The Buzz
Life's a beach for Australia's World Cup stars
Peter English
25-Feb-2013
Beach cricket in summer is as Australian as winning World Cups.
Matthew Hayden ensured the men’s team made it three in a row in 2007 and the women’s side will attempt back-to-back successes when the 2009 global tournament begins in New South Wales on Saturday.
Full postCricket was imported from Belgium?
Has the first potshot of the Ashes been fired
Nishi Narayanan
25-Feb-2013
Has the first potshot of the Ashes been fired? News just in: Cricket could have been imported in to England from northern Europe. This could be a bigger blow to England’s campaign than the chance of Andrew Flintoff missing the entire series. If a researcher from the Australian National University’s department of English and theatre is to be believed, a poem written in 1553, attributed to John Skelton, refers to Flemish weavers, who settled in southern and eastern England in the 14th century, as “kings of crekettes”.
Paul Campbell discovered the reference in the poem ‘The Image of Ipocrisie’ while searching for variations of the ways in which the word cricket was spelt back then. He was aided by German academic Dr Heiner Gillmeister, who first established that ‘cricket’ had its linguistic origins in Flemish. “It could be the earliest known reference to the game which we know as cricket,” Gillmeister was quoted as saying in the Sunday Telegraph. "Of course there is something quite ironic about a German and an Australian making discoveries about what is considered to be such an English game, and in reality that game being a foreign import."
The lines of the poem believed to lend solid proof to the import theory are:
"O lorde of Ipocrites/Nowe shut vpp your wickettes/And clape to your clickettes!/A! Farewell, kings of crekettes!"
Waxing lyrical over Sachin Tendulkar
Sachin Tendulkar will never be forgotten, not by a generation of Indians and certainly not by cricket
Will Luke
25-Feb-2013
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Sachin Tendulkar will never be forgotten, not by a generation of Indians and certainly not by cricket. But if anyone wants to find out just how diminutive the “little master” really is, they can come face to face with him at Madame Tussauds who are to spend £150,000 ($USD 215,000) on creating his waxwork.
Tendulkar, famously modest and private in spite of his achievements, might have discovered the perfect solution in combating his insatiably adoring fans. Tussauds’ waxworks are world renowned for their lifelike realism, and Tendulkar becomes the third cricketer after Brian Lara and Shane Warne to be converted into a wax statue.
“We are delighted to confirm our next sporting superstar is going to be Sachin Tendulkar; his achievements on the cricket pitch are phenomenal and he is one of the biggest names in international sport,” said the museum on Friday.
Full postSlumdog cricketer
In India, cricket and films are often the quickest way to arrive in life
Nishi Narayanan
25-Feb-2013
In India, cricket and films are often the quickest way to arrive in life. Having watched the Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire, where a poverty-stricken teenager makes it big, Allan Border thinks it’s possible for underprivileged kids to improve their lives through cricket. In Mumbai, coaching children rescued through an anti-child labour campaign, Border said he’d like to see a “Slumdog cricketer” come through the ranks.
“We understand the kids we work with in Mumbai have had a very tough upbringing,” Border told the Daily News & Analysis. “So we want to bring some fun back into their lives and have some fun doing it as well.
"When you come as a cricketer you stay in five-star hotels and get looked after incredibly well and play at great stadiums. On those trips you don't see the real India but through these programmes you get to see the real India or a different side of India. It's different from where we come from.”
As a result, Border said he had a "great appreciation for the story line”. Here’s hoping real life emulates the reel life.
Full postClub cricketer beats Oram in six-hitting contest
Less than 24 hours after it rained sixes during the first Twenty20 international in Christchurch, New Zealand unearthed their biggest hitter
George Binoy
25-Feb-2013
Less than 24 hours after it rained sixes during the first Twenty20 international in Christchurch, New Zealand unearthed their biggest hitter. And it wasn’t Brendon McCullum, Jacob Oram or even Ross Taylor. The batsman who smashed the ball 98.27 metres during the inaugural State Big Hits competition at the Basin Reserve in Wellington was a club cricketer Jimad Khan from the Onslow Cricket Club. He beat off some serious competition: Ian Butler was second with a 94.77m hit while Oram came third with 91.89m. Have New Zealand found their David Warner?
Full postWarne's Ashes worries
Nearly 16 years after his 'ball of the century' to Mike Gatting marked the start of his domination of England, Shane Warne unusually finds himself a little apprehensive going into an Ashes series.
Cricinfo
25-Feb-2013
Nearly 16 years after his 'ball of the century' to Mike Gatting marked the start of his domination of England, Shane Warne unusually finds himself a little apprehensive going into an Ashes series.
He may not be sending down those ripping legbreaks anymore, but he has signed up to commentate for Sky this summer. With Australia looking at their shakiest in a long time, Warne isn’t looking forward to calling the game with the likes of Ian Botham and Nasser Hussain if England start to dominate. “Copping an earful from 'Beefy' if we’re under the pump out in the middle . . . I reckon I’d be counting down every second to the end of my stint on air,” he wrote in his column in the Times. What England fans would have given to have had Warne jittery ahead of an Ashes campaign during his playing days.
Full postDravid's new price tag
Cricketers keep lending their names to products all the time but how many have works of art based on their nickname
Nishi Narayanan
25-Feb-2013
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Indian air farce
Mistaking the letter ‘H’ painted in the corner of a cricket field an unlucky pilot landed a helicopter smack in the middle of a domestic cricket game in India
Jamie Alter
25-Feb-2013
Mistaking the letter ‘H’ painted in the corner of a cricket field an unlucky pilot landed a helicopter smack in the middle of a domestic cricket game in India. The players, at first looking on in bewilderment as the chopper swooped down, quickly scurried for cover.
The match was a Ranji one-day between Punjab and Services at the Indira Stadium in Una, Himachal Pradesh. According to the Hindustan Times, a fire near the ground added to the uncertainty of the pilot, who mistook it for smoke signals, and also confused the letter ‘H’ for a landing pad. The ‘H’ stood, in reality, for the name of the home team, Himachal Pradesh.
The impulsive appearance of the helicopter, owned by a private airline, halted play for 26 minutes. "It landed suddenly. No one knew what was happening," the Punjab team manager told the paper. "There was chaos. Everyone ran for cover."
Full postBeing paid to watch the girls
As a captain Sourav Ganguly was never shy of expressing himself
Cricinfo
25-Feb-2013
As a captain Sourav Ganguly was never shy of expressing himself. Now he claims to be fighting for the rights of others to express themselves – namely a group of 24 young female cheerleaders. Ganguly is the judge of ‘Knights and Angels’, a reality show that will whittle down the competition to six lucky ladies who will cheer the Kolkata Knight Riders in the IPL.
Asked if cheerleaders distracted players, Ganguly rejected the claim adamantly. When one of the journalists checked if his new role wouldn’t embarrass his daughter back home in Kolkata, Ganguly hit back, asking, “What is so bad with dancing?” Even if it isn’t a career choice, Ganguly said the girls were just doing something they liked and he even compared them to gymnasts. “Would you call gymnastics a bad sport then?”
Ganguly said the girls need to be knowledgeable on cricket and understand the match situations better so that they can pump up the energy levels of the crowd and support the team. He did much of that during his captaincy years, though without having to shake a leg.
Full postBlunt Yorkshiremen
Yorkshire-Derbyshire might not rank as one of cricket’s greatest rivalries, but there is clearly someone at the Sheffield Star (motto “Serving South Yorkshire”) with a chip on their shoulder and no end of cross-border bitterness.
Martin Williamson
25-Feb-2013
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A somewhat innocuous story about Derbyshire hosting back-to-back Twenty20 matches was enlivened by the description of the hosts in the headline as “Derbyshite”. It is unclear whether this is editorial policy but clearly the chief sub shared his colleague's view.
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