France was my pick for a while – for all the non-soccer reasons like diversity and for soccer reasons like Zidane. Pdcs penned a wonderful ballad to Zizou, even, to hype the finals. And then. Watch the beginning closely and Materazzi‘s hand in particular. Well, I am staying with Zidane. And, if there is any [...]
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Tony Karon’s excellent post should get you started on your path to world cup madness. Next, bookmark Soccer Blog and NYT’s World Cup ’06 blog or Guardian’s World Cup blog [what? no Weekly Standard World Cup blog?] and, via moacir, World Cup Blog – one for every team! Lastly, youtube has all the highlights you [...]
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That Australia hit 434 in a ODI is amazing in itself. That South Africa successfully chased it, is mind-bongling. I can remember the first time 275 was hit in a ODI, thinking, wow, some team will crack 300! And Jayasuriya happened and ODI totals started to go up and up. Yet, the real high ones, [...]
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Seldom is it that my worlds collide so drastically. But, a simple one-line email frrom desiknitter pointing me towards the photo-essay of the Chosen One in Islamabad’s embassy row playing cricket with a bunch of kids while Inzammam and other looked on, did just that. No, it wasn’t just the sight of the Chosen One [...]
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“Cricket as Art”. An amazing Radio 3 presentation by Darkus Howe on CLR James and Cricket. Must listen. [via CT]. There is a gorgeous paragraph in Beyond the Boundary that I can merely echo: Our house was superbly situated, exactly behind the wicket. I doubt it for some years I knew what I was looking [...]
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Come, little Iqbal, I* will tell you about Pakistani bowlers. As a genetic anomaly, they emerged from the banks of that old river Ravi. Weaned on a diet of buffalo milk and hearty roots, they were found to have great upper body strength. This provided them with a natural advantage over the rest of the [...]
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There was England with six series wins in a row, including the little matter of the Ashes. There was Pakistan, with a new coach, without having won a test series in who knows how long. I certainly don’t. In 12.1 overs after lunch, eight English wickets fell and they lost the match by an innings [...]
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Guardian‘s Richard Williams is in Multan covering the first Eng-Pak test. Multan is a city of saints and sun. It may make a mystic out of anyone but cricket and sufism proved a deadly combo for Williams. He wants to write about the use of instant replay in adjudicating a run-out [caught off-base]. But in [...]
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I won’t say that this trumps the ’92 World Cup win by Pakistan….but it comes close. The Grand Slam and the el Duque in the 9th were the highlights for me. Seeing Bush Sr. cheering the ‘stros was also a moment. Of intense hilarity, of course. My condolences to my peep, Rajeev, who had the [...]
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Somebody call Shoeless Joe Jackson and tell him…we’re going to the World Series. Crede! SoouthSIDE!
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Recently, WaPo and NYT did pieces on the growing dominance of Christian prayer in baseball. Jesus is my designated hitter, indeed. I chuckled at the conflation of sports and religion in present day USA. Why can’t the Americans keep their religion off the pitch? The overt religiosity has always grated me in, what I perceive [...]
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Bloody good show, eh? England win back the Ashes from the Ozzies who have been hoarding them since 1987. The Ashes, lore has it, symbolized the cremation of the English cricket after their first defeat by Australia on home ground in 1882 [at the Oval]. The urn doesn’t really exchange hands – it just sits [...]
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As I mentioned, yesterday we went to hang out at Washington Park for some sporty fun. The park is an amazing urban space. Someone recently was grouching that Chicago parks have no character and I wish they had come with us to see how much character and life they do have – from people, natch. [...]
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A few days ago, I hit a perfect drive over mid-on. It was a gorgeous shot, really. The bat moving as an extension of myself. I saw the very moment that the ball hit the pitch and, seemingly, slowed down for me. I have hit that shot hundreds of time, in real matches even. During [...]
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Pakistanís Military Dictator-cum-President Parvez Musharraf is in India this weekend, in what is being hailed on both sides of the border (India, Pakistan and even in vilayat) as another successful round of cricket diplomacy (the first being Ziaís surprise trip to meet Rajiv Gandhi in Rajasthan in 1987). This cricket match, played in the Firuz [...]
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Played a few games of cricket yesterday. The venue was the entrance to the Reg. Ostensibly, we were all there for this. But, the sun was shining blue and I had a bat in my hand after a long, long time. The teams and the audience were a mixed bag of subalternists, cambridge wallas, and [...]
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We were seniors or juniors, I cannot remember. The sun had baked the earth of Lahore into clay even in early March. I was a new convert to cricket. Having been raised on the mean streets of Doha, the game was as foreign to me as Gulli-Danda [also a source of shame]. However, in any [...]
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No fun being a fan of Pakistani cricket lately. Of course, I have risen above such petty nationalisms a long time ago. I am now an objective connoisseur of the tao of cricket. But for those that care, Pakistan has taken a beating far surpassing their usual flameouts. Consider this: First Test – Australia wins [...]
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Over at tsk, is an ad hominem attack on Cricket. And I am asked to defend it. Just as tsk has to defend white man’s brutal colonialism that has led to the unfortunate situation where a poor sepoy has to defend the landed gentleman’s leisurely pursuit of sipping tea and knocking around a leather ball [...]
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Amazing. I don’t really have any passion for the Red Sox – although they appeal to my inner demons. I do have a real passion against the Yankess. They appeal to everything I hate about organized sports in the US. Last night, I went over to tsk‘s crib and we enjoyed a multi-screen bonanza of [...]
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