The Buzz
Heat treatment
Club cricketers the world over – especially those in England – are used to playing in the cold and the wet, but the current heatwave blasting parts of Australia has proved too much for even the hardy locals.
Martin Williamson
25-Feb-2013
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Club cricketers the world over – especially those in England – are used to playing in the cold and the wet, but the current heatwave blasting parts of Australia has proved too much for even the hardy locals.
A day after the organisers defending men’s champion Novak Djokovic had to pull out of the Australian Open in Melbourne with heat cramps, South Australia took the decision to scrap most of the state’s men’s and women’s grade cricket because of the abnormal conditions.
With temperatures well into the 40s – so hot that insects were dropping dead in their thousands at the Melbourne tennis – the news might be seen as a sign that Australians are going as soft as their national team’s bowling attack.
But Cricket Victoria showed that the old hard approach remains. A senior CV official, sitting in his air conditioned office no doubt, dismissively brushed aside a request from South Australia that the start time of the Sheffield Shield game at the MCG be brought forward to 9am to try to avoid the worst of the day’s heat. More drinks, less whinging was the gist of his reply as he took another ice-cold can from his desk-side fridge.
Full postMulti-cultural South Africa floors Tutu
Archbishop Desmond Tutu can’t stop gushing about South Africa’s stunning Test and ODI victories in Australia, saying the multi-cultural team has set a shining example by performing as a unit.
Kanishkaa Balachandran
25-Feb-2013
Archbishop Desmond Tutu can’t stop gushing about South Africa’s stunning Test and ODI victories in Australia, saying the multi-cultural team has set a shining example by performing as a unit.
Tutu said two pictures from the tour had particularly impressed him. "The first, following the captain's brave effort in the third Test at Sydney, captured Graeme Smith and Makhaya Ntini together, arm in arm, brothers in arms,” he said. "The second, following the one-day series-clinching victory this week, featured batting heroes Hashim Amla and AB de Villiers in a similar embrace."
The most remarkable aspect, however, was the fact that Tutu was able to see any photos at all from a historic series, after Cricket Australia's decision to deny accreditation to most of the agencies that supply pictures to the world's media.
Full postDoug Bowler and Neil who?
An email plopped into our inboxes this afternoon from the Indian Premier League, excitedly announcing no less than 114 players for the forthcoming auction
Will Luke
25-Feb-2013
An email plopped into our inboxes this afternoon from the Indian Premier League, excitedly announcing no less than 114 players for the forthcoming auction. But which names have been included?
Well, alongside the expected ones – Michael Clarke, Andrew Flintoff, JP Duminy and the like – were the lesser-known Kevin Peterson, that nobody from Australia, Doug Bowler, and the South African Neil McKanzee.
England’s lot included the ageless Dominic Cork and, err, Tyron Henderson. Woops.
Full postWarne's musical pitches up new audience
Shane Warne has helped revive the art of leg spin, sell millions of copies of News of the World and make ‘blond and overweight’ a combination irresistible to women
Jamie Alter
25-Feb-2013
Shane Warne has helped revive the art of leg spin, sell millions of copies of News of the World and make ‘blond and overweight’ a combination irresistible to women. Now he is luring men – the beer-drinking, sports-loving kind – to Melbourne theatres through the smash hit musical based on his life.
Eddie Perfect, the actor playing Warne in ‘Shane Warne – The Musical’, says Warne is someone who has fascinated Australia, and come to typify the best and worst of the country. "We're getting guys dragging their girlfriends to the theatre, which is the opposite of how it usually works," Perfect told AFP. "You see young blokes making their way to their seats carrying armfuls of beers for their mates, just like they do at the cricket.”
Perfect said the new faces in the audience had upset some in the traditional group but it was for the best. “It's like Reformation theatre when people were buying oranges to throw at the actors - why shouldn't they have fun?"
There have been suggestions of taking the production to London and even India and Perfect is keen to go international. He said not much would have to be changed in the current musical to suit the English audience since Warne was as popular in England as he was in Australia. But the chance to play in India excited him. "It'd be a blast. We could turn every number into a huge Bollywood production."
Full postDravid loves to tell the tale
With the tour to Pakistan called off, most of the Indian team had a month’s break from international cricket and they used the precious time to pursue some personal interests
Jamie Alter
25-Feb-2013
With the tour to Pakistan called off, most of the Indian team had a month’s break from international cricket and they used the precious time to pursue some personal interests. Sachin Tendulkar looked for real estate in the north Indian hill station of Mussoorie and Mahendra Singh Dhoni trained with the National Security Guards.
Always the intellectual, Rahul Dravid decided to lend his voice to a talking book on cricket for children, Cricketmatics, which will be brought out by the Karadi Tales company, a Chennai-based group which publishes books on Indian heritage. Dravid said he was keen to involve himself in such a project because his three-year-old son, Samit, wanted his parents to read stories to him. And so, as quick as he is to hop across and keep the ball away from his off stump, loving papa opted to offer junior a fun way of learning. The son is father to the man.
It remains to be seen if Dravid explains how to tuck bat behind pad to avoid the lbw.
Full postFast-tracked Australians
South Africa's series-clinching win over Australia on January 26 - Australia Day - was special for the country's cricket fans, for it followed the historic Test win on what has been an epic tour Down Under
Jamie Alter
25-Feb-2013
South Africa's series-clinching win over Australia on January 26 - Australia Day - was special for the country's cricket fans, for it followed the historic Test win on what has been an epic tour Down Under. But for one family, being at the Adelaide Oval and witnessing South Africa beat Australia was bittersweet, for they had only a few hours before switched over to the other side.
The Fasts, formerly of Johannesburg, chose the national holiday to become Australians, a few of among about 13,000 people from 120 countries to do likewise. They had only moved to Australia five years ago, bowled over by the openness and sociability of Adelaide.
Before the match, the Fasts walked out in front of a full house and spoke a few words. "We fell so in love with the country and decided it would be a good move for us," Cathryn Fast told The Australian."We had to think long-term for our three beautiful children, what would be best for our family. We thought about it long and hard and decided it would be wonderful to be part of the Australian life here."
Her husband, Ralph, said the family hadn't expected to become citizens at the venue, and certainly not when South Africa played Australia.
Full postAin't no mountain high enough
Martin Williamson
25-Feb-2013
Two teams from England are planning to play the world’s highest game of Twenty20 on a plateau halfway up Mount Everest. Expedition leader Richard Kirtley dreamed up the idea two years ago during a trip to the region. He saw the Gorak Shep plateau, which is 5165 metres above sea level, and instantly thought it resembled The Oval.
“I wasn't confident that I'd find enough people nuts enough to try it, but in the end I got over 100 applications,” he said. “I'm proud of the tradition of British eccentricity. The most important thing for me was that it wasn't just going to be a bunch of blokes going up there for a bit of a knock-around.”
Full postThe drugs don't work for tourism
The internet can do wonders in helping to promote a place to the world, but it also has a down side – just ask Hastings, the south coast town in England.
Andrew McGlashan
25-Feb-2013
The internet can do wonders in helping to promote a place to the world, but it also has a down side – just ask Hastings, the south coast town in England.
A cricket team cancelled their tour after finding a guide online that pinpointed Hastings local drug hotspots under a map entitled: ‘Map to show hotspots for discarded injecting paraphenlia' (sic).
Fleckney Village Cricket Club, in Leicestershire, instead opted for a five-day tour of the West Country after studying the map, but local officials said it didn’t paint a true picture.
Hastings MP Michael Foster told the Argus: "I will contact the cricket club and invite them to Hastings and I'm sure they will be impressed when they get here."
Full postDhoni masters the tongues
ESPNcricinfo staff
25-Feb-2013
Mahendra Singh Dhoni is surely not of the ilk to be flustered easily, nor the kind to shy away from a challenge, and the India captain seems to have found an ingenious way to handle a few language issues.
"In countries like Australia or England, people speak English in such an accent that it is very hard to understand. So, at parties when locals come to us and start talking, even if we are not getting anything, we say yeah,” Dhoni joked during a show on NDTV. "Or if I have a drink in hand, I excuse myself by saying, 'I'll just get a drink' but never show up in front of that person again.”
Full postTwo hat-tricks and a tie
Two hat-tricks are taken by team-mates in the same game and the match ends in a tie
Judhajit
25-Feb-2013
Two hat-tricks are taken by team-mates in the same game and the match ends in a tie. Sounds like a quirky cricket tale but that was exactly the scenario when South Launceston's Under-16 side played the North-East Bushrangers at Scottsdale recently. Shaun Field, 15, and Ben Jackson, 16, opened the bowling for their club, and each took their first-ever hat-tricks in the game, as well as their maiden five-fors.
While both boys were elated by their hat-tricks, South Launceston U-16 coach Peter Linger, who has played cricket for 35, said he had never seen anything like it. South Launceston were set a target of 169, and the match went down to the wire with two runs required off the last ball. However, they could only manage a single. The stuff of dreams. Well sort of.
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