Bread and board

Matthew Hayden, as regular readers of L&L may recall, is a bit of a dab hand with an egg whisk and a wok. In fact, he loves cookery almost as much as he likes accumulating Test hundreds and dreaming about wrenching out Harbhajn Singh's appendix the hard way. And there is no reason why Hayden would let his IPL obligations get in the way of expanding his culinary horizons, as this story reveals. Hayden was in Madras recently and popped into the Sheraton to cook lobster curry and a potato/onions combo that he calls The Masala.

The most interesting revelation, however, is hidden away at the bottom of the piece. Hayden, it is claimed, never goes on a tour without packing his breadmaker. While other cricketers spend their down-time on the PlayStation or with a pack of cards, Hayden is always working on a new recipe for a walnut and raisin loaf or perhaps trying to get the right consistency for his bagels.

In fact, it is probably fair to say that if you asked Hayden about the dough he could make in the IPL, he would assume that you were referring to the new ghee-based bread-making opportunities rather than the vast pay packets.

Comments

[Rusty]

Oscar,

I commend you. You have excelled yourself, though you could, of course, have gone on to explain that Roy should have used his loaf over Lee's Sally Lunn's, but he's a bit short in the bread basket at the best of times.

And maybe Bhargie was justified in acting the sourdough, since Sreesanth really is a bit of a Pain in the Levain. He was going to knead a bap sooner or later.

Sorry, couldn't help myself. I'll go now...

[Oscar the Grouch]

You know, this explains a lot. The poor man has often been accused of hard sledging, when in fact he was probably just calling his sledgee a 'silly baguette' or telling them to 'get foccacied'. Since Symonds is a great mate (they swam to safety from a swamped fishing boat once, I seem to remember, in the shark-infested waters of North Queensland), it is little wonder that Symonds rose to the defence of Lee when Harbhajan molested Lee's buns.

No doubt it will come as something of an eye-opener to certain of the frequent contributors to this blog to discover that a member of the Aussie team is so well bread, of course, but I suppose they will continue to suggest the team is just a pack of crusty loafers.

I'll stop now, I can hear the sound of distant knives being sharpnened; why is it that everybody wants to take the pun out of cricket?