Negative questions in positive times

	Sukhvir Singh has a bowl at his heroes © Siddhartha Vaidyanathan

India's fielding coach Robin Singh got angry while speaking to the press today. He isn't the first one to do so, neither will he be the last. The main reason why cricketers get put off is because there are so many negative questions asked in positive times. Robin's argument might run thus: we've thumped England in a Test after being given no chance and here I am answering questions about our shoddiness in the field. The press may respond: we completely understand the scale of the achievement, we've been celebrating your victory days on end, the win was great but now we need a new story. Quite a poser.

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Sukhvir Singh, a promising pace bowler who recently won the Cricket Star reality show in India, is currently in Leicester. He's part of the second XI team at the county and bowled to the Indians at the nets today. Such distances people travel to bowl at their heroes!

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Happened to pick up Richard Beard's How to beat the Australians, a hilarious travelogue cum sports biog on a journey through Australia. This one paragraph explains everything:

" … it's impossible for anyone interested in sport to ignore the way Australia's supremacy has crept well beyond the boundaries of cricket. The Australian Lleyton Hewitt is and will always be a Wimbledon champion, whereas Tim Henman will always have his family. Australia have triumphed in two Rugby World Cups, consecutive cricket World Cups [the book was written in 2006, so it missed their hat-trick of victories], and the Davis Cup. In 1990s, they were winners in twelve team and 21 individual sports, a period we in England spent waiting for the nation to be saved by Graeme Hick."

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