ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
One of the greatest players of cricket's modern era has pulled up stump this week, ending a career that has long been a source of sadness and frustration to many around the nation.
England captain Ben Stokes is the greatest Test all-rounder since Jaques Kallis, who is widely regarded as one of the finest players to ever play the game, and he's chosen to leave the game halfway through a Test match and series against New Zealand.
He is only the second player, behind Kallis, to score more than 7500 runs and take 250 wickets.
As news filtered out around the cricketing world, no nation celebrated harder tha this one.
Fans took to the streets in downtown Betoota this morning shortly after 7am, as push notifications from various news outlets alerted them to stark new reality that the English cricket team is now facing.
Bars opened early, roads were blocked off. A group of strong young men rolled a Suzuki Swift over and set it alight. The pureness of ecstasy was in the extreme. Beer and body fluids ran down the gutters with a velocity unseen since the Betoota Dolphins clinched their first premiership since the Joh years. The police were brought in the disperse the crowd shortly before 9am. They shot one reveller who refused to transfer his glass schooner of Carlton Draught into a plastic one as he walked out of the Gelded Seahorse Hotel. He is expected to survive but with much less dignity and aura as he previously had when he woke up this morning. Police managed to gain control of the mass public display of disobedience a short time ago. One policeman was injured after a member of the public lashed them about the head and face with a gym-sock full of golf balls.
Local fans of the Three Lions were urged by the mob to join in, telling them it was simply a celebration of a great career. And that the two best all-rounders the game have seen are southern hemisphere boys and don't fucken forget it!
More to come.
