It did, however, contrive to make global headlines, earning the defender the nickname "Llama" in honour of the South American camelid's prodigious ability for hurling projectiles manufactured from saliva.
The adaptation also works in a redemptive romanticism, which sets it in the sub-tradition of British films that depict working-class grime but contrive happy endings.
MARK TWAIN regarded trial by jury as "the most ingenious and infallible agency for defeating justice that human wisdom could contrive".
There is, after all, every chance that China's heavy-handed officials, as intolerant of non-conformity now as under the Ming, will once more contrive to scuttle the ships of its visionaries.
From a distance, the Kirgiz events look genuinely revolutionary; up close, they are more ambiguous.Last week, motivated by two rounds of flawed parliamentary elections, and fears that Askar Akaev, in power since 1990, might remain so indefinitely or contrive a dynastic succession, protesters seized several towns in southern Kirgizstan.
In 1677 King Narai of Ayutthaya commissioned a famous French engineer to contrive a way to get ships over the land bridge, which though conspicuously narrow in parts has an elevation of 75m metres.That 17th-century Frenchman failed, but the dream stayed on for generations.
But the secret police and army, his family-connected network of businessmen and cronies, who control much of the economy and suborn enough politicians, and a slavishly deferential state-controlled press all contrive to keep him going.The secret police are crucial.
That England found themselves within minutes of potentially winning the game, despite the delaying tactics, was down to both captains making the creditable decision to contrive a contest on the final day through some aggressive batting and a generous declaration by Australia.
