Living in East Asia, I get an awful lot of IPL on television. And IPL highlights. And IPL re-runs. And the IPL Champions Trophy, or whatever it’s called. Leaving aside any snobbish and/or condescending opinions I might have about the quality of IPL cricket, I’d like to share my confusion at the IPL team names, which – the defunct Deccan Chargers aside – make less sense to me than those in the United States or Yorkshire (remember the Phoenix!). I see that they are supposed to be glitzy, but...
Victory in Sydney. Meanwhile in Mumbai …
It was all doom and gloom earlier in the week. The storm clouds over Hobart, plus a decidedly dicey forecast for Sydney, put England in a bind: there was a real danger we’d turn up at Brisbane without any meaningful match practice whatsoever. Undercooked? If Alastair Cook’s team were a steak, it would’ve been blue; a very rare occurrence for a team that’s normally well prepared. Food puns aside, it’s a bloody good thing the rain in Sydney wasn’t as bad as first feared. England’s match against...
How good was Ricky Ponting?
So there was no match winning triple century. There was no miracle. Ricky Ponting was caught Kallis bowled Peterson for just 8 in his last test innings – and Australia lost by 309 runs. The contrast to the start of Punter’s test career could not have been more stark – and not just because Mitchell Starc was opening the bowling for the baggy greens rather than Glenn McGrath, a bowler of undisputed class. The truth is that Australia are now an extremely average test team. When Ponting played his...
Alastair Cook for parliament
Anything you can do he can do better. He can do anything better than you. That’s our message to Sachin Tendulkar today. If you don’t have a penchant for bizarre stories – and you actually have a life – you might have missed the news that Tendulkar has become a member of parliament in India. The bloke is like a God over there, so why not? Imran Khan did it in Pakistan, so it’s not without precedent. However, Sachin’s position was appointed rather than elected. He’s joined India’s equivalent of...
Waiting for Sachin
Masterful, serene, stylish, and graceful – all these words have been used to describe Sachin Tendulkar’s batting over the years. However, listen carefully and you’ll hear a plethora of new words being used; not all of them very flattering. I don’t like going into specifics too much as we’re talking about the little master here – a man who is indisputably one of the best batsmen of all time – but phrases like ‘over the hill’ and ‘washed up’ have been bandied about in recent months. The...
Final pits the master against the maestro
There’s probably no such thing as a true neutral in cricket, as all fans have the teams they love to hate. But if real impartiality did exist, the matchup for Saturday’s World Cup final would be the dream final. It’s Sachin Tendulkar, the best batsman of the modern era, against Muttiah Muralitharan, the best spinner the subcontinent has ever produced. It’s enough to get even Duncan Fletcher excited. Whatever happens, the match will have a fairytale ending. But who do you want to win? As an...
