A little walking humour here, for fans of cricket and fans of Geoffrey Boycott.
A story (perhaps apocryphal) in the Times last week said that Boycott was once talking to John Barclay, captain of Sussex, before the toss at a match in Scraborough. Boycott asked Barclay if he was a religious man, and Barclay said that he was and that he always prayed before he went out to bat. And Boycott said, ‘I’ve based my career on the first psalm.’ Barclay was evidently not religious enough to know the reference and had to look it up later. The psalm begins, ‘Blessed is the man who does not walk.’
To walk, in cricketing terms, in case you’re not a fan, is for a batter to give himself or herself out and walk off the field without waiting for the umpire to confirm the dismissal. I suspect this is getting rarer all the time, and the reason often given for not walking is that umpires often give you out when you’re not, so staying in when you know you’re out is a small act of compensation.
Anyway, the line as it appears in the King John Bible runs as follows, ‘Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.’
This is not my area of expertise, but a little research reveals thatJewish tradition has it that the Book of Psalms was composed by Adam, Melchizedek, Abraham, Moses, Heman, Jeduthun, Asaph, and the three sons of Korah.
One more and they’d have had a cricket team.
Below: the umpire raises his finger.
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