The Buzz
Beefy marches on for charity
Sahil Dutta
25-Feb-2013
At 53, and with an appetite for the good life, a 900-mile trek should be beyond Ian Botham. But instead he’s unveiled plans for a 13th charity walk to begin April next year.
'Beefy's Great Forget Me Not Walk' will mark the 25th anniversary of his first trek in aid of leukaemia research as he walks length of Britain from Scotland's John O'Groats to England's Land's End.
Full postUK charity bats for AIDS awareness
Andrew Strauss’s men aren’t the only England cricketers touring Africa this winter
Sahil Dutta
25-Feb-2013
Andrew Strauss’s men aren’t the only England cricketers touring Africa this winter. Cricket Without Boundaries (CWB), a UK charity that aims to increase awareness about HIV/AIDS through teaching cricket, is sending two teams of volunteers out to Rwanda and Kenya.
CWB started in 2005 and works in partnership with the Cricket Associations in each country, the relevant British High Commissions and the ICC to ensure sustained development of cricket. They return having established successful projects in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Botswana over the last three years.
They just completed a two-week project in Botswana, where volunteers overcame the challenges of lost baggage; rain on the ‘mini-world cup’ tournament they organised; and the odd blown generator to teach a staggering 1311 kids the basics of cricket and train 57 coaches who receive ICC certificates.
Full postGreek Adonises on crutches
"Get off the gym and bowl" – that’s the message former Australian players have for the country’s fast bowlers, who’ve probably given the team physio sleepless nights in India
Kanishkaa Balachandran
25-Feb-2013
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"Some of the best specimens running around in cricket have the bodies of a Greek Adonis, but we can't get them on the park to bowl,” says Rixon, who feels bowlers are spending too much time pumping iron instead of running in at the nets. Walters agreed with Rixon that the training methods need to be reworked. Lawson, also a former Pakistan coach, rubbished suggestions of workload saying, "Brett Lee has hardly played any cricket for two years, so you wouldn't think that was from overuse. When I was coach of Pakistan we looked at every injury systematically and how our fitness people were dealing with it."
Full postChinese choice: Mexican wave, Indian style
Akhila Ranganna
25-Feb-2013
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Among the packed crowd watching India play Australia at the PCA Stadium in Mohali on Monday was a group of highly excited young women getting their first taste of cricket in India. They were members of the Chinese national women’s cricket team, currently in India, training for the 2010 Asian Games where the sport will make its debut. Cricket is rarely shown on TV back in China but whatever they’d seen couldn’t have matched up to the noise and spectacle of a packed house. “We are used to watching rugby, badminton or gymnastics at home, but nothing is as big as cricket is here,” Zhou Haijie, an offpsinner, told The Indian Express. “Watching the game was very insightful,” Zhang Jing Jing said, “the Mexican waves in the stands were the most fun.” What hit them the most? The noise in the stadium after an Indian boundary. “It's so loud,” said offspinner Zhou Haijie. “I didn't know 35,000 people could make noise for a billion.”
Full postThe IPL at a theatre near you
Move over Bollywood, the IPL might soon be coming to a multiplex near you
George Binoy
25-Feb-2013
Move over Bollywood, the IPL might soon be coming to a multiplex near you. The Twenty20 league had invited tenders for its theatrical telecast rights for matches beginning next season until 2019. The reserve price for the bid has been set at US$ 2 million per year. Going to a theatre to watch a Twenty20 game is all very well but hearing the commentators yell “That’s a DLF maximum” and “Citi moment of success” in Dolby Digital sound could get trying very quickly.
Full postChirpy Chirpy Tweet Tweet
As sportsmen increasingly find Twitter an excellent way to land themselves in hot water, England’s Graeme Swann and Jimmy Anderson stayed clear of controversy during a Tweet-Off in London’s Covent Garden at the weekend
Martin Williamson
25-Feb-2013
As sportsmen increasingly find Twitter an excellent way to land themselves in hot water, England’s Graeme Swann and Jimmy Anderson stayed clear of controversy during a Tweet-Off in London’s Covent Garden at the weekend. The pair invited their followers to assemble in central London with the winner being the one with the biggest following.
Swann, with 22,855 followers against Anderson’s 22,950, lost by a short head.
For those interested in what these stars are up to ahead of the South Africa tour, Swann seems to be watching X Factor (“did anyone else notice Whitney 'crack pipe' Houston was high as a kite on x factor?”) while Anderson ... seems to be doing the same ("Didn't like Michael Buble cover of Cry Me A River on X Factor. Not as good as Justin Timberlake's version"). What thrilling lives they lead.
Despite this, to follow their every move, check out Swann here and Anderson here.
Full postIts just not <i>Kirikiti</i>
While the ICC works hard to spread the game to all regions of the world, one aspiring cricket body is having a bit of trouble recruiting players from within its natural auspices
Jamie Alter
25-Feb-2013
While the ICC works hard to spread the game to all regions of the world, one aspiring cricket body is having a bit of trouble recruiting players from within its natural auspices. Samoan cricket authorities are keen to recruit kirikiti - an indigenous Pacific Island form of cricket - players for their club infrastructure but have found it tough to coax them, because islanders are worried their traditional sport is endangered.
Seb Kohlhase, the Samoa Cricket president, is reportedly in talks with leading kirikiti players who fear the game, which was introduced by missionaries in the 19th century, will be forced into extinction. "They are so used to kirikiti, so they treated us with apprehension as if we would stop them," he told Radio Australia. "I don't want it to stop.
“But we are sending people tomorrow to Savai'i to hold clinics. They will hold development squads for women and Under-19 players, so that finally their cricket and their talent will be recognised, not just for Upolu (the most populated island) but for the whole country."
Kirikiti, unique to Samoa, includes more players and has different rules than cricket, but the two share distinct similarities: they consist of batting and fielding teams who play on a pitch, the bowling is done from either end by different bowlers, and batsmen look to score off deliveries all around the playing space.
Full postFoster's Passage to India
ESPNcricinfo staff
25-Feb-2013
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Just when the cricket world was debating the ODI’s waning popularity and wondering just who’d watch another seven-match series, the suits at Foster’s, the Australian brewers, have come up with an ace: Foster’s girls. Four of them, clad in fetching blue-and-yellow skirts and with strawberry blonde hair under matching hats, accompanied the drinks on to the field during the India v Australia game at Vadodara on Sunday, doubtless sending temperatures around the stadium soaring even higher. While cheerleaders aren’t new to limited-overs cricket – the recent Champions League had the omnipresent White Mischief team – this is perhaps the first time in an official international bilateral series that the drinks break has been so enlivened. The girls will at the other six games too, which should help ease doubts over thinning attendance and the future of the ODI.
Full postThe Kat in the chef's hat
Two victories in different continents on the same night is quite an effort
Brydon Coverdale
25-Feb-2013
Two victories in different continents on the same night is quite an effort. A few hours before Simon Katich’s New South Wales outplayed Victoria in Delhi, an episode of Celebrity MasterChef featuring Katich aired on Australian TV. And what’s more, Katich was triumphant over his competitors, comedian Wendy Harmer and fashion designer Alex Perry.
Katich first prepared his signature dish, crispy salmon with wilted spinach and mashed potato, and then wowed the judges when he was asked to prepare a restaurant-quality ten-layer crepe cake. His crepes got him over the line and the victory was all the more impressive given that Katich has the disadvantage of having no sense of smell.
"Everyone thinks that not having a sense of smell must hold me back when I'm cooking, and especially when I'm tasting food, but I feel like my palette is no different,” he said. “When I describe a dish it's no different to anyone else. The only problem I have is I don't know when something is burning.”
Katich was taught to cook by his mother and whenever he’s at home he does most of the cooking for himself and his wife Georgie. He now finds himself in the semi-finals of the cooking show, along with Olympic swimmer Eamon Sullivan and INXS band member Kirk Pengilly.
Full postTeenage thunder
Though not quite in the league of the legendary Tendulkar-Kambli school partnership, two junior cricketers from Delhi made sure they grabbed headlines when they added 349 for the second wicket in an Under-16 match
Jamie Alter
25-Feb-2013
Though not quite in the league of the legendary Tendulkar-Kambli school partnership, two junior cricketers from Delhi made sure they grabbed headlines when they added 349 for the second wicket in an Under-16 match. The LB Shastri club batsmen Nitish Rana and Siddharth Sehwag hit 185 and 134 respectively in the Delhi & District Cricket Association tournament on Monday.
Rana’s innings consumed 226 balls and included 24 fours, while Sehwag faced 215 balls and hit 23 fours to beat Malik Sports on the basis of a first-innings lead. Rana, 15, was joined at the crease by Sehwag, 14, on the second ball of their side’s innings and forged a mammoth partnership.
"We eat from the same plate … we understand each other enough," Sehwag, the Delhi Under-16 captain, told the Hindustan Times. “We like to bat together.”
Their stand was broken by an act of sportsmanship, something rarely seen by international players. Rana looked set for a double century but walked on 195, even after the umpire ruled him not out. "I knew I was out and I did not want to score a double-century with the feeling that I was out," he said.
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