A World Cup Finals Guide for the English

Good morning ye of pale skin and yellow teeth.

At best, the above is a bad stereotype of the English. At worst, it is racist. Most likely, it is deadly accurate.

Anyhow, I am your friendly neighbourhood Dennis, here to guide you through what to expect during the World Cup Finals.

Firstly, it is important to note that your team is not present for these heroic battles. That’s because the English are not very good at things like cricket or winning.

Instead, Sky Sports is asking you to fork over nearly £50 pounds per month to watch the glorious attributes of countries where one normally holidays, like South Africa and Australia.

You also get bonus Nick Knight and Andrew Strauss. Excitement for the whole family if you are engineers, actuarists or grave diggers.

So what is an English cricket fan to do for the next two weeks?

In somewhat of a coup, I have managed to negotiate with myself to share some simple ideas that should make this difficult time less painful.

Take a bath

Now is a perfect time to wash off the remnants of the last 6 months of your travels. For those English unfamiliar with the concept of bathing, it involves water (usually warm), some soap-like apparatus, your naked body and the odd bit of scrubbing.

While at it, you could also take a metaphorical bath for your teeth. It’s called brushing.

Sook about Something

Many of you will already have this covered, but this is a guide for the masses. There are many topics at your disposal for the beginner sook.

Try your hand at the weather, the Euro, the Irish, Liverpool, Vladimir Putin or Kevin Pietersen. All of these targets are easy to blame for something. It is important that the world hears your concerns constantly and without joy, humour or any attempt at rectification.

Watch the World Cup Finals

This should only be attempted by hardened English cricket tragics or the mentally unstable.

For the uninitiated, the World Cup Finals involves teams that can play cricket going at each other with layers of skill, guile, desire and pride. These concepts will be new to the English cricket fan.

But by watching others display these attributes, it should open your mind to the idea of following other sports more suited to the native servants of Queen Elizabeth. Ones that don’t rely on it not raining perhaps?

Expect to see the colonies playing a game somewhat foreign to the English. These guys make 300 runs and bowl teams out. Incredible, but true.

They do it with players who don’t necessarily come from the right kind of family, those that whistle, some who haven’t written a book and clearly none who have ever been on reality television.

The winner of the World Cup wins a big trophy. Sri Lanka have won it before. So have Pakistan. Don’t forget India and Australia. There’s also the West Indies.

England haven’t won it yet.

That’s because it represents success in the field of cricket.Follow @denniscricket_