Albie The Villain Wears A Visor

You heard it here first. Albie wore a visor. Disgusting.

Idiot. And no, the guy next to him isn't from Doctor Who.

Alright, setting all the petty stuff aside (although who does willingly wear a visor?), French Sydneysider has sent me the link to interesting articles on Albie, written from his bat's POV. But the most interesting parts of it are where it talks about things we wouldn't already know. Little insider things which aren't all that significant but I'll be damned if I don't comment on it.

The first is on the case of the missing equipment which Morne dressed up as a baggage handler to remove stealthily:

Albie had warned me to stay prepared because he wanted to go straight into action for the Super Kings. I even heard him imploring the person at check-in that even if nothing else did, at least his cricket kit needed to be waiting for him at the other end. I even felt them slap a “priority” sticker onto us.

The plot thickens... weeks after it occurred. Apparently he has size 10 shoes. That's irrelevant, but okay.

More importantly, it seems perhaps Albie is battling a minor injury. How I'd love to put his below par performances down to this:

He’s also not one for excuses, but I can tell you exclusively that my partner isn’t quite firing on all cylinders fitness-wise – he strained some ankle ligaments against Bangalore Royal Challengers. He’s baffled as to exactly how it happened; he just told me he suddenly felt a burning sensation after bowling a ball. There’s no real recovery time during the IPL, so he’s biting the bullet and playing through it – luckily a scan showed it’s not too serious.

But is it serious enough to make him play worse than he could be? Hopefully. At least then there's hope he'll be back to full strength and pounding balls once more.

And then there's Albie not voting in South Africa's general elections. If the same thing happened to me, I'd be slapped with a fine. Compulsory voting, folks. We gotta do it.

He didn’t have his ID book with him on his IPL travels, come election day itself, which was a pity.So he promised me he wouldn’t complain about the way the country is governed for the next few years!

What's wrong? Did the communists come into power?

Yes, unfortunately. Say goodbye to cricket.

"Albie assures me he loves the responsibility and the pressure of trying to be the match-winner -- even if, when you don’t come off, there’s the danger you’ll be branded as the villain by some people."