Bailout

English masters of the dead bat

By Felix Salmon

John Gapper isn’t letting the World Cup get to him: he knows that when it comes to Tony Hayward’s Congressional testimony today, the sports metaphor of choice has to come from cricket rather than football. “Tony Hayward plays a dead bat to Congress” is his headline, and he’s right: Hayward isn’t interested in winning anything, here, he’s just interested in letting the hearing time out by being infuriatingly passive and unhelpful. He’s simply letting the attacks come, refusing to show any spark of humanity or willingness to engage.

Here, then, are two masters of the dead bat. One of them epitomizes England across the Caribbean and the world; the other one is Geoffrey Boycott. I wonder whether Hayward was a cricket fan as a lad.

(Photo by Larry Downing for Reuters)

Full post as published by Macroprudential on June 17, 2010 (boomark / email).