It’s Sharjah, not Haar jaa
It’s disconcerting how many times Sharjah appears on this list:
Records | One-Day Internationals | Most runs on a single ground
Thankfully, that era is over.
Deep Backward Point
Blog against the machine.
Aside | February 26, 2011
February 20, 2011
Patel bowls to Patel
Imran Tahir by megara_rp via Flickr
This is perhaps an obvious point, but I’d like to belabor it here:
- The captain of Canada is named Ashish (and they have Rizwan, Nitish, Parth and yes, a Patel)
- Kenya has a Patel
- England, of course, has Ravi and Ajmal
- South Africa has Hashim and Imran
- West Indies has Ravi, Ramnaresh and Shivnarine
This is diaspora.
Cricket’s growth around the world in the past, such as it has been, was largely due to the Raj. The future may be in the hands of the diaspora.
February 18, 2011
My Predictions for the World Cup
Ok– so this is part whimsy, part wishful thinking and part serendipity.
Group A Ranking:
- Australia
- Sri Lanka
- Pakistan
- New Zealand
Group B Ranking:
- South Africa
- India
- England
- West Indies (though I’d just as easily say Bangladesh, but I think Ireland may beat Bangladesh which will negate another Bangladesh upset.)
QUARTER FINALS
- Australia v West Indies
- Sri Lanka v England
- Pakistan v India
- New Zealand v South Africa
SEMI FINALS
- Australia v India
- Sri Lanka v South Africa
FINALS
India
v
Sri Lanka
WINNER
India
At least, that’s what I came up with while playing Cricinfo’s Predict the Winner. And even I don’t agree with it.
And it’s in complete contradiction with what I thought was the best path for India to get to the final.
February 18, 2011
Los Angeles Gangs Take Up Cricket
The Sun has a story so ridiculous it sounds like it came out of The Onion. A British film producer and a charity worker set up the team, teaching cricket to gang members in Los Angeles as a force of good (its “civilising quality”). Every sentence in the article is jaw-dropping. You can’t make this stuff up:
Two of the original Compton Cricket Club – also known as The Homies and The Popz – have died. But that is a decent survival rate for around here.
And, since the stereotype would not be complete without hip-hop–
Isaac and Theo play in the team – and also make up a hip-hop duo who rap about the sport. The lyrics include:
The respect of cricket etiquette is how we’re hanging.
Stick it out for the long haul, Make a phone call To the President It’s evident I represent my hood with this cricket ball.
Oh and there’s more– tea at Buckingham Palace, a dude who can’t tour with the team because that would constitute a parole violation, trash cans for stumps.
(via Ducking Beamers)
February 17, 2011
The Associates Portfolio
On the subject of the Associate nations, Ducking Beamers makes a good point:
[O]f all the Associates, I think Ireland and Afghanistan have the most potential. I say this not to disparage the likes of Canada or Kenya or the Netherlands. No, this is simple geography: the Irish are a good team in part due to the proximity to England, and Afghanistan’s squad was born in Pakistan. These teams make sense and we’d be stupid to let them slip back into obscurity.
Now if only someone could come up with a plan to save New Zealand
Like I said, I wouldn’t mind trading NZ and WI for a couple of scrappy associates.
February 17, 2011
The Best of the Rest, and Other Lessons From the Warm-Up Games
Everyone is curious about those other cricket-playing countries once every four years. Look how cute the Bermuda team looks in their bright blues. Is Obuya a common name in Kenya? Has Mugabe ruined Zimbabwe yet? They play cricket in Canada? And so forth.
Here’s a handy guide to the best of the rest, based on what happened at the warm-up games this week:
The Best of the Rest: The World Cup Warm-Up Games
Everything clear now?
You will notice, I left Bangladesh out. I think they are a cut above the rest, but they regularly prove me wrong.
Here are the lessons we gained from the warm-up matches this week. You know, the warm-up matches that everyone assures us mean nothing. Except when they win.
- Canada beat Netherlands. Afghanistan beat Canada. Kenya beat Afghanistan. Netherlands beat Kenya. Ireland beat Zimbabwe, and Zimbabwe beat Ireland. The associates are a most exciting bunch, but only when they play among themselves.
- Ireland came close to chasing 300 against New Zealand. Canada came close to beating England. Upsets in the World Cup seem inevitable.
- India Proved they could win a match with the bat as well as the ball.
- New Zealand’s bowlers enter the World Cup with even less confidence than they had before. Giving up 360 to India is one thing, but 279 to Ireland is criminal. At this point, I wouldn’t mind trading New Zealand and West Indies for a couple of promising associate countries on the international calendar.
- Australia is in trouble. Plain and simple. They couldn’t take a wicket against South Africa in 46 overs. They couldn’t get past 217 in two attempts. Of course, I’ve said it before, I wouldn’t bet against them. The format of the World Cup allows them to be mediocre for the first four weeks, and surge towards the end. And the Australians can surge.
February 15, 2011
The 2nd-Most Awesome Thing Ever Said About Javed Miandad
Miandad and More
There is a story, perhaps apocryphal, about Sunil Gavaskar’s wife. She was once asked who her favorite batsman was. Here’s what she said:
If I wanted someone to bat for my pleasure, I would ask my husband. If I needed someone to bat for my life, I would ask Javed Miandad.
This captures much of what I feel about many things. For example, the iPhone (or the Mac) for pleasure over Android (or Linux) for my life.
∞
This is only the second-most awesome thing anyone has ever said about Javed Miandad. The most awesome was Rashid Latif in Outlook magazine. Latif claimed that, sure, Miandad fixed matches. But only to win them.
Which is patently ridiculous, but awesome all the same. Fixing a match to win it is worse than fixing to lose, because fixing to win means that all the other times you weren’t being paid, you weren’t putting in one hundred percent.
∞
Remember Outlook’s series of match-fixing exposés? They were Tehelka before Tehelka. They were News of the World before News of the World.
Manoj Prabhakar, for his part, claimed that Kapil Dev fixed a match. This brought about the second-most famous incident of cricket related crying, when Kapil cried for Karan Thapar on BBC.
∞
The most famous incident of cricket related crying was Vinod Kambli at Eden Gardens at the World Cup semi-finals.
The rest of the country would have been crying with him, if they had looked up from the burning effigies in their backyard.
February 11, 2011
The Birth of One Day Cricket
Image via Wikipedia
Andy Bull remembers the day One Day cricket was born:
When the match was called off on the third day, Bradman himself climbed up the steps to the press box and announced that a seventh Test had been bolted on to the back-end of the England tour. And, as a short-term sop to the sports-starved Melbourne public, a Gillette Cup style ‘limited-overs Test’ would be played between the two teams at the MCG on what would have been the fifth day.
February 10, 2011
How to Read the Redacted ICC Pakistan Spot-Fixing Report
The ICC, apparently, has no computer skills. To read the “redacted” parts of the ICC spot-fixing report:
- Download the PDF from ICC
- Upload it to your Google Docs account
- Click “View as HTML”
That’s all. Oh, and the form to download the PDF doesn’t care what information you fill in. And then it gives you a direct link to the PDF. If I was younger and more adventurous, I would put the link to the PDF here.
February 9, 2011
Promise Me This Will Never Happen Again
Dear God of Cricket,
Promise me this will never happen again.
Thanks,
DM
Deep Backward Point 