Job No. 10 - National Coach

It was a tough decision today. I almost applied for the Regius Professorship of Moral and Pastoral Theology at Oxford University because it sounded like it would be such a fun-filled job but I eventually balked at their request for applicants to send in eleven copies of their application form. Eleven! I figured that either Oxford University has a really bad filing system (and eleven copies is the optimum number to ensure at least one reaches them) or they're extremely tight and won't even spring for a bit of photocopying. I know which one my money's on!

So, deciding that I would not be responsible for the destruction of a small Brazilian rainforest just to apply for a job, I instead continued yesterday's Irish theme. Today, I have spread my search into the sporting arena and applied for the position of National Coach for the Irish Cricket Union, as advertised on the ECB website.

Now, maybe I am misunderstanding the complexity of the sport, but I think that coaching cricket sounds like a pretty easy job. I remember playing it as a small child (admittedly, with a bat my father had carved out of an old plank and a tennis ball) and it seemed a fairly simply game to get the hang of...

In summary, if you have the bat then you need to hit the ball somewhere that the fielders can't catch it; if you are bowling (or throwing the ball) then you need to try and get the person with the bat to miss it (and thus hit the three little sticks behind him) and, if you are fielding, then you stand around for much of the day and hope the ball comes nowhere near you. It doesn't seem like there's actually that much to coach really! And, with my sporting background (well, I designed a baseball game once), I'm sure my application will go straight to the top of the pile...