You've got to laugh

The cafe. The usual threesome. It's May so I'm wrapped against the cold, the old pro is wearing two old sweaters and the kid is in a pair of ragged shorts and a tee shirt with the sleeves torn out.

"You never learned to tie a tie?" asks the veteran. The kid looks shy. "I'm off go-cartin'" he says. "If this game finishes with me I might follow Lewis Hamilton. He makes more than a poor cricketer with a rotten county."

The old 'un looks ready to faint. "Get dressed up and play a round of golf," he grumbles. "We all did that in my day - Dexter, Boycott, Underwood - the bloody lot. Tie and a nice pullover. It's all it takes and it makes you look like a cricketer. Look at you now - going rattin' or beggin' or off lookin' for drugs."

"Not on my wages," says the kid. "Now if I was in F1 . . ."

I try to change the subject. "Any news, anyone?" I ask.

"I hear that Ryan Sidebottom is fully fit and rarin' to go," says the old guy."No Freddie but I reckon Sidebottom might be the difference. A month of county stuff and he'll roll over those Aussies. I'm not sure they've picked the right team."

"That Tim Bresnan is all right," says the kid. "He says 'Go for it kid' when I get to fifty and start hitting at Kettering one time. But I wonder if Strauss fancies him. You know, being Yorkshire and all that."

"He knows his game," says the vet. "Bowls nicely in the one-days. But he needs a five-fer or something to make the rest of the world take notice."

The waitress appears. "Who's the tea latte?" she asks. The lad says he is and slips off to the toilet.

"What are you putting in that tea latte he keeps ordering?" I ask. "Slops," she says. "He knows nothing. See what happened that time when Bresnan says 'Go for it.'"

"Do tell," I say sensing gossip.

"This child hits the next ball into the pavilion and the ball after that straight up in the air. I hear Bresnan shout 'One for six - I'll settle for that every two balls' and the tea latte here doesn't know to this day it is a wind up."

"He's only a lad," I say.

"Stuart Broad is two years younger and you will never catch him out like that," says our waitress. "I like that attack even without Freddie: Anderson, Broad, I'm told Sidebottom is fit, and Bresnan. They'll know too much for the Aussies."

"Never,"says the kid, coming back to the table. "You know nothing about this game, do you!"

WE WERE leaving the cafe - me with my radio in my ear - when the news came through that Flintoff was out of the World Twenty-20. "That's not news," said the old man. "Just someone with nothing better to do making an official announcement."

"It's a worry," said the lad. "Serious."

"He'll be all right," I said

"No, not Freddie," he grumbled. "I mean that bloody waitress might be right. Funny girl, you know. It was her told me that a young athlete like me ought to drink tea latte. It's foul. Like slops."