Burkhas and beard cricket

I’m reliably informed that a new and peculiar pastime is sweeping across the UK.

It is based on the popular game of beard cricket, which has devotees across the country and which involves scoring runs (as in cricket) when you see a beard.

Generally beard cricket’s rules are something like this:

Heavy stubble: 1 run
Sideburns: 1-3 runs, depending on their expanse
Goatee: 1-3 runs (as above)
Full beard: 4 runs
Massive, santa beard: 6 runs

Moustache: a wicket falls.

The player continues their innings, amassing runs, until 10 wickets have fallen.

Burkha cricket operates under the same general principles.

Woman wearing a headscarf as fashion accessory: 1 run
Child wearing headscarf for religious purposes: 2 runs
Woman wearing headscarf for religious purposes: 4 runs
Woman wearing full, burkha-style, dress with just eyes showing: 6 runs

Wickets fall whenever the player sees a really short skirt of pair of short shorts being worn by a woman. There is an element of umpire judgement to this, but a shortish skirt isn’t good enough. A wicket requires the sort of thing that would send the Taliban into furious rage, not just leave them mildly annoyed.

The game is clearly very much dependent on the pitch conditions.

Driving through Whitechapel at the weekend I amassed a total of 535-5 declared.