England v Australia

It seems that Australia's selectors enjoy the same inside joke as England's, to wit, choosing as many players as possible whose names are ordinary words (nouns, professions, verbs, adjectives etc). They've scored six each with their current squads (if you squint at it from a certain angle)

England
Jason Roy
Rory Burns
Joe Root
Joe Denly
Jos Buttler
Ben Stokes
Jonny Bairstow
Moeen Ali (Alley)
Chris Woakes
Stuart Broad
James Anderson

Australia
David Warner
Cameron Bancroft
Usman Khawaja
Steven Smith
Travis Head
Matthew Wade
Tim Paine (Pain)
Pat Cummins (Comings and goings)
James Pattinson
Nathan Lyon (Lion)
Peter Siddle

This is not normal!

I checked our telephone list at work for comparison, out of eighty people we score a mere dozen, which I think is a typical ratio.

England's women's football team has a lower ratio than the men's cricket team, with a respectable but unspectacular nine out of twenty-two. Let's see if they can improve that.

Hilarious shoe shop names

R. Soles

On the subject of names, the English cricket selectors have let themselves down a bit. There are only half a dozen ordinary words (verbs, nouns, adjectives etc) on the team: Bal(l)ance, Cook, Broad, Root, Stokes, Wood.

Two years ago they managed nine.

England test selectors back on top form

Here are the names of the current England eleven:

Cook
Lyth(e)
Balance
Bell
Root
Ali
Buttler
Stokes
Broad
Anderson
Wood

For good measure, the ECB chairman is called Graves.

As I pointed out five years ago, nearly all those names are everyday nouns, verbs, adjectives or job descriptions. Which is probably why they got rid of Pietersen. That's not just clearly a 'name' but a foreign one, and Anderson and Ali ought to go next.

(Footballers on the other hand tend to have names which are clearly just names, and more unusual or exotic names at that, even the English ones.)

Names

Something that has always struck me about cricket players is how many of them have surnames that are just ordinary verbs, nouns, adjectives or job descriptions. In the past we've had Old, Young, Boycott, Lever, Lamb, Knott, Fletcher, Smith, for example, although that looks as if I'm being selective.

But look at the current England squad of thirty players - it includes Cook, Bell, Key, Trot(t), Foster, Prior, Flint-off, (W)right, Broad, Onions, Side-bottom, Batty and Swan(n). Even 'Strauss' is a noun - it's German for a bouquet (of flowers), meaning nearly half of them fall into this category.