Swann and Cook lack the manly bite

Graeme Swann, the England cricketer, looks relaxed after he took a dip off the deck of Azzam, the Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing yacht, on Saturday.

I do not wish to sneer at those two English cricketers who jumped off Azzam into the Arabian Gulf last Saturday except to say that they are gutless little yellow-bellied little showboating little clowns.

They may have turned up wearing shorts and resembling refugees from some annual picnic of some association of losers, but I do not look down on them or anything.

Now, when Zinedine Zidane and I jumped - and I do like to use the words "Zinedine and I" in casual conversation from time to time - we wore the big-boy wet suit.

We looked like men rather than a couple of weenies, which is not a reference to anyone in particular, especially not Graeme Swann and Alastair Cook.

In fact, Zinedine and I wore the same suit, at different times, and once we got all suited up, Zinedine in the Mediterranean and myself in the Atlantic off Cape Town, well, you would not want to mess with us.

In our cold-water courage you barely could discern us from, say, Wade "Bubs" Morgan, the mighty bowman who went into the Mediterranean during Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing's terrible first night off the Spanish coast.

(Actually, I mistakenly tried to pull that rubber neck thingy over my head - "We were concerned for you," said the watch leader Rob Greenhalgh - but let's not burrow into technicalities here.)

In an unusual ritual, Volvo Ocean Race teams often sail off toward new ocean legs with a temporary guest or guests.

Those guests, or those dweebs depending on the occasion, ride near the stern through the inshore manoeuvres, then plunge into the water once the yacht heads out to sea, for rapid collection by a trailing RIB (rigid inflatable boat).

Thus far in the 2011/12 race, the fleet has departed into the Mediterranean, the Atlantic off South Africa and the Arabian Gulf off Abu Dhabi.

Note those waters, and you will note that you never hear too much talk about sharks around the Mediterranean, unless you count the capitalists along the shores.

And in the Arabian Gulf, as reported last autumn in various media outlets including The National, there is an ecological mission afoot to tag the occasional sharks, amid uncertainty as to their numbers and worries that their scarcity could disrupt the ecosystem.

UAE hotel lobbies never, ever feature brochures offering "shark tours". Cape Town hotel lobbies ... well, it is clearly illegal to start up a hotel in Cape Town unless you put shark tour brochures in the lobby.

Among the sharks available for modelling for these brochures, the ones they choose always appear to have had an uncommonly bad day. The brochure boasts of lowering tourists in cages into the deep for a face-to-face, while always promising shark sightings.

Tourists see these beasts face-to-face and do what people have done since the beginning of time: brag about it on Facebook. Clearly, for such a cold-water, shark-laden region, Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing could not settle for, say, a duo of ninnies who would jump into lily-livered, warm-water shark-less-ness.

No, they had to choose a rugged, tough-hided, he-man who could stare down apex predators if necessary, as occurred upon my entry when two sharks approached me but retreated.

(Actually, Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing chose me on a lark about an hour before departure, and the story about the sharks is untrue, but I do not want to dwell on these things just now.)

Now, some observers have swooned because Cook went off with a cannonball and Swann exited by spinning and saluting, and blah blah blah blah blah. But you can never trust people's taste, otherwise I Gotta Feeling would not have sold almost 13 million units worldwide.

"An elegant twirl," wrote Kate Laven in the UK's Telegraph, but I have met Kate Laven and can attest to her kindness. I am certain she intended only to comfort a countryman given his demonstrable meekness.

Zinedine and I went off, of course, with utmost nautical suavity.

Gracefully he departed backward, probably to avoid butting the water, and I stepped off in a swaggering elegance, as if blithely exiting the bottom of an escalator.

(Actually, I was frightened to within a centimetre of my sanity, but that is not the point here.)

Come to think of it, I had two burdens (shark numbers and extremely cold water) while Zinedine had only one (merely cold water), but I do not mean to put down my friend Zinedine, whom I have never met and never even come close to meeting.

I also do not mean to put down Swann and Cook, even though they are such weaklings.