Following an incident involving captain Aaron Finch at a
Twenty20 game, Cricket Australia has decided to remove flamethrowers from the
boundary.
Flamethrowers: natural enemy of the boundary fielder
“It’s a safety issue,” said Mike McKenna, Cricket Australia’s
general manager and weaponsmith. “We want to give the fans the most exciting
experience possible, but we also want to manage the risk of the players vanishing
in a napalm inferno. It’s a judgement call in this case; Aaron Finch was at
least a metre away from the flamethrower when it was triggered, so he was
perfectly safe. Fairly safe. Well, we have his dental records, so it’s not like
we wouldn’t have known it was him.”
Asked about the wisdom of placing military-grade ordnance in
a space frequented by humans, mister McKenna was dismissive. “Look, the odds of
players actually being reduced to smoking pyjama-wearing corpses is minimal. We
want to give the fans the most exciting experience possible. And war is super
exciting! Seriously, did you see ‘Saving Private Ryan?’ We want to bring
something of the excitement of 1944 to the cricket-watching public.”
"The visiting team's captain has won the toss and elected to field."
Mister McKenna did however concede that the a review of such
features was warranted. “We’ll be looking closely all of our match-enhancing devices
as a result of this incident. At this stage we’ll definitely be keeping the
square leg minefields; they’re a real crowd-pleaser. Will he catch it? Will he
drop it? Will he set off a bouncing betty that’ll take out half the slip
cordon? Mortar fire during slow overs is staying too; we want to give bowlers
every reason to keep up the pace, and hey, what better incentive than red-hot
shrapnel from above, right!? The match committee is split fifty-fifty on some
of the minor enhancers; we’ll have to wait until the next meeting to learn the
fate of the spiked ball and laser bat. I'm confident though; we want to give the fans the most exciting experience possible.”
When asked if any features were definitely being removed,
mister McKenna conceded they were. “We’re definitely getting rid of the
pre-match cluster bombing runs on the outfield. Numbers through the
turnstiles were a bit off after those two solid hits on the members’ stand last
Sunday, so we’re listening to our customers and making the change. The timing wasn't
great anyway; with a fair chunk of the air force off livening up local sporting
events in Syria it was a bit tricky getting the planes. They navy offered to
step in and provide long-range gunfire from the Harbour, but there are safety
issues around that. Night matches would mean sailors working longer
shifts, and the last thing we want is a fatigue-related manual handling
incident.”
"Danger tape that missing barrier, able seaman Smith! Do you want to hurt someone?"
Faced with questions over why cricket was the only sport
that needed such gimmicks to draw crowds, Mister McKenna attempted to terminate
the interview, but launched into an exasperated rant when pressed. “We want to
give fans the most exciting experience possible,” he said. “Attention spans are
getting shorter and shorter; cricket’s had to go from week-long test matches in
the ‘70s to these two-hour circus acts with all the dignity and style of a monster
truck rally. It’s tough trying to get people to pay to see a world-class
sporting event in between tweeting a picture of their brunch and posting a
dozen #YOLO selfies from the night club toilets. We've already got people
leaving well before security starts popping beach balls and capsicum-spraying
the Mexican wavers! Getting punters through the gate meant either cutting the
game to two overs each and an all-in cage fight, or…yeah, flamethrowers. I
think we made the right call; sure, there might be a death or two, but that’s
what the twelfth man is for.”
Mister McKenna emphatically denied rumours that wild animals
would play a part in the upcoming One Day Internationals, adding that ‘some of
the leopards were quite tame.’
I have no idea what this is. I got it when I Googled "Leopard cricket." The Internet's a weird place
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