Football has long held a monopoly on overused hyperbole but with each passing day its position as the preeminent sport of trite under threat from the growing number of stock in trade platitudes permeating the world of cricket.

Whereas once a sheepskin coated football manager would project an aura of “over-the-moonedness”, or utter a half time reminder that the 90 minutes of play is in fact equally divided between two halves, we now have cricket captains, staunch in the face defeat proclaiming that “We can take a lot of positives from the game” and firmly refuting ”claims of a crisis within the camp”

Perhaps it’s a sign of bland media training by fee hungry PR execs, or perhaps it’s simply that in the face of a shock defeat, a captain relies on the relative safety net of positivity , but whatever its cause, the emergence of en masse cliché media twaddle is a sad indictment of cricket in the 21st century.

The forthcoming world cup will no doubt be saturated with “the lads expressing themselves” to the bitter disappointment of all those who would love to hear “we played like turkeys and deserved to lose”.

Bookmark to: