Abi Collins’s Reviews > Penguins Stopped Play: Eleven Village Cricketers Take on the World > Status Update

‘First up is the Malaysian armed forces.’
‘Phew. Sounds tough. And after that?’
'On the Tuesday we've got Malaysia.'
'Malaysia what? Malaysia juniors? The Malaysian
Blind Cricket Association?’
'Er, no ... Malaysia'
'Malaysia?’
"Er, yeah. The country.'
‘Jesus Christ, Sean. We're a village team.'
‘They're not as strong on a Tuesday. And they've got a really nice pitch.’
Oh God.

‘We've heard the team has just been on two great overseas trips,’ they said.
‘Well... they started well enough,’ I ventured guardedly. ‘They sort of ... all went wrong though, in the second week.'
'Then we'll only go for a single week.'
Cunning.

‘Anuj, being a proper bowler (he'd once been the Delhi University equivalent of a blue, before unwisely eating several thousand doughnuts)’

‘As we reached the edge of the square, another pitch invader, a small elderly black man in a nautical-looking peaked cap and neat tie, launched himself wildly into my arms. As we whirled in giddy celebration, me holding him clear of the ground like a small boy, I caught my first glimpse of his face. It was Archbishop Desmond Tutu.’

‘We simply rode the wave of euphoria while it lasted, relishing the collision of a moment of enormous historical significance with a dirty-great party. I'd been there when the Brandenburg Gate had opened and the Berlin Wall was starting to look like a Swiss cheese, and the atmosphere had been nothing like this.’

‘I stress, at the time. Reading this (if you haven't already tossed the book aside in disbelief), you're probably feeling like a parent confronted by a small boy who's admitting that, yes, he knows he was told not to put the cat in the tumble-dryer, but he thought it could still do with fluffing up a bit.’

‘By prior arrangement, I and Andy, one of my teammates, had agreed to hire a venerable Ambassador saloon and head south to some of the country's less touristed areas. So, I'm ashamed to say, we simply slipped away and left the warring parties to it. It felt like catching the last helicopter off the US Embassy roof in Saigon, hours before the Vietcong arrived.’

What a similie lmao

'Please, he begged. 'I will lose my job if you do not go into the shop.’
'You accepted the deal. That's your problem. Four... three... two..’
When I reached 'one' he fired the ignition and the taxi began to move off. Immediately, the shop-owner hurtled frothing and outraged from his premises, yanked open the cab door, wrenched the driver out into the dust, and started beating him up.

“There he is one minute, Mr Reliable, putting the ball on the spot again and again with the accuracy of a Swiss watch; then, a moment later, for no apparent reason, he'll be spraying it around like the US Marines on a precision hostage-rescue mission.”

Lmao rip Hugh Dennis

“I didn't care. We'd beaten rotten old Highgate School. We'd killed our parents.”