In the festive spirit
| 04:51 UK time, Thursday, 20 December 2007
One of the more bizarre moments on Test Match Special this series occurred during the final session on Wednesday when “The Analyst" Simon Hughes suddenly burst into song.
It was all TMS listener David Cook's fault.
During a quiet passage of play he e-mailed the programme with his suggestion for a Christmas carol based on the .
It was inspired by some of the carol singing we heard from the Barmy Army, who decided to make their own entertainment as .
In case you missed it this was what David Cook came up with set to the Harold Darke version of .
In the Bleak Midwinter, Sir Lanka made us moan
Prior dropped two catches, Vaughnie's face was stone
Monty's bowling far too fast, slow down, slow
In the Bleak Midwinter, not long ago"
I'm not certain that the singing of Simon Hughes quite did it justice - but it did lead to a stream of other ideas for cricket-based carols, which I will come back to later.
It is one of the more bizarre aspects of covering cricket tours with England that you tend to spend the Christmas period in hot countries.
There is something rather strange about hearing "Frosty the Snowman" belting out on a loudspeaker when it’s 90F outside. Here in Sri Lanka, with an 8% Christian population, Christmas is quite a big deal.
One of the most romantic images has been the lights glimmering in the trees beside the majestic Galle fort as the sun sets over the Indian Ocean.
Many of the hotels we have been staying in have had some fantastic decorations with some of the larger places in Colombo resembling Santa's grotto by 1 December.
If you turn on one of Sri Lanka's national television stations "Eye" at the moment, any gap in programming is filled with either a Daniel O'Donnell Christmas classic or Boney M's "Mary's Boy Child" and the Barmy Army have spent a fair part of this tour throwing an inflatable Santa Claus around the crowd.
Perhaps the England supporters could have a bash at singing some of your other Christmas cricketing tunes on day three.
Here are a couple of your other suggestions.
This one from Damian Finn to the tune of Jingle Bells.
Dashing through overs
Until the end of play
Off the field they’ll go
Laughing all the way
Bell’s on Priors case
For dropping balls in flight
What fun it is to laugh and sing
A sledging song tonight
°¿³ó³ó³ó³ó³ó³ó…
Cook and Bell, can you tell?
If we’ll win away
Not much fun it is to watch
The shambles of today
Oh, Harmy bowls a wayward spell
While Hoggy toils away
Oh, what fun it is to hide
At mid-off half the day
And it wasn't just carols you had a go at. This was Dave Burke's version of Cliff Richard's Christmas number one Mistletoe and Wine:
Bowling time...
Can’t bowl out their number nine
Harmy struggling to find his line
With Collingwood at first slip
And Ian Bell at three
There's just no chance
Of English Galle glee
Batting next...
Not up to the test
Murali spins out all our best
With Cooky gone quite cheaply
And KP back by tea
England nowhere near victory
Any more of your suggestions are still welcome - you can e-mail us tms@bbc.co.uk, text 84040 or contribute to this blog.
You will be relieved to know Simon Hughes will not be singing - you can have too much of a good thing.
But if you'd like to contact Simon about other cricketing issues then Friday's lunch interval is for you as we are inviting you to "Ask the Analyst". If you have queries, questions or points you'd like to put to Simon, get in contact with us over the next couple of days.
