Saturday 9 May 2009

Drilling Holes in Bats

GoodCricketWicket is onto a story that is possibly the funniest I've heard in a while.

A Lancashire captain bought 8 new bats while on a club cricket tour of Pakistan, and decided to have them shipped back to England. Sounds fine, except for the fact that an overzealous customs feared there might have been bombs inside those bats so decided the only thing to do was investigate by drilling holes into the bats.

It wasn't just the suspicious looking bats which may or may not have declared a jihad on the Queen while sitting in storage, but also some very terrifying pads sporting pictures of Osama bin Laden glued onto them. Off went customs, drilling holes into the pads too.

All the equipment was brand new.

"I bought the cricket bats in Lahore and each one cost me 8,000 rupees (£67). The total came to £475. The bats and pads arrived on April 15 and I was shocked to find they had holes drilled into the front of them."

Even better is the blaming that's going on:

"I rang Pakistan and they said UK authorities had made the holes. When I rang the UK office they said Pakistan had done it."

Evil bastards.

Reportedly a very hush-hush deal was made with the ECB, who expressed an interest in buying the bats and sending them off to Middlesex as part of a "surprise gift package for Phillip Hughes". Around the same time the transaction was made, a whole lot of wood putty went missing from a nearby hardware store.

Interesting. I wonder why.

Oops.

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