 for three hours of entertainment complete with overtime and penalties resulting in a 5-4 win for Basingstoke - is pretty hard to beat.
Overall, a thoroughly enjoyable and refreshing night of sport. I will most certainly be returning. Speaking of which...

Next up on the sporting 2015 tour
Possibly back to Basingstoke Ice Arena on the 15th for their last regular season home match or their match a Bracknell Bees on the 8th. Alternatively it will be Rivermead Leisure Centre on the 28th for a Reading Rockets basketball match.

Sports done so far
Football and ice hockey.

A late New Year's resolution - my 2015 campaign to see a massive variety of local sport

It is statistically (un)proven the New Year’s resolutions which are most easily broken are the ones made half-cut at 12.01am on New Year’s Day - those ones which have had no thought put into them whatsoever.

So, therefore, using the same reasoning, the best time to make a resolution must certainly be at the start of February. So, here is mine.

This year, I want to watch live as many different sports as I possibly can, at a variety of different levels in Berkshire and North Hampshire (for the simple reason I grew up in Reading, work in Slough where I cover the Windsor patch and live just in Hampshire in Tadley).

And this is where I want some help; I want suggestions on what sports and teams I should go to see over the remaining 11 months or so of 2015 to add to this crude list I’ve made below which will also outline why I’ve chosen that sport/team or who has suggested it.

Football

Reading FC - hometown team, supported since I was five-years-old and, to be honest, an easy one to add to this list as I would be seeing them already this season anyway. DONE - AWAY AT FULHAM FC, SATURDAY 17 JANUARY

Basingstoke Town FC - fitting in with my relocation from Reading to Tadley, Basingstoke are the nearest semi-pro side around (and my girlfriend’s boss owns the place so it would be rude not to divert some of my income that way)

Reading Town FC - there has to be a lower league outfit in this list and seeing as RTFC play at Scours Lane around 15 minutes walk away from the house in which I grew up, it kind of makes sense.

Cricket

Berkshire CC - when I was studying journalism at university, I did a ‘day at the cricket’ as a feature piece for the sports journalism section of my course. Unfortunately, that day largely consisted of eating the food the club generously laid on as heavy May rain caused the match at Falkland CC to be called off. Time for a re-visit.

Basketball

Reading Rockets - They are the only basketball team playing at a decent level in the region so kind of a forced-hand but they have been pretty handy in recent years, so Wikipedia tells me.

Rugby

London Irish - I am in no way a fan of rugby but as a proper UK sport, it must be done and I may as well see what is the cause of why the Madejski Stadium pitch is a bit ropey at times. Plus the promise of St Patrick’s Day being the day for this trip is kind of enticing.

Ice Hockey

Basingstoke Bison - I can’t remember where the idea for 2015 being the year of diverse spot for me came from but Basingstoke Bison features somewhere in there so they have to feature. DONE - HOME TO GUILDFORD FLAMES, SATURDAY 28 FBERUARY

Hockey

Reading Hockey Club - Back to Reading again (this is becoming awfully Reading-centric), but both the men’s and women’s team compete in the top tier of English hockey with many an international player among them which is something of a rarity in this list.

Boxing

No idea where yet but there is always some amateur boxing going on in Reading or Slough... no reference to nightlife chortle, haha, etc and so on.

Horse Racing

Newbury, Windsor, Ascot - plenty of choices here to get pissed in as classy a way as there is.

Got anything else I should add to this list? Tweet me or leave a comment!

On The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

The Hobbit series has never really grabbed the same attention the preceding Lord of The Rings series did for any number of reasons you want to pick out – cashcow, script stretching, less screen friendly content matter.

Naturally, the trilogy’s conclusion fits in with that dynamic being occasionally epic, occasionally banal but consistently…long.

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (THTBOTFA for short, kind of) picks up where The Desolation of Smaug ends with Smaug angrily descending on Laketown to unleash fiery wanton destruction and the Dwarf fellowship set to claim the treasure under the Lonely Mountain.

What follows is two-and-a-half-hours of your usual Peter Jackson blend of battle scenes, undercooked romance and intense hairiness.

It’s a shame when something that was genuinely innovative and groundbreaking gets overtaken by rivals and left in the dust.

On the plus side, at least it doesn’t make the mistake of trying to keep up with other genre stablemates with graphic violence, countless sex scenes and exposed breast after exposed breast and sticks to what it does best.

In that regard, the climax battle scene is just as epic as any of the Lord of the Rings films and so, therefore, up there with the best in modern cinema.

And, as you would expect with any LOTR or The Hobbit films, the cinematography is stunning, augmented by that trademark New Zealand scenery and lovingly-crafted sets, perfect down to the smallest detail.

However, the feeling can’t be shaken that we are basically watching a film that is 13-years-old such is the shooting-style and script.

Everything script-wise is stretched to the limit to wring out as much screening time as possible (sound familiar with the rest of the series?) which is fair enough if it all stands up on screen, but in THTBOTFA it doesn’t. And that is saying something as close to half of the film is largely taken up with the battle alluded to in the title of the film.

The majority of these problems probably date back to that one fateful decision to make The Hobbit into three films – two would be enough and even probably one if we take out the ludicrous Gandalf ‘second storyline’ which sets up the Lord of The Rings trilogy a good century before it actually happens. I get keeping the dwarf/elf romance storyline as all modern films need a love angle to spread the demographic, but it is merely another adornment to pad out the script.

Towards the end, knowing nods allude to what is coming in the Lord of The Rings which quickly turn from being “ahh, clever” to “another one, really?” Something of a metaphor for how the two trilogies have kind of worked really. The thrilling finale of The Return of the King is more of a natural finish, but THTBOTFA does the best with what it can.

Oh, and ma-hoos-ive spoiler alert, again with the fucking eagles.

Something I can agree with teenage girls on

The things that are liked by both myself and teenage girls is a happily small pool.
Broadly speaking, things they like - One Direction, sexting, excessive make-up usage,teenage boys - are very different to the things I enjoy - FIFA 15, decent cider, writing and sleeping.
So, given lots of the crowd at the o2 Arena on Monday night were females aged between 11 and 19 wearing lots of eyeliner, perhaps the fair conclusion was to say either myself or all of them had got our dates and times hideously wrong and were at the wrong gig.
Don't get me wrong, I like a bit of Ed Sheeran - even more so reading up on his backstory prior to the gig (yeah I read to get a narrative before a gig as opposed to, I don't know, listening to the artist's entire back catalogue) - and he can write a good tune with actual proper lyrics.
But, I kind of thought, can a guy with a guitar really dominate an arena - keeping 12,000 people in the palm of his hand for 90 minutes, owning a rather large stage?
Well, the answer was quite emphatically, reject that thought Dan.
Sheeran was utterly superb - an enthralling watch from start to finish.
His slow, female-targeting songs were all well and nice, gentle strumming, nice lyrics and all that but his craftmanship is the truly astonishing thing.
Using perhaps a double figures amount of effects pedals, Sheeran makes it sound as if there are a band of four on stage rather than just one ginger fella younger than me (grrrrr) confident enough to play around with his tunes and engage with the audience off-the-cuff (with marriage proposals in the crown for example, lame!).
Recording a guitar rhythm section first off and then layering over a beat (smacked out on his guitar) and backing vocals together live on stage in front of a huge audience requires massive balls, to put it one way.
Then, with all that sorted, he bursts into a cutting mixture of clever, witty lyrics, extreme guitar shredding and occasional very adept rapping (I know what adept rapping sounds like of course...). In what surely lasted at least eight minutes, the mashup of 'You Need Me I Don't Need You' and a cover of Laid Blak's My Eyes Are Red' was a perfect example of this combination- it was truly astounding and thrilling.
I'm far from being a musical connoisseur, but it seems so innovative to use effects pedals so often, intelligently and properly to actually add to his offering rather than for the mere sake of it. 
Ultimately, a fantastic evening with an appeal for a wide variety of people.

Taking from the rich to pay the....slightly less rich

Money! Everyone loves money. Small pieces of paper that skyrocket in value depending on what they have printed on them and having lots of 0s on your bank statement, what's not to love?
Football, now football really loves money. Football is to money like Jesus is to Christians and Lynx is to teenage boys, the thing.
Except, except money is undergoing a bit of a rebrand in football. It is a dirty word, one to be loathed, detested, despised says walking, living, breathing, shrugging French strereotype and failed Blatter challenger Michel Platini.
Michel wants to balance up football, to make clubs live within their means and cut their cloth accordingly - leaving the powers that currently be, be the powers that be forevermore with their already paid-for, cash mountain generating massive stadiums and even larger reputations but unintended consequences and all that.
But poor old Michel is finding the love of dough is rather hard to overcome with football bigwigs (probably) literally being dragged kicking and screaming and greasily sliding to the Financial Fair Play table.
But yet, hurrah, results! Arab embassiesManchester City and Paris St-Germain being fined - the equivalent of stealing from my Kilner jar of pennies but a start nonetheless.
But oh no, hang on, where is this cash going to go? To help grassroots football? To subsidise matchday tickets? To readdress the balance between the haves and have nots of domestic football?
Nope, it is going into a great big massive pot to be distributed out among last year's Champions League and Europa League entrants, apparently.
That's right, the European Club Association has decided the £50m pot would best off be split among themselves - basically the same decision a conference of toddlers would make when deciding what to do with a box of Jelly Babies and Skittles.
So, the likes of Manchester United, Arsenal and Chelsea (as well as Wigan, Hull and Swansea) will receive a slice of around £212,000 to immediately piss away on paying Falcao for one set of weekdays. Glorious.
It is like making a really amazing cream cake and then screwing it all up right at the very end after being forced to substitute fresh cream for sour cream but still keeping the jam.
Some sense appears to reign back here in fair and honest Blighty with QPR's potential £40m FFP fine which would go to charity "rather than the other clubs under an agreement with the Premier League over its solidarity payments" though no word yet if the Premier League intends to apply for charity status in the near future.
The whole problem seems to be different bodies having jurisdictions over their own respective areas whether it be the Premier League, the Football League, UEFA and the ECA with ad-hoc compromises being formulated under the guise of having a 'flexible' system which most certainly wasn't thought up on the hoof and rushed through.
A laudable idea that doesn't quite work in practice, much like Euro 2016 expect for the laudable bit.

Wading in on #indref

One rung above the thing Scottish people may well loath most (public-school-educated, southern English politicians telling them which way to vote next Thursday) is any old English person telling them which way to vote next Thursday - 'aye' or 'ach no' to use a lazy, but invitingly easy, stereotype.
So, on we go, two penny-worth time.
There are countless things I'd miss about Scotland if it were to secede- a third colour which brightens up the Unions flag, charity challengers getting an easier ride by walking from Marshall Meadows to Land's End rather than John O'Groats and Twin Atlantic to name three.
But what I think I would dislike the most is having our clearly defined geographic landmass cut into two, separate pieces - much like across the Irish Sea though that was kind of the fault of we English anyway... like in Palestine...and much of Africa....and India and Pakistan....
Anyway, I've never been to Scotland and for all I know there could be a modern day Hadrian's Wall at the border complete with barbed wire, spotlights, sniper lasers and innumerable boxes of clinical, latex gloves to check people aren't smuggling Tennent's Super Strong Lager, heroin and the Daily Record.
But the idea that this landmass is split into two formally different countries feels me with a sadness I just can't quite understand, nor rationalise. It feels like my right arm - a pretty key part I'm sure you'll agree- suddenly deciding it doesn't want to be controlled by me anymore but has the distinct disadvantage of not being able to physically escape short of cutting itself off.
Perhaps a massive canal being built from coast-to-coast might be the solution should the 'ayes' have it next week so Scotland can drift off to shack up with Iceland in one of the most bizarre partnerships imaginable - Bjork meets Rod Stewart or Lazytown creator Magnis Scheving writing a show for James McAvoy.
However, despite the perceived support for the Union in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, we should not be allowed to have a say in the argument - it is the Scots' right to have their say on self-determination and if they say 'aye', what right do we have to hold them back like an older brother snatching back a stolen toy from a younger sibling? "Here you go...just kidding."
But if the Scottish were to vote for independence, there is a huge knock-on impact for the English identity. Being English is a concept I struggle with as apart from placing overwhelming, cloying and ultimately destructive faith in our sporting teams, what separates being English from being British?
If Scotland were to sod off, what we would be? The Dis-United Kingdom? Good Britain? Three loosely-associated countries, two of which probably have more in common with Scotland than they do England? Come to think of it, who would get custody of Wales?! Won't somebody please think of the Welsh.
An 'aye' may well be the springboard for Scottish pride and a reforming of the Scottish identity but an identity crisis would be left for the English - a cynic would suggest that might be a good campaigning tool for amateur Andrew Lloyd Webber lookalike Alec Salmond.
So whatever way you vote on Thursday Scotland, do it for the positive reasons and not the negative.
But if you do go, please take Gillian McKeith with you. Cheers.

On petsitting - a week of cat-astrophes and doggy crises

If having pets is a trial run for having kids (which for the purposes of this blog it most emphatically is), the last week has taught me I am ready for neither.
For the past week or so, I've been housesitting for my parents' while they are away on holiday - come at me burglars! - meaning I've had all the fun of running a household with the additional responsibility of caring after two cats; eating, shitting pain in the arses that I apparently can't help but love despite being completely and helplessly allergic to them.
There are also fish to look after but fish count as pets in the same way a pot plant does. Or any kind of plant for that matter.
Anyway, of the two cats, one is old and doddery and the other is young and mad as a bicycle so each presenting their own unique, engaging, glorious challenges.
The morning after the first night of petsitting, there lying at the bottom of the flight of stairs was a deposit that I'm fairly certain most human beings would not be able to pass. Seriously, if I wasn't so repulsed and annoyed, impressed would have been the only feeling to be expressing.
It was almost certainly done by the old, doddery one - the one who probably should know better, but either has selective memory on how a litter tray works or thinks it is a good laugh to pretend like he forgets, the bastard. I mean, you would definitely do that if you were a cat, wouldn't you?
Out came the scooper, the disinfectant, the scrubbing cleaning sponge thing and all that paraphernalia and before you knew it, clean hallway; disgusted, depressed Dan. Onwards we go.
Until that evening.
Surprise number two - cat water on the kitchen floor, in and around the bin. Out came the bucket and the gloves and the disinfectant and that stuff once again. And industrial amounts of Glade spray.
By this stage, I was honestly wondering how much a cattery costs for the week. I hadn't quite Googled it yet, but the thought was there. Or how much catnip it takes to stonk them out for seven days.
Fast forward four days and thankfully there were no more accidents (though the smell coming off their uneaten food at the end of every day was horrendously horrid) and it was time for a trip to the other half's for the weekend where she was dogsitting.
I'm growing to be a dog person - I've recently just about started to cope with them licking my face and in all fairness, they probably are more fun that cats - so I can cope with what they're all about.
Just to make sure he was alright and he could get to us if there was some sort of doggy crisis (unfortunately only felines have cat-astrophes), we slept with the door ajar.
The doggy crisis inevitably came, but clearly the crisis was that it was about 8.15 in the morning and I was still asleep. I'm not a fan of alarms at the best of times, but a cold, wet nose all over my facial features wasn't the most fun experience while groggy.
And, before we move on, there is nothing quite like a dog licking your face to extinguish morning glory - forget a cold shower, get a dog and get one that corresponds with how high your bed sits off the ground; probably no point getting a poodle if you have a four-poster...although they can jump up I guess...yeah, ignore the majority of this paragraph.
Come the end of the weekend and returning to the parents' house to get cracking on the inevitable pile of house husband shit that had piled up, SURPRISE, old, doddery one decides now is probably the best time to have a good old spray on the bin.
Seriously, the bin which I was stood about a foot away from with my back turned ready to show some cutlery who the boss was when it come to washing up.
Cue massive kick up the arse* and then deciding that wasn't enough and harrying him out of the door, shutting it behind him.
Gloves, disinfectant, yada, yadda. Then I repotted my bonsai tree to chill out, as that is exactly how I roll.
However, you probably won't be surprised to hear that this post has been written while old, doddery one is asleep by my side and I ended up playing with the dog for most of the weekend and taking him for walks.
Sigh, pets.


*If the RSPCA are reading this, it wasn't THAT massive. We're still friends, the pair of us. And he is sitting down without complaint.

Alexandre Gaydamak and Portsmouth vs Anton Zingarvich and Reading

I'm currently reading Jim White's (the writer, not the football transfer maniac with more mobiles than a modern day Pablo Escobar) ambitious 'Premier League; A History in 10 Matches' which explores...well, you can probably guess what the subject matter is.
The eighth match in the book is one Reading fans will never be able to forget as it was one of the most conspicstaging posts in the collapse of our greatest ever team.
It was on Saturday, September 29. Stephen Hunt, Dave Kitson, Shane Long and an OG from a Nicky Shorey short were our scorers. And we still lost.
Yup, it was Portsmouth 7 Reading 4 - a match which presumably still has Alan Hansen waking up in the middle of the night drenched in cold sweat and needing to turn the bedside table lamp on.
The chapter focuses largely on the largescale financial incompetence at Portsmouth under the ill-fated Harry Redknapp/ Alexandre Gaydamak axis starting in around 2006 and how the club are still paying the price for that to this very day. The Reading angle is largely sketched in (small club inferiority complex yada yada yada), but more on which later.
The overall summarisation being that Portsmouth's demise changed the way the Premier League saw the potential financial implosion of its members - from being something very distant to being a genuine threat (though one which one always got the feeling they were hoping to just keep Portsmouth going until the end of the season and then they would be the Football League's problem).
The chapter ends on a positive with the takeover of Portsmouth by its Supporters' Trust and highlighting the fact that their opponents on that strange September afternoon were a sustainable model they could seek to emulate.
This book was written last year and hindsight is 20/20 of course but given the events of the past year at Reading, it makes such a suggestion seem somewhat laughable. The pace of change in modern football, eh?
The club and Sir John Madejski are praised in the book for the self-sustainable model imposed and more or less achieved (in relative football terms anyway) from 2006 to 2011 - a model which many Reading fans were rightly proud of and perhaps, whisper it, even miss the security of.
While Portsmouth chased the dream and lived so scarily obviously - and obviously scarily - beyond their limited means, Reading cut their cloth (to use the parlance) and lived within their similarly limited means.
However, both ended up being sold on to a young owner with ties to Russia with no real indication given where they had earned their respective wealth with suggestions dubious Daddy was behind each of them respectively.
While Reading - or so it would seem if the latest takeover gets finalised - were saved by the early prudent bookkeeping and owning their stadium and their training ground (making them a much more attractive purchase), Portsmouth were not so lucky and League Two has proved to be the place where enough anvils were thrown out of the hot balloon to allow them to float.
Were it not for Reading's circumstances of owing a modern, income-generating machine of a stadium, the post-Zingaravich world could be looking a lot worse - indeed, genuine fears over administration earlier this summer suggests it may not have been all that far away.
All of which goes back to that 7-4 game nearly seven years ago where two similar-sized clubs met with markedly different immediate pasts, presents and immediate futures but ended up going in the same direction (though to differing extents) further down the line.

In defence of Alastair Cook

The time was 12.58pm on Monday, July 21. The largely Indian crowd at HQ was subdued - even the chap who wanted to stand in everyone's way at the foot of the Lower Compton to get pictures of himself had sat down, the victim of an epic Coca-Cola spill on a white shirt - a 100-run partnership had been secured and the first bottle of wine was nearly finished. All was well and good.
Then Moeen Ali got caught between pulling and ducking (pucking?).
An hour of play later and that was that - England all out, six wickets lost for around 50 runs or so, tipsy but inoffensive Indian fans were delighted and England fans were just plain offended. A collapse to a fast-medium pacer in English conditions deploying some short-pitched stuff.
Batsman after batsman going taking on the hook and pull.
Prior? Live by the sword, die by the sword right and play to your strengths but read the situation as an experienced player - there are three men out on the hook. Leave the short ball alone.
Stokes? Yes you're out of form and slightly green but take a look at the scoreboard. Leave the short ball well alone.
Root? Likewise. You've batted superbly for 66. You have lost three partners in quick session. You have only played 19 Tests but take a step back and breathe. And leave the short ball well alone.
Broad? Well, you're not an all-rounder so we can let you off really.
Inevitably, the inquest spotlights fell on to Alastair Cook, unfairly in my view.
The buck probably does stop with the captain but what can he do when his players are not using their brains?
Yes he can score more runs but that isn't going to get his batsman to play properly. He was incredibly proactive in both innings when talking to his bowlers (for the most part) but if they don't use their initiative as professionals, what more can the captain do? What else can the skipper do to get his senior players backing him and leading alongside him when he is already taking scorchers of catches and setting relatively smart fields?
Yes Matt Prior and Stuart Broad in particular look to be carrying injuries and are knackered but there is no shame in sticking your hand up and saying 'I can't carry on' rather than forcing your captain and management team in to having to make a tough decision. Ian Bell is out of form and James Anderson is probably pretty shattered and distracted by the Jadeja spat furthermore.
Cook has enough to worry about with his own form without having no-one to stand alongside him
He is still the best man for the job. Without wishing to make him sound like the best of a bad bunch, every other candidate has a worse CV.
Bell - equally as out of form. Root - arguably in too good form (captaincy will drag it down). Prior? No form and injured. Eoin Morgan? Average Test record and no first class captaincy experience. Chris Read? He's nearly 37 and averages 19 - you might as well bring back Mike Brearley. Any bowler? Too many Tests crammed into a short space of time so they won't play regularly.
Furthermore, what would be the point in shaking up the team so violently when the Rose Bowl Test is five days away?
Cook should remain as captain - though certainly take a break after the Tests and come back in the winter - as he is still the best candidate - mentally strong, seen it all in the game, the natural choice and up until a year ago, a very good track record.
Unlike Andrew Strauss - a very similar captain - and perhaps in a similar vein to Ricky Ponting, Cook has had to deal with the demise of a very good team. In the past year, for one reason or another, Cook has lost Jonathan Trott, Kevin Pietersen, and Graeme Swann.
Cook probably has a similar job description to that of Nasser Hussain - the changing of the guard with a young team in transition. Who will be the new Marcus Trescothick, Michael Vaughan, Andrew Flintoff, Steve Harmison and Matthew Hoggard to lead the next generation? Root, Gary Ballance, Moeen Ali and Chris Jordan look promising but not ready for leadership.
Cook still wants the role and can lead the next generation through. Let him get on with it.

Starting XI for the Third Test vs India- Cook (C), Robson, Ballance, Taylor, Root, Ali, Buttler, Woakes, Plunkett, Jordan, Anderson

An ode to an NHS A&E department from a first-time adult user

Last night, for the first time in 15 years, I found myself in the Accident and Emergency department (as with the last time, very much emphasis on 'accident') of the Royal Berkshire Hospital.
My problem? Drunken misdemeanor involving a traffic cone and a statue of Queen Victoria? Punched in the face repeatedly after defending an old lady from two callous criminals? Falling off a bicycle and under a truck, leaving my lower body looking like a toothpaste tube nearing the end of its natural usage? Anything even remotely cool or exciting?
Nope. Bet that wasn't a surprise...
Being a spry, youthful 24-year-old, it was a dodgy back. Yeah, a dodgy back. A debilitating, horrendous, tear-inducing series of sharp, stabbing, excruciating jots of agony pouring out of my lower back up as far up as my shoulders and down as low as my knees leaving me on two occasions unable to move and, even now, stooped like a marginally prettier Hunchback of Notre Dame (but with a far worse singing voice apparently). All that and more. But still, a 24-year-old hobbling into A&E with a hot water bottle crammed into my lumbar region with a back problem.
Anyway, enough self-pity.
Outside of a Wetherspoons at 7.30 in the evening, the A&E department of any hospital at nighttime is perhaps the closest you can get to a Mad Hatter's tea party - sans tea and cake but with added vending machine Fanta - in terms of strange, concerning and daft characters.
In roughly two-and-a-half hours last night (big up the NHS for that short wait) I witnessed, to mention but three:
-a certainly drunk and potentially mentally troubled middle-aged gent who arrived in ambulance, was led out from the A&E ward to the waiting room, asked the receptionist on five separate occasions if he could go back on the ward to find his '£220 glasses', asked who had won the football 'Brazil or Argentina', fell asleep in the toilet for half an hour and then fell asleep again outside the toilet door for another 15 minutes.
-a chap behind a pair of dark glasses who had an 'accident' at 7pm the night before, proceeded to sit in the waiting room for 90 minutes making out with his very blonde other half and then deciding to head home- despite said other half referring to a 'fractured eye socket'- mentioning the word (presumably not entirely in jest) 'curfew' to the receptionist as he left
-a woman rant and rave about the competency of NHS staff to a poor Irish patient who looked as if all she wanted to do was be on her own but was far too polite to say so.
And then some people who were genuinely injured and in quite some pain.
Through all this, the lovely NHS staff took it all in their stride and got on with their jobs with smiles on their faces, the picture of politeness when by rights they should be legally (let alone ethically) allowed to administer a heavy dose of tranquilisers and be granted a short, sharp kick to the sensitive parts of said damn fools - me included for basically turning up to get some super-strong codeine when there were people who walked as if one of their legs had been replaced with a none-too-supple pool cue.
Personally, in my adult life, I've never had to rely on the NHS apart from an occasional GP visit, but happily paid my taxes knowing that one day I would need to utilise it. That night came last night.
For free at the point of use, I could call a hotline to get some information and help, speak to an on-call doctor (who basically told me to go to A&E and get off the phone, perhaps as the second half of the World Cup final was just starting), get checked out, reassured, get some painkillers and be granted the bliss of a relatively painless night's sleep, advice on how to get literally back on my feet and prevent it from happening again in the future from pleasant, knowledgeable staff, all within three hours or so.
What more could you possibly ask? Except maybe more comfortable chairs...