Australia is kinda pretty, you know pic.twitter.com/dvWpp78aPI
— Alagappan Muthu (@AlMuthu) December 18, 2024
Tour Diary
The inexhaustible kindness of strangers in Pakistan
Over 72 hours in Islamabad and Rawalpindi, our correspondent sees little cricket but comes away with stories and enough love for a lifetime
Andrew Fidel Fernando
28-Feb-2025
"Sirri Lanka? Oh Sangakkara!"
I'm not being mistaken for Kumar. This is just how Pakistanis tend to greet Sri Lankans they have just met. It is, I learned on my first trip to Pakistan in 2019, a yearning to make a connection. It is both mini-flex and major compliment: "I know something about your country. And it's something very good."
The Sri Lankan passport is among the most pathetically powerless travel documents on the planet (on par with those of Ethiopia, Iran and Congo, if you're wondering). It is exceedingly rare that anyone has anything nice to say upon your arrival overseas, so this man already has my attention. Then, unprompted, he offers to share his Wi-Fi hotspot with me. This is as winning a one-two combination as a taxi driver has ever delivered to me at an airport. My three-year-old son in Colombo had sent me a burning question in a voice note just as I took off from Dubai. ("Hi, do cheetahs climb trees?") I need to make sure my response has actually gone through for him to see when he wakes up. My phone is not picking up Pakistani telecommunication signals.
Full postWhen seagulls lead you to an impromptu dance party
Our correspondent in Australia goes around Canberra and Adelaide and encounters scenic distractions
Alagappan Muthu
18-Dec-2024
I am very good at goofing up. My laziness has something to do with that. Probably. I woke up too late (ignore the obvious signs) to do the hike up Mount Ainslie in Canberra. It's 843m above sea level and the reward for huffing and puffing up there is a look at the capital city unfurled before you. It's not a bad view.
"More so if you'd earned it," said an elderly gentleman to whom I'd made the mistake of admitting I'd taken an Uber up. There are several trails up to Mount Ainslie. A popular one is stopping by the War Memorial and heading up. The Kokoda track, named after and filled with plaques detailing stories about a battle between Australian and Papua New Guinea people and Japanese soldiers. I might have sullied all this sombre history when I careened down the hill going "wheeeeee".
Going with the wind, leaving chic snobbery behind
Correspondent Vithushan Ehantharajah bonning vivant in Wellington and Hamilton, eating, running... and changing tyres
Vithushan Ehantharajah
14-Dec-2024
Another short Test match, another road trip.
Granted, this one was always going to take place after day five. But with England polishing off the second Test in Wellington - and the series - by about tea on day three, exploration was on the agenda (after finishing all my work, of course).
Wellington is a great city, probably my favourite over here. Picture a glorified version of the gentrified bits of east London (England); cool little bars, cafes and restaurants, tidy music scene, all without the chic snobbery but still a hell of a lot of wind. If they ever decide to relocate Lord's, my first choice should be to stick it on a roundabout in Dalston.
Full postBunny chow and beaches in Durban
Our correspondent takes in the sights and bites with a side of football while covering the first South Africa vs Sri Lanka Test
Andrew Fidel Fernando
05-Dec-2024
South Africa's status as the Rainbow Nation is down to the diversity of its people, but for the visitor, the place has a broad range of experiences it can push you through too.
The first place I'm staying in, the building has a colonial-gothic edge to it. Inside, the vibe is abandoned mental asylum, replete with the kind of elevator where you shut the door and a metal grille slides across, plus corridors out of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, and over-large bathrooms that look like they belong to a facility in which people have been lobotomised.
Three days later I move to the much fancier Palace, an establishment that offers spectacular views of Durban's South Beach and the much-used Rachel Finlayson pool. This sounds like a dream, but we are in South Africa, a place in which surprises are heaped on surprises. Though during the day South Beach is as conventionally Instagrammable as any city beach in the world, at night it transforms.
Full postEngland players take the Kiwis' e-scooters too far
Correspondent Vithushan Ehantharajah goes around a bit to conclude that the outdoor views in New Zealand are better than those in the London Underground
Vithushan Ehantharajah
03-Dec-2024
Cricketers (and cricket journalists) are just big kids. That much has been clear over the last week in New Zealand.
If you have been in Christchurch in and around the first Test, you will have been all too aware of an uptick in e-scooter use. Introduced in 2018, they hit top speeds of 27kph (16.7mph in "old money" as Beefy Botham used to say) have a maximum range of 48km (29.7 miles, move on!). Both have been tested robustly by the English.
All novices, of course. All now aware that you really can test a Kiwi's patience. To the bloke I almost took out leaving the gorgeous Riverside Market in the centre of town, I really am sorry. And I probably should have said that at the time rather than accidentally kick-flipping off the curb and accelerating away.
Full postUncertainty in the corridors of power
Our man in Canberra finds out that cricket and politics are meant to mix at times
Alagappan Muthu
30-Nov-2024
Apparently, when you get on a plane to Canberra, there is a one in ninety chance you'd be sitting next to a person who works in home affairs. (On Wednesday afternoon, there was also a one in sixteen chance you'd be sitting next to an India cricketer.)
Iákobos - who became Jack before I could butcher his name - told me all sorts of stories. Cleaning house playing poker in Singapore. Swimming in secluded little spots in Samoa. Stepping out of his hotel lobby and walking straight into a fire dancing routine. He seemed like the kind of guy who'd know what the hot spots in Canberra are and he told me I could spend a night at the zoo and wake up to a lion at my window. Gulp!
I chose a mellower outing. An early morning visit to the waterfront, where I got my fill of less scary wildlife.
Full postBlunder down under
Our correspondent finds himself on the verge of entering the sanctum sanctorum of the Indian squad in Australia
Alagappan Muthu
19-Nov-2024
The door in front of me read "India Changing Room" at the Optus Stadium in Perth. We - I was with a group of other journalists on tour - had a stadium escort leading us in. A peek into the inner-est of inner sanctums. Amazon Prime had to go and make a documentary to get this kind of access. We were about to have it because of a misunderstanding: the escort thought we were the Indian selectors that he had been asked to bring in.
We were about 10 steps away from… what? Virat Kohli coming out of the shower? Or maybe it'd be someone clicking on the back of Jasprit Bumrah's ear to bring his artificial intelligence online. Eight hours into landing in Australia, I was going to get the scoop of a lifetime.
Eight hours and a sheepish admission that we had no business going into team dressing rooms later, I have this blog entry, which is not the world's worst compromise. Right?
Full postIce-cold in Brontë country
Never mind Fred, Brian and Geoffrey, you can learn plenty about Yorkshire character from Emily, Charlotte and Anne
Andrew Fidel Fernando
25-May-2016
Long before Brian Close wore a ball on burly body, before Fred Trueman terrified opponents or Geoff Boycott ground them down, three Yorkshire natives had brought to life the northern character - the homes people dwelt in, their trials, their desires, their barely decipherable accents, their icy moors.
I am in Haworth, about 30 kilometres west of Leeds. Ahead of me a cobbled street climbs past a windswept old village, beyond a stone pub that serves beef nihari, and an apothecary that sells soy candles. Atop the hill, the tower of St Michael and All Angels rises from the church where Patrick Brontë, father of three beloved authors, was reverend for 41 years.
All of his family, save for Anne, are buried in the vault below the church's southeast corner. Emily died at age 30. A pregnant Charlotte at 38. Anne had gone to Scarborough in the hope the seaside could cure her tuberculosis but, of course, died, and then was buried on the coast. She was 29.
Full postLearning the sounds of Indian cricket in Mohali
ESPNcricinfo's South Africa correspondent gets caught up in the chanting of a rather sparsely populated PCA Stadium on her first time covering Test cricket in India
Firdose Moonda in Mohali
07-Nov-2015
In a country obsessed with cricket, Mohali is surprisingly mellow when the game comes to their city.
If you didn't know there was a Test match happening at the Punjab Cricket Association, you may not even notice the flag sellers and face painters milling around the ground in the mornings. They're not like other hawkers, they're more hummingbird: quick but delicate, not loud and forceful. They don't have all that many people to sell to anyway.
Test match crowds are generally smaller than limited-overs' masses in many parts of the world, India included, but Mohali's is particularly small. There were rumours that the barely 2,000 people who passed through the PCA Stadium gates on day one was a record for the opening day for a Test at this venue, but what they lacked in quantity, they made up for in quality.
Full postGrasping the depth of drop-in pitches
In Melbourne, Sidharth Monga tries to understand the science and logistics behind the idea of drop-in pitches, and that they are not as complicated as he expected
Sidharth Monga in Melbourne
24-Dec-2014
When I first heard of drop-in pitches, I thought it involved closing air traffic in the Richmond area of Melbourne to bring it in carried by some 30 aircrafts. I also imagined secret simulated environs, a bit of a green house if you will, where mad scientists bring in the best possible soils to create this mythical creature called the drop-in pitch. I must say I'm a little disappointed it's not all of that. And David Sandurski, head groundsman at MCG, makes it sound even simpler. Important people all do that. VVS Laxman never understood what the fuss around his flicks from well outside off was.
Drop-in pitches are hard work - don't get me wrong - but a simpler, less dramatic, process than I thought. Especially in Australian grounds - where footy and cricket seasons don't clash - the installation and removing has to be done only once each year. I've seen in Christchurch a pitch being brought in a day before a T20 match and then removed minutes after the conclusion. Here in Australia, at MCG for example, they remove the pitches - 10 of them - in the off season and leave them in an open ground near the G. They keep working on them during the off season - on the foot holes, tending to grass etc. - but they leave it open to the elements. The actual work on the pitches begins when they are installed in the ground.
The pitches are in a steel frame - a cake tin, if you will. They are 24 metres long, three metres wide and 200 millimetres deep. They weight around 30 ton. MCG brought the concept 14 years ago, and is using the same pitches still. That means they are durable. The work on them, the soil in them, the grass on top of them is pretty much similar to actual pitches.
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