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From Andrew Hughes, United Kingdom

Warning! The following piece of writing contains extended metaphorical sequences which some of the more literate readers may find distressing.

Andy Zaltzman’s Cricinfo articles never fail to arrive punctually at Comedy Central. But whilst his latest piece on the IPL was chugging along nicely, inducing more than its share of laughter from the Hughes sofa (or more accurately, the idle man reclining upon the Hughes sofa) it gradually became clear that I had boarded the wrong carriage. Having travelled on his train of thought for most of the journey, I was forced at the last minute to leap from the speeding vehicle of logic and roll down a grassy embankment of disillusionment.

Jumping from a metaphorical locomotive isn’t easy, but I had no option. So what was it that could have provoked me, all these days later, to create such a shaky analogy? It wasn’t that he expressed his lack of interest in who might win the IPL. I don’t care who wins it either. What led me to pull the emergency cord was the conclusion that he drew from that insouciance. Not giving a Mark Nicholas about who won the thing, he seemed to be saying that it would not therefore be permitted to cross the electronic threshold into Zaltzman Land.