Too much information, Mark. Or depending on which way you look at it, too little.
A childish practical joke went to a weird place thanks to Mark Waugh as the Aussie great chimed in with a deadpan one-liner in a below-the-belt discussion on Fox Cricket before a ball was bowled on day three of the second Test between Australia and India.
As commentator Mark Howard patrolled the turf at Perth’s Optus Stadium he grabbed Nathan Lyon for his take on the pitch and how the hosts planned to get Virat Kohli out. But the unsuspecting Aussie spinner became the victim of a calculated ambush from a teammate mid-interview.
Inspired by Channel 7’s pre-summer slogan “I’m coming”, Mitchell Starc made a beeline towards Lyon and dropped the spinner’s dacks before running from the scene of the crime like a thief in the night.
Fortunately for television viewers across the country, Lyon was wearing compression tights under his training shorts and they were spared the scary sight of seeing any loose tackle fly out.
Lyon kept his composure and carried on chatting to Howard, joking he’d got his sportswear sponsors some extra exposure.
Fox Cricket commentator Adam Gilchrist said what we were all thinking: “Thank God for sports skins under the warm-up shorts.”
But then Gilchrist’s former ODI opening partner got intimate, dragging ex-teammates Shane Warne and Michael Bevan into the gag.
“Lucky that wasn’t Bevo or Warney,” Waugh said as Gilchrist and fellow commentators Michael Hussey and Michael Vaughan burst into laughter.
“What have you got to say about them?” Gilchrist replied.
We were wondering the same thing.
Warne was famously caught with his Playboy jocks down during a tryst with two women in England earlier this century but we’re not sure what Waugh was trying to insinuate about the legendary spinner and one-day expert Bevan.
Maybe he was suggesting the two pack sizeable packages that would have been uncomfortably obvious had the TV audience been greeted with a front-on view of their nether regions.
Or maybe Waugh was saying those are the two teammates who would have been left more red-faced than most had their modesty been exposed by a scheming teammate and a loose drawstring on national television.
Or perhaps the former Australian selector was making comment on Warne and Bevan’s fashion choices. They may not have been fans of compression tights so if they were in Lyon’s place their thighs would have seen more sun than they should have.
Hopefully we’ll never know.
