The Second Michael Vaughan 2005-2007

It is with great sadness that we at As A Dodo must report the passing - during our brief absence celebrating the impending publication of As A Dodo: The Obituaries You'd Like To See (soon to be available at all good bookshops, many bad bookshops, assorted remainder bookshops and many charity bric-a-brac stalls) - of The Second Michael Vaughan, the comically inept and permanently injured would-be cricketer whose farcical antics kept a nation entertained and appalled in equal measure during the enforced absence of Michael Vaughan from the England cricket scene.

The Second Michael Vaughan was born in 2005, when a desperate attempt to save the England cricket team from an inevitable descent into disaster following a severe knee injury to Michael Vaughan, resulted in a - frankly doomed - attempt to clone the inspirational England captain from a dodgy patellar fragment. That the attempt had proved less than successful was apparent from the moment that the newborn Second Michael Vaughan was tapped on the buttock by the midwife and immediately collapsed to the ground in agony whilst crying out "That's no way to treat The Second Michael Vaughan. England need The Second Michael Vaughan".

Moving with their usual swiftness, officials at the England and Wales Cricket Board ("the ECB") erected a cage in which to keep the misbegotten product of their tinkering in the gene pool. That this was to no avail was in part the product of the skill of their quarry but mainly down to the fact that the 17-month consultation process necessary before the ECB does anything meant the cage was only completed many months after The Second Michael Vaughan had fled and, in any event, lacked a lock following representations from the several county chairmen about locks being contrary to the spirit of the game.

Thus, while the real Michael Vaughan stoically set to work in the gym, undergoing hour after punishing hour of rehabilitation in an attempt to recover from an injury that could have destroyed the career of a lesser man, the Second Michael Vaughan was left to roam the outfields of cricketdom, amazing crowds with his extraordinary exploding knee and ability to refer to himself in the first, second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth persons during a single response in an interview.

Excluded from the England set-up following an ill-advised attempt to get a giggle out of England cricket coach Duncan "Less prone to laughter than a Yorkshire undertaker on Thorazine" Fletcher, The Second Michael Vaughan was left to loudly bemoan "The Second Michael Vaughan's" lot while the team went from disaster to disaster. With England suffering a drubbing in the Ashes and humiliation during the world cup, The Second Michael Vaughan's behaviour became increasingly erratic. Some even claim that the disgruntled clone was seen in the Caribbean hiring scuba-gear and an Acme junior torpedo-kit just before the tragic pedalo accident which saw Andrew Flintoff's national hero status going down with all hands.

By the summer of 2007, however, The Second Michael Vaughan was beginning to show signs of frailty. Even as the England team proved themselves unable even to beat a West Indies Test team with plenty of spirit but less cricketing talent than Sir Viv Richards's left testicle, the clone's protestations that England "need The Second Michael Vaughan" were sounding increasingly hollow. While The Second Michael Vaughan had been making a complete tit of itself with its pompous pronouncements, the genuine article had finally returned to fitness. Tired of being made a laughing stock by his William Wilson-esque doppelganger, on Friday 25th May 2007 Michael Vaughan set about mercilessly pounding his idiotic stand-in with a series of glorious and graceful cover drives, pulls, and laser-guided clips through the onside. Though police were called to the scene, all present were willing to attest that the returned England captain had merely acted in self-defence.

The Second Michael Vaughan will be buried at the Mike Gatting-Shakoor Rana Church of the Cricketing Embarrassment. The service will be conducted by an old buffer in a blazer making dodgy jokes about "getting caught by the googlies", "standing at leg slip, legs wide apart waiting for a tickle" and "the batsman's Holding the bowler's Willey".