Foreign Correspondence #9: Stokes to play in USA, horses in hospitals, petro cricket, Infantino and more

PL dives into cricket's foreign pages

Logie nominee Stuart Broad has dressed up his David Warner cutout

Have you listened to the For the Love of Cricket podcast with Stokes yet? It’s not exactly packed with news or revelations, but it was, as I said earlier, interesting to hear where he was at.

They went too easy on him, ya reckon? Well, what are you going to do? If he’s your mate and he’s spooked and you need content for your podcast, of course you are going to have him on, and of course you are going to make it as smooth as possible.

Welcome to the safe room; you are among friends here, Benny boy.

With the commodification of access to players and the proliferation of podcasts, the old-fashioned press conference is fast becoming a thing of the past. Cricketers are brands looking for the best outlet, the best hearing. Why talk to a hostile pack of hacks when you can choose a sympathetic ear, or a lucrative offer?

Stokes’ silence since his retirement has driven people a little mad. It reminds me a bit of that old John Mulaney sketch from the first Trump presidency about the horse loose in the hospital …

When a horse is loose in a hospital, you got to stay updated. So all day long you walk around, "What'd the horse do?" The updates, they're not always bad. Sometimes they're just odd. It'll be like, "The horse used the elevator?" I didn't know he knew how to do that. The creepiest days are when you don't hear from the horse at all. You're down in the operating room like, "Hey, has anyone…Has anyone heard–" [imitates clopping hooves] Those are those quiet days when people are like, "It looks like the horse has finally calmed down." And then ten seconds later the horse is like, "I'm gonna run towards the baby incubators and smash 'em with my hooves. I've got nice hooves and a long tail, I'm a horse!" That's what I thought you'd say, you dumb fucking horse.

Stokes, unlike the loose horse, has rejected invitations to smash things up, saying all of that is for another time.