Eccentric Flamingoes

The Eccentric Flamingoes Cricket Club was formed in 1868 in Edinburgh. After successfully branching out into a number of other sports it was renamed the Eccentric Flamingoes Cricket Club and Worldwide Sporting Movement circa 1988. These days it is primarily cricket that they play. But not as you know it.

Like their avian counterparts, Flamingoes cricketers are naturally athletic. Any form of training or practice is frowned upon and condemned as un-Flamingo-like behaviour. Drinking, however, is heavily encouraged before, during and after matches. Like their avian counterparts, Flamingoes cricketers are notoriously fickle when it comes to choosing hostelries in which to partake of a beverage - any pub that puts on a good spread of sandwiches and/or pies will do, even if it's in Gifford.

The team colours are "red and black, curiously disposed".

The team play their home games at Inverleith Park in Edinburgh, where an array of natural (and unnatural) talent can be seen.

The current Captain is Bob Giulianotti, a Guinness drinker of international renown.

The collective noun for flamingoes is flamboyance. The Eccentric Flamingoes Flamboyance assembles formally every northern winter for an evening of drinking games and vaguely cricket-related speeches known as the Annual Dinner. It is an interesting study in collective amnesia as dozens of the greatest minds in Edinburgh (arguably) are unable to reconstruct events after 11pm between them.

Jimmy Adams once played a game for the Eccentric Flamingoes. It is believed that this was the catalyst for his development as an international cricketer of repute who would go on to captain the West Indies cricket team. It is believed that Adams is the only Flamingoes player to have played at international level, but it is perhaps more correct to assert that he is the only international player to have played at Flamingoes level.

The Club occasionally produces a humorous newsletter entitled "The Living Mallet" referring to the use of a Flamingo as a 'mallet' in a game of croquet described in "Alice in Wonderland".