Drug Bat
3By Pie Chucker
The perils of international travel for travelling sports teams were illustrated recently in the Caribbean Premier League. Although the CPL is considered to be the domestic T20 cricket league of the West Indies, the various teams are of course all separate nation states and some of the travel arrangements can become convoluted.
So it was that the Guyana Amazon Warriors – featuring Kiwis Martin Guptill and Jimmy Neesham – found themselves flying from Kingston, Jamaica to the tiny island of St Kitt’s last week. These two locations are but 1500 kilometres apart, yet the journey by plane can be undertaken only via Miami, where US Customs officials deemed that one of the bats owned by Lendl Simmons needed to be tested to determine whether it contained drugs.
Simmons later received his bat back, but only after three large holes had been drilled in it, rendering it useless. One can only be thankful he wasn’t a violinist carrying a Stradivarius as a tool of his trade:
Imagine if your cricket gear went through America and they drilled holes in your bat to look for drugs… pic.twitter.com/oaxAFJAvSK
— Jimmy Neesham (@JimmyNeesh) August 8, 2014
Naturally the Twitter community is never slow to seize upon such a story and it wasn’t long before the hashtag #drugbat produced a raft of suggestions involving cricketer’s names. Here is a list of some of the best – see if you can spot the five which are actually real names:
Hashish Nehra
Wasim Smackram
Arul Supplier
Glenn McGrass
Rehab Riaz
Floyd Reifer
Malcolm Speed
Abdur Prozzaq
Darren Ganja
Hashim Amla
Hashwell Prince
Heroin Morgan
Alistair Coke
Keegan Meth
Ajunkie Rahane
Kemar Roach
Dion Hash
Pill Tufnell
Marijuana Ranatunga
Andrew Caddict
Herbal Gibbs
Cokane Williamson
Acid Rauf
LS Dhoni
Alex Inhales
Ed Joynt
Ravi Asprin
Druggie Bollinger
Henry Obonga
Malcolm Speed
Kemar Roach
Darren Ganja
Hashim Amla
Struggling for the 5th
Er, Darren Ganga.
The real cricket names are:
Malcolm Speed: former ICC CEO and the man who broke his own organisation’s rules by awarding Test status to the Australia v World XI match in 2005.
Kemar Roach: current West Indies fast bowler noted for the amount of bling he wears when playing.
Hashim Amla: recently-appointed Test captain of South Africa whose status as champion beard wearer in cricket is now under threat from Moeen Ali.
Floyd Reifer: West Indian batsman who in a Test career spanning 1997 to 2009 never managed to crack 30 and averaged 9.25.
Keegan Meth: mediocre Zimbabwean all-rounder with the impressive Test bowling average of 24.50, although he has only played two matches (which takes several years to achieve in Zimbabwe).