Christopher Martin-Jenkins, writing in The Times about the resignation of captain Andrew Strauss &the continuing absence (maybe) of Kevin Pietersen, speculates about which batsmen from the ‘reserve crop’ may best be able to cope with Sri Lankan spin during this year’s winter tour. The piece ends, mystifyingly, as follows:
‘Miller has already come up with one coconut in Jonny Bairstow. He has more ECB corn to earn now.’
My comment is not about possible mixing of metaphors, but the use of the word ‘coconut’.
I assume that Martin-Jenkins had in mind the coconut shy at an old fashioned funfair, which offered as prizes the then much-valued nut in its dry, hairy form. But ,given that a professional footballer has recently been fined £45,000 for calling another footballer a ‘choc ice’, a description deemed to be racist, & given that ‘coconut’ is used, by some, in the same sense of ‘black on the outside, white on the inside’, & that we are all patting ourselves on the back for being so enlightenedly inclusive in the wake of the Olympics, the word might have been avoided or removed.
Not that any racist slur could be inferred in this case – Bairstow is white – but it could be taken as an unkind reference to his ginger hair.
Elder writers are allowed twelve mixed metaphors per thousand words no matter how immiscible or risible - Esquire July 1992
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