Watching Wimbledon, I was thinking about how much the appeal of tennis depends on the scoring system. You have to win games by a two-point margin and sets by a two-game margin, so at the key moments in the match, when it’s tightest, the drama is artificially enhanced: the balance can swing back and forth [...]
Posts tagged with ‘cricket’
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The sad decline of West Indies cricket
21 June 2007 – 3:20 pm
There was a good documentary on last week about the West Indies tour of England in 1976. The tour was notable in part because before it started the South-African born captain of England, Tony Greig, said in an interview
“These guys, if they get on top they are magnificent cricketers. But if they’re down, they grovel, [...]
Cognitive dissonance at the cricket
18 May 2007 – 10:40 pm
The first international cricket match of the season started on Thursday; the F.A. Cup final is tomorrow. Which must make it the official start of summer.
I was watching the cricket on TV today and of all people, there was Kirsten Dunst, at Lord’s, drinking a cup of tea and watching England’s middle order knocking the [...]
Soccer in the US
15 January 2007 – 12:03 am
All the coverage about the position of soccer in the US, and whether Beckham moving there will have any impact, had me thinking. If his new home ground is only half-full, he’ll still be playing in front of about 13,000 fans. It’s true, that’s not very many compared to the Bernabéu or Old Trafford, but [...]
Fave books of 2006
28 December 2006 – 6:09 pm
It’s end-of-year list time. These weren’t all first published this year, and I daresay I’ve forgotten some, but they are at least all books I’d recommend. In no particular order:
Rembrandt’s Eyes by Simon Schama.
I blogged about this before. Simon is a serious historian (rather than, say, a journalist who writes occasional books) who writes brilliantly [...]
Nearly time for the Ashes
23 November 2006 – 12:15 am
Just an hour until the start of the Ashes. Since the play is going to run from something like midnight to 7am, I’m not going to listen to it all, but I want to at least stay up to hear the start of play.
I can’t help feeling that England have less momentum going into this [...]
the clean, dry corpse of a parrot
20 September 2006 – 4:48 pm
From Robert Graves’ Goodbye to All That:
24 June, 1915, Versailles. This afternoon we had a cricket match, officers v. sergeants, in an enclosure between some houses out of observation from the enemy. Our front line is three-quarters of a mile away. I made top score, 24; the bat was a bit of a rafter, the [...]
Just not cricket
21 August 2006 – 12:26 am
What a complete farce. I just hope the England players and management have the sense to keep their heads down and stay out of the argument as much as possible. Let Pakistan and the ICC sort it out between themselves.
EDIT: Simon Barnes is good on this.
Summer days driftin’ away
14 August 2006 – 3:54 pm
Flicking channels the other day, I was horrified to come across ‘Live Champions League Football’ – a pre-qualifier between Arsenal and Zagreb. Much as I like football, the start of the season marks the start of winter. It always seems especially grim to see football before the end of the cricket season.
Despite the realities of the [...]
The ‘cricket test’
9 August 2006 – 9:25 am
Talking about cricket and politics yesterday, one thing I didn’t mention was Norman Tebbit’s famous ‘cricket test’. Tebbit is a Conservative politician, and in an interview in 1990, he said
A large proportion of Britain’s Asian population fail to pass the cricket test. Which side do they cheer for? It’s an interesting test. Are you [...]
Cricket and politics
8 August 2006 – 12:34 pm
In the comments to my last post about cricket, Scavella mentioned the role of cricket as a ‘vehicle of subversion of empire’. It was always inevitable that cricket would have a political dimension.
For those who aren’t fans, the list of nations that play cricket at the top level is: England, the West Indies*, South Africa, [...]
The beauty of cricket
7 August 2006 – 1:14 pm
The beauty of cricket, and the reason it can (sometimes) hold your attention for the whole five days of a test match, is that it’s well balanced. In almost any situation, the fall of a couple of quick wickets would significantly change the balance of the match. So even when there’s nothing very exciting happening [...]
Harmison’s dew-pearled
27 July 2006 – 2:20 pm
The lark’s on the wing,
The snail’s on the thorn,
Harmison is on fire,
Panesar is taking key wickets,
Pietersen is holding his catches,
God’s in his heaven –
All’s right with the world!
As I’m sure Browning meant to say.
Sport on YouTube
5 June 2006 – 3:27 pm
A flukey goal; a flukey hole in one; and a freakish cricket shot.
Not exactly a thrashing
15 May 2006 – 9:38 pm
It seems only fair to point out that when I said, about the cricket match between England and Sri Lanka, that Sri Lanka were “almost certainly going to get thrashed” – I was wrong. After following on, they made one of the great comebacks in the history of Test cricket to be 537-9 at the end [...]
The Plot Against America – Philip Roth
13 May 2006 – 11:49 am
The NY Times ’sent out a short letter to a couple of hundred prominent writers, critics, editors and other literary sages, asking them to please identify “the single best work of American fiction published in the last 25 years”‘. You can see the list of works that got more than one vote here. I’ve read [...]
England vs. India
23 March 2006 – 4:59 pm
I must admit, after the humiliation in Pakistan, I was starting to lose faith, but England’s performance to tie the series in India without Vaughan, Trescothick, Simon Jones or Ashley Giles, and for the last game without Harmison and Cook as well, was seriously impressive.
BTW, isn’t Marcus Trescothick just the perfect name for the hero [...]
England vs Pakistan
3 December 2005 – 9:10 am
I turned on the radio in time to hear the last ball before lunch, and was pleased to hear that England hadn’t lost a wicket and it was 201 for 2. Four overs later, it’s 220 for 6.
Bugger.
EDIT: 227 for 7, now. Somehow I think we’ve lost this series.
Strictly Come Dancing & Darren Gough
26 November 2005 – 11:25 pm
I’ve been watching Strictly Come Dancing which, for those who don’t know, is a BBC knockout pro-celebrity dancing competition. Last year it was won by a soap actress, the year before that by a newsreader. This year, for me the pleasure has been watching Darren Gough. Gough is a fast bowler (i.e. a cricket [...]
You can tell I have something I should be doing
2 November 2005 – 9:29 pm
A new logo for Will:
Just playing around.