It was jiggery-pokery, trickery jokery,
how did he open me up?
Robbery, muggery, Aussie skulduggery,
out for a buggering duck.
MIKE GATTING’S LAMENT, as imagined by Neil Hannon and Thomas Walsh for their concept album The Duckworth-Lewis Method, is surely the finest song ever written about an international cricketer, with all respect to “Fuckin’ ’Ell, It’s Fred Titmus”, the 1985 song by Half Man, Half Biscuit about bumping into the Middlesex and England off spinner while shopping for Lenor.
It pips “Victory Calypso”, Egbert Moore’s elegy to “cricket, lovely cricket”, written to celebrate joined him in the pavilion. Cruelly dismissed by the eternal umpire.