All you people are vampires
Vampires are So Hot Right Now. Wizards are yesterday's news.
Bookshop shelves groan under the weight of a million identical tomes with none-more-black covers, written by hormonal women and with embossed silver titles like Dead Vampire B*stard and Fang F*ck For That and such.
On the gogglebox, Being Human - a gritty, realistic tale of house-sharing vamps, werewolves and ghosts - was almost decent enough to make up for the unmitigated toss that makes up the rest of BBC3's output. Stateside, the highly-sexed, ultra-violent True Blood, starring Anna Paquin's teeth and breasts alongside some chap from Essex is a huge hit.
And on the silver screen, naan-faced simpleton Robert Pattinson is inexplicably one of Hollywood's hottest properties on the back of starring in some vampire version of Harry Potter or something.
Yes, vampires are in. And what kind of blog would this be if I couldn't draw some tenuous, self-indulgent link between the hugely popular bloodsuckers and cricket?
Probably a much, much better one, but I'm gonna do it anyway. Because vampires, you see, are the cricket administrators of the mythical creature world.
Don't believe me? Consider the evidence.
Most cricket administrators are many hundreds of years old.
Cricket administrators also have an instinctive aversion to natural light, hence the silly obsession with day-night Tests and floodlighting.
Like vampires, cricket administrators are selfish creatures who will bleed their victims dry without a pang of remorse or regret. For vampires, these victims are generally comely wenches with heaving bosoms. For cricket administrators, the victims could be anything or anyone from Test cricket itself to every single cricket fan on the planet.
Also, cricket administrators prefer to be among their own kind, only venturing out to feed. Lalit Modi would no sooner talk to an ordinary cricket fan than he would post a dignified, non self-congratulatory and non-spammy Tweet.
This is even more true in England, where Giles Clarke has never even seen an ordinary person close-up. He's seen them queue for the bar or the toilets at Lord's, or singing their ghastly songs and enjoying the cricket - which isn't really the idea, old boy, is it? - but that's about it. Giles Clarke believes David Gower to be A Bit Common.
And, finally, cricket administrators cannot be killed by conventional methods. They are immortal. Or at least immune to criticism and able to cling on desperately to their jobs and perks despite continued and utter incompetence.
Legend has it Lalit Modi can only be killed by a DLF-sponsored stump through the heart, delivered while somewhere in the distance Ravi Shastri excitedly bellows, "This is a Citi Moment of Slaying!"
It's admittedly not a perfect comparison. Vampires, for instance, are generally alluring and charming creatures, while every cricket administrator in history has had all the charm and sex appeal of a syphilitic warthog with bad breath.
But if Pattinson, with his sunken eyes, sneering little sphincter of a mouth, bicycle-seat-shaped face and deeply unfortunate hair can become a sex symbol, then why can't David Morgan?
