You have to wonder at the particular brand of knuckle-headedness that governs cycling. This week, at the Giro d’Italia, there was a positive story to be had. Not the failed drug test kind of positive but a solid gold good news story. Worthy of a Chariots of Fire soundtrack. That good. The scene opens on…
Category: Cricket
I’m an English cricketer. Get me out of here!
Scene: The middle of nowhere. PETER MOORES sits on a log in front of a campfire, frowning, a spreadsheet on his lap. Ten men emerge from the bushes in dirty cricket whites. They reach the campfire and slump to the ground. One starts burning a cricket bat to keep them all warm. JAMES ANDERSON: What…
How do we build on the legacy of these two men?
They were born almost 60 years apart, yet died within months of each other, both at the hands of the game they loved, one felled by a ball, the other by the long-term effects of not wearing a hat. Through that game, they are both forever linked to the number 63, one by virtue of…
Cometh the hour…
When Michael Clarke announced Sunday’s World Cup final would be his last one-day international, one New Zealand cricket writer accused him of hijacking the occasion. His name’s Jonathan Millmow. Yep, I’d never heard of him either. Millmow played for New Zealand for a nanosecond 25 years ago. He never made the Test team but took…
An NZ quinella? No way, bro.
A couple of weeks ago, when I was taking a little too much pleasure in England’s departure from the Cricket World Cup, a Pommy colleague desperate to shut me up said something that stopped me mid-sledge. “You do realise,” he said, “that the Kiwis could end up winning both World Cups.” Oh crap, I thought….
Winning ugly
There were times last night when I wasn’t sure if I was watching a game of cricket or the Jim Rose Circus. Some of the contortions going on in the middle of the Adelaide Oval were reminiscent of the guy who can thread his body through a tennis racquet. Like this — can I even…
Is it wrong to be enjoying this so much?
You know that scene in Love, Actually when Laura Linney’s character gets the tall, dark, handsome colleague back to her place and ducks into an alcove to jump excitedly on the spot? That was me last night when England got bundled out of the Cricket World Cup. I’m not Robinson Crusoe on this one. Bagging…
When sport is more than a game
Over the past few months, cricket fans — myself included — have fixated on Kevin Pietersen’s exclusion from England’s World Cup team, Michael Clarke’s battle to be match ready and whether West Indies cricket would implode before a ball was bowled. On Thursday, these petty musings were put into perspective when Afghanistan, playing in only…
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