I don't like Cricket

Hanged, drawn and quartered

Below is an account of the ancient and cheery old British form of execution - for people who had been really, really bad - known as hanging, drawing and quartering:

The full sentence passed upon those convicted of High Treason up to 1870
was as follows : “That you be drawn on a hurdle to the place of execution where
you shall be hanged by the neck and being alive cut down, your privy members
shall be cut off and your bowels taken out and burned before you, your head
severed from your body and your body divided into four quarters to be disposed
of at the King’s pleasure.”

The hurdle was similar to a piece of fencing made from thin branches interwoven to form a panel to which the prisoner was tied to be dragged behind a horse to the place of execution. Once there, the prisoner(s) were hanged in the normal way (i.e. without a drop to ensure that the neck was not broken) but cut down whilst still conscious. The penis and testicles were cut off and the stomach was slit open. The intestines
and heart were removed and burned before them. The other organs were torn out
and finally the head was cut off and the body divided into four quarters. The
head and quarters were parboiled to prevent them rotting too quickly and then
displayed upon the city gates as a grim warning to all. At some point in this
agonising process, the prisoner inevitably died of strangulation and/or
haemorrhage and/or shock and damage to vital organs.

And this, it seems, in cricketing terms is pretty much what Australia have done to England this series. Brisbane was like getting dragged behind a horse, then that stopped and for four days in Adelaide we thought the worst was over. Until we got hanged on the fifth. We expired up there in Perth. But that wasn't the end of things. They chopped our manhood off in Melbourne, and decapitated us for good measure. Tomorrow they finally get around to burning our entrails and dividing us into four.

Struth!

posted by M. Reynard @ 9:26 am