Geoffrey Boycott, the outspoken cricket personality, has made some shocking statements in his time, but none more so than this week.
As the England team commenced its 2,000th Test match, against India at Lord's, Boycott declared: "I like Katy Perry singing Firework."
While fan profiling remains an inexact science, one might not automatically consider a cantankerous, septuagenarian Yorkshireman as a typical consumer of California bubblegum pop.
Nor, indeed, would you see him as a typical consumer of fireworks: "All that brass going up in smoke, and for what? A quick whizz and a bang. No thank you very much."
But Boycott is, if nothing else, a pragmatist. I suspect he has studied the field and found Perry to be "the best of a bad bunch". I am now hoping that we can hear this analysis in full. It will probably go something like this:
Shakira: This lass wants to tell us the hips don't lie. She obviously does not know the first thing about batting stance. Do you think I would have scored 22 Test centuries without using my hip positioning to bamboozle the bowler? Not ruddy likely, dearie.
Taylor Swift: A cracking voice but she fell apart at the 2009 VMAs, when Kanye West stormed the stage and said Beyonce should have won. Can you imagine if I had done that in 1970, when Brian Close had a few choice words to say about me being made captain of Yorkshire? Mental toughness, you see.
Rihanna: No, love, I won't stand under your umbrella, if it's all the same with you. I'll go into the pavilion for tea, and I suggest you do the same. It's bloody pouring down, woman.
Adele: OK, flower, so you got your heart broken by some chap. Are you going to spend the rest of your life moping around, or do what I did when Yorkshire dropped me as captain, and the next season I averaged 61.7 at the crease? My advice: Try to be someone like me.
sports@thenational.ae
