Friends, Simon, Cricket Fans

Friends, Simon, Hounds

lend me your ears;

I came to bury Warner, not to praise him.

The evil that men do with sandpaper lives after them;

The good - like silently supporting kids with cancer - 

is oft interred with their bones;

So let it be with Warner. 

The noble Simon hath told you 

Warner was ambitious:

If it were so, it was a useful fault,

And usefully hath Warner answer’d it.

Here, under leave of Cricket Australia and the rest–

For Hockley is also an honourable man;

So are they all, all honourable men–

Come I to speak in Warner’s final flourish.

He was our friend, faithful and scored many centuries

But Simon 

says he was ambitious;

And Simon is an honourable man, 

although he himself bought few Test runs and wickets home?

Whose ransoms did the opener’s hundreds coffers fill: Cricket Australia.

Did this in Warner seem ambitious?

When the concourse have cried, Warner hath wept:

Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:

Yet Simon says he was ambitious;

And Simon is an honourable man.

You all did see that on the MCG

I thrice presented a hundreds crown,

Which he did thrice accept:

was this ambition?

Yet Simon says he was ambitious;

And, sure, he is an honourable man.

I speak not to disprove what Simon spoke,

But here I am to speak what I do know.

You all did love him once, not without cause:

What cause withholds you then, from cheer for him?

O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,

And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;

My heart is in the centre there with Warner,

And I must pause till it come back to me.