Tony Blain: A two-fingered salute to cricket's closet parking wardens

I was disgusted at the International Cricket Council's petulant response to Leigh Hart's drinks break infraction, or as I'm remembering it "Gatorgate", writes Tony Blain.

Notwithstanding several difficult and extended public relations issues last century, Germans as a people have many admirable qualities.

Putting the limitations of their stodgy diet and an absence of any discernible sense of humour to one side, we should honour them for giving us the foundations of our English language.

Happily, over the centuries our language has jettisoned their constant and disturbing guttural enunciation. To say that spoken German is not easy on the ear is something of an understatement, unless you enjoy the sound of someone choking to death on a weta.

One quirky facility their language does have is the way in which it can describe a situation or emotion with one encompassing word.

One of my favourites is "Schnapsidee", which literally translated means "liquor idea". It can both describe a plan that's hatched while drunk or alternatively implies that said plan is such a lousy idea you'd presume whoever concocted it was hammered.

Which brings me directly to the Alternative Commentary Collective.

Or so I figured when I originally heard about the concept of half a dozen cricket tragics dressed like Hungarian possum trappers off to a job interview, stuffed into a rusting mobile breadbox, gypsying their way around the countryside seeking corkyball caperings to chat about.

At first glance it had all the flavourings of something brewed in the most obtuse Schnapsidee distillery ever.

But guess what? They're brilliant. And like many thousands of other cricket fans with a sense of fun, I love what they do.

And like all of what I'm sure is a massive and burgeoning fan base, I was disgusted at the International Cricket Council's petulant response to Leigh Hart's drinks break infraction, or as I'm remembering it "Gatorgate".

By withdrawing broadcast privileges for our cross-country cricket cavaliers, the ICC have revealed themselves as punitive sadists of the first order.

Our brave beige caravanners are now forced to relay their broadcast from a secret location somewhere near the ground, Pak'nSave car parks mostly, one imagines.

This is a cruel and unusually vindictive punishment that far exceeds any reasonable reprimand for a relatively insignificant misdemeanour.

Damningly, such was the swiftness and voracity of the ICC's response to a bit of benign tomfoolery that it confirms the ICC as crass advocates of the kind of limp-wristed dentistry you'd expect from someone whose main hobby as a child was communist puppetry and whose mother made them wear a bow tie until they were at intermediate.

Fittingly, the Germans have a word that is an apt descriptor for these ICC closet parking warden types, these joyless office jockeys devoid of personality who seem so set on crushing the cricketing joie de vivre of our happy campers.

The word is "Sitzpinkler". I'll letyou have the pleasure of googling it up.

So come on you bunch of overpaid Sitzpinklers. Get up, get a grip, get over yourselves and embrace the crazy.

Do you not realise the cricketing value of these engagingly off-kilter broadcasters, calling it as only they can, with love for the great and noble game in their heart and a canister of nitrous oxide lurking under the formica fold-out table.

They are a much needed breath of fresh air in a game that's always better with a breeze.

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