The wicket has got another terrorist

Setting aside scores of hot stories that came its way over the past fortnight, The Scoop presents to you this Tuesday the unending mystery of who exactly, if at all anyone, the temporarily disgraced cricket broadcaster Dean Jones called a terrorist in August.

It had been thus far widely accepted that 'Prof' Jones, in what close friends called a moment of "typical, no-nonsense, light-hearted, livin'-on-the-edge, fair-dinkum forthrightness", had referred to the bearded South African Muslim Hashim Amla as a terrorist during the second Test against Sri Lanka at Colombo. However, the Wednesday before last Jones issued the following clarification to the Sydney Morning Herald:

"In the long run, I wasn't even really referring to him. What was my comment? And who got the wicket? Amla got the catch, Nicky Boje was the bowler. Just listen to the comment. The terrorist got a wicket. Who got the wicket? I'll leave it up to you to work out who I was referring to."

Jones's latest comments have perpetrated a great chaos. Amla and his supporters remain convinced that the insult was directed at him, since Jones's use of the term "the long run" makes it amply evident that in the short run and medium run the person referred to was indeed Hashim Amla. Whereas the bald spinner Nicky Boje was simply stunned into an unbreakable silence when told he had been accused of being a terrorist.

But it was on World One-day XI captain Shaun Pollock that Jones's remarks had the most devastating effect. Research by cricket24x7 has proved beyond any doubt that it was, in fact, Pollock and not Boje who 'got the wicket' of Kumar Sangakkara on Day Four in the second innings of the momentous Test match following which Jones made his comment, a fact readily confirmed by this scorecard and this video clip. The Scoop understands that Pollock suffered a mental breakdown due to confusion over whether Jones was denying him a Test wicket, obliquely referring to him as a terrorist, or, worst of all, making a shamefully cheap jibe at his recent drop in pace by likening his bowling to Boje's slow left-armers.

Legal proceedings initiated by every South African cricketer is now on the cards as reports from within the team suggest that the players feel that if Jones was not sure which of Amla or Boje or Pollock he was calling a terrorist, it is just as likely that he could have been calling any of the other team members a terrorist. The Player's Association is also expected to bring legal action against the Sydney Morning Herald, "which endorsed Jones's lethal manipulation of previous insults to heap scorn on the mental injury suffered by Mr Amla, tarnish the reputation of Mr Boje, diminish the achievements and damage the confidence of Mr Pollock, and to cast in a suspicious light the entire republic of South Africa."

However, Jones has found great support from the wondrously morose and influential intellectual group, Cricket Is Not Life Because Life Is Nothing, who called the initial remark "by no means an insult or an abuse but a great literary metaphor for the age that will stand the test of time."

The group elaborated that Jones's words were tinged with genius, referring to it a "most resonant denouement of this meaningless age, at once a defeated exhalation and a rallying call; an existential gasp aimed at no one, meant for everyone; a piercing cry both a product of the times and external to it; a terrifying observation linking the vicissitudes of the absurd human activity of cricket and the brutality of the world in which it is located; an expression of despair so encompassing that it carries in its mighty, vaporous sweep Dubya Bush, Don Rumsfeld, Tony Blair, Osama Bin Laden, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Ahmed Chalabi, Kim Jong-il, Robert Mugabe, Christina Aguilera and Darrell Hair." The group urged followers to "say it, whisper it, whisper the words 'The terrorist has got another wicket' in a dark room from under a satin blindfold. Feel the chill. Weep."

It has, thus, not been all bad news for 'Prof', known globally for his mellifluous on-air delivery of his signature statement, 'aww, look, for me, as far as I'm concerned...' As he himself remarked to the SMH, "[the support] has been awesome, particularly from people in India and Pakistan and the subcontinent," further fuelling rumours of an impending reality television show where Jones is to trawl through the teeming millions in the dusty maidans of the subcontinent before finally calling one lucky youth a terrorist.

Rahul Bhattacharya, before he began urgently fabricating breaking news stories for The Scoop, wrote Pundits from Pakistan: On tour with India, 2003-04