Tag Archives: #cricket

Sport, So Pure

14 Saturday Dec 2019

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If one watches sports, one notices athletes. Some have beautiful toned sculpted bodies, both men and women. To see them move represents complete grace and beauty. Watching cricket is to observe these beautiful, extraordinary people.

Stand out in the heat 100+° F. Then at a moment’s notice, make that a millisecond, off a fielder runs at a break neck sprint to stop a ball before it reaches the boundary rope and a four run boundary. The bowler makes a delivery after another such sprint.

The batsman will position himself (herself) at the crease and with their wrists, arms, and upper body, bat that pitch where the fielders aren’t.

The game looks so simple. But we know better. So deuce difficult, made to look simple, by these athletic prodigies.

The Sun Is Shining Somewhere

12 Thursday Dec 2019

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I awoke after about four hours sleep around 4:00 AM. I thought I would fall back asleep, but no.

I thought I would see if #98 would be passing through Ashland any time soon, but no. The Silver Meteor (NB#98) is running late. Going downstairs, I grind some coffee beans, brew a pot.

Turning on Willow, I see where New Zealand and Australia are playing a test match in Perth. It is day time in Perth, late afternoon, and hot 40°C (104°F), while it is still dark in Richmond and -5°C (23°F). Dusk was approaching in Perth as dawn was breaking here. The little glimpse of Summer with a tenacious New Zealand squad facing the prolific Aussie batsmen of Warner, Smith and Labuschagne did wonders for my spirits. Play was called after 90 overs with Australia 248/4. Labushagne over 100 and not out.

Now, I am sleepy again. Back to bed.

Summertime, A Do Over

21 Thursday Nov 2019

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Summer is starting in Australia, the whole Southern Hemisphere really. They are playing cricket. The Women’s Big Bash League, several other “pyjama cricket” leagues. Now we have the Pakistan vs Australia Test. The match grinds on. After about 90 minutes and 22 overs, the Aussies have yet to take a wicket The Pakistanis aren’t exactly a run machine either

But it is Summer. The lads seem to be playing with vigor and there are another couple of days to go.

I have no enthusiasm right now. Maybe I will sleep late. Abandoning the lads in Brisbane, I am now watching Civilisation. The Florentine Renaissance offers some hope for our modern predicament. Small and petty people have always jockeyed with other lesser fellows for power. Unfortunately, we have no duelling to cull our herd of oafs.

Once this episode is over, I shall significantly reduce the stimuli. I fear I am over-stimulated. That carries the expectation of some sort of release. This does not happen here.

Six Hours Later

Thanks to waking up around Midnight, I have discovered that Pakistan’s first innings in this test continues. 6 for 208 after 77 overs. The commentators are having a good laugh about something, either that or they’re delirious from boredom. Marnus Labuschagne is bowling for Australia now. And now Steve Smith. This is actually fairly interesting. Will Shafiq get his century? He is at 75 right now. Pakistan ends its inning at 240.

Day 4 Test 2 Ashes 2019

17 Saturday Aug 2019

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Here we are. This is Test Match #2 of The 2019 Ashes Series. It’s called The Ashes because way back when the series began, the Aussies beat the English so badly the sporting press declared English Cricket to be a smouldering ruin. The metaphor stuck and it was then decided that the trophy battled for would therafter be known as The Urn.

It looks like a nice day. I’m sure that will change. The match is at Lord’s, a venerable cricket ground, with the original architecture, evocative Queen Victoria and the glories of Empire.

Cricketers, among the world’s athletes have a unique look. They are lean, tall, and sinewy. The men could all be models for men’s fashions. I suppose if men’s fashions weren’t an absolute wasteland, they could all find work. Style, for men, has been on life support for years now. The tyranny of the tee shirt grips the world. Go to any mall, look at the males, you will see what I mean.

I didn’t really decide to watch the day’s “action” (cricket and action seem to be in conflict at times). I woke up after 4 hours sleep and decided i would just stay up. Just a few minutes ago, Matthew Wade of Australia was caught out in a nifty bit of fielding.

I assessed my progress in clearing the mess out. I see that I am getting somewhere. J will be up in about an hour

Last night’s shower before bed was welcome, making the clean sheets feel all that much nicer.

I could back to bed, sleep another three hours, wake up, turn to the match again and find that I have missed very little. So I am going back to bed to test my hypothesis.

Sleep Comes To The Old Man

03 Saturday Aug 2019

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I woke up at Three AM to go to Holy Hour at Four down at my church. Then I came home, started watching cricket, The first of the The Ashes Test Match series between England and Australia. I can honestly say I don’t have a dog in this fight. Both sides are great, with superb individual talents on both sides.

Then around 7:40 I left for First Saturday Mass at the Abbey. The football players at the affiliated Catholic high school were practicing. Football season is four weeks away, whether we like it, don’t like it, or just plain don’t care.

Mass was celebrated by a priest who seemed oddly “out of it”. I think he was OK. I had never been at one of his Masses before and I suspect this was just his style. He was old, in this case, about my age.

Back home for breakfast and more cricket. Then tiredness hit and I finally went to bed.

After sleeping a bit, I woke up, brewed some coffee and am now watching some film footage of Tokyo, in 1934 on YouTube. Japan was a police state, run by a military junta. It had seized Manchuria three years earlier. The Sino-Japanese War, the Asian precursor to the Second World War, would begin in 1937. Peaceful times, I suppose. There are scenes of Japanese military close order drill with young boys in samurai costume. In all likelihood, these children would be dead within eleven years. The vignette was creepy and simultaneously poignant. Wasted lives on display.

J is coming home from work. It is ex-wife #1’s birthday. I sent her a birthday text.

I feel like I have done enough today already.

Cricket World Cup. England Wins.

14 Sunday Jul 2019

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The Cricket World Cup is over. England won. It was an epic final in the One Day International format (50 overs). They tied on the last ball in regulation, won on the last ball of the Super Over. I had never seen any sort of cricket match in any format, prior to the start of this competition. I have had an intense and welcome immersion into this marvelous sport.

The best part of the last six weeks is a welcome break from the internecine bickering of American politics.

World Cup Champion England will not decline an invitation to the White House. No invitation will be proferred. They did have to shake hands with HRH The Duke of York, aka Prince Andrew. And so they did, most graciously. This is Britain, after all.

We saw nations competing who get very little positive exposure in the global media, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and South Africa. Their won-loss records may not have been sterling, but they showed up and played. The stands were filled with loyal fans, who were, well, fans, cheering and exuberant. Much like us. I think this is what Baron de Coubertin had in mind when he founded the Olympics movement.

The world was not suddenly rid of two-legged swine, boars, gilts, and sows. But we didn’t have to think about them as often.

Undergirding the tournament was money, of course. Prize money, like any other professional sport. But in this moment the money didn’t matter. We got to be children again, whether we live in Kabul. Kolkata, Christchurch, Sydney, or Soweto, Richmond-on-Thames or Richmond on The James.

It was so welcome, like Christmas in July.

“Do-Overs”

22 Saturday Jun 2019

Posted by in American History, loneliness, sleep, Uncategorized

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I just saw a headline regarding England’s loss to Sri Lanka in the ICC World Cup match of 21 June. Somebody was grousing about one particular player. England’s captain Eoin Morgan refused to make Mooen Ali the scapegoat for England’s loss. (He is the Captain, for Heaven’s sake. If he won’t stand up for his mates, he has no business being the Captain.)

Morgan Refuses To Blame Mooen For Collapse

“We didn’t deserve to win.”

That pretty much said it all. But somehow, some way, there has to be somebody to blame. Oh please. I’m on my way to becoming an ex-fan of cricket. OK. Stupid commentary is as popular as Sport itself.

That said. It is 2:19 AM. I couldn’t get to sleep. Maybe I’m jazzed up from working out. But last night (Thursday night/Friday morning) I worked out at the same time. Sleep was not a problem. But tonight, sleep had yet to come.

I came back downstairs, put the clean dishes away, moved the dirty dishes from sink to dishwasher. Now I am watching an English urban explorer show us a disused railway line neat Manchester. His Midlands accent is thick enough to slice. But he’s better than anybody on American television.

The people trekking about the countryside in England, America, Ukraine, and other places with metal detectors, or just a simple webcam on a “selfie” stick talking about their corner of the world do so much for improving my understanding of the world. They are true teachers, in my opinion.

I suppose what’s up with me is a true sadness about modern times. So much has been discarded. Some of it, maybe even most of the machines of the past, were obsolete, yet not totally. A passenger train was/is a dandy way to get somewhere. Nostalgia is about the pain of loss. “Progress” is a highly subjective term.

The Grand Budapest Hotel, that delightful film of a few years back was about mourning a lost world. In its fictional way, it was more honest than another film nostalgic for a lost world, Gone With The Wind. The antebellum South was a cruel and brutal world. We all know that. Yet Vivien Leigh and Hattie McDaniel were damn good actresses. They could con us into thinking it wasn’t.

Maybe what we really want in life are “do-overs”. We hope that one day we’ll get it right. The “it” can be a marriage, Thanksgiving Dinner, the England vs. Sri Lanka ODI limited overs match. Sometimes, I think the mind doesn’t know the difference among them. Nor does it care.

Sri Lanka Wins.

21 Friday Jun 2019

Posted by in Civilization, Sport

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I was watching England vs Sri Lanka in today’s World Cup match. Sri Lanka elected to bat first. They did not produce a lot of runs in their inning. I thought England would trounce them. Yet Sri Lanka defeated them through adept bowling and fielding, what we Yanks would consider defence,(borrowing a baseball analogy).

Sport has accomplished things that religion would like to do, and at which it often fails. That is bringing people together in a peaceable pursuit. We can look at the oft-quoted example of truces between warring city-states in ancient Greece during Olympic years. I recall from my childhood USA-USSR track meets during the height of The Cold War. And who can forget ping pong diplomacy? (Forrest Gump.) Savannah is calling me Olivia.

Now apart from the India/Pakistan tensions, no nation in the World Cup is warring with another. There are internal tensions, to be sure, as in Afghanistan or Sri Lanka or tensions within England herself between Muslim and non-Muslim communities. But, by golly, people can make time for cricket.

It’s too easy to think of conflict resolution in such simplistic terms. Then again, there are few things as deadly as preconditions. I think what’s at work here is attraction, much like sex.

Roy Campanella, the American baseball legend once said of baseball, “You have to have a lot of little boy in you to play this game.” So very true of so many games.

No Longer Disinterested In Sport

19 Wednesday Jun 2019

Posted by in #cricket, British Empire, Sport

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There I was congratulating myself about losing interest in sports. Ice Hockey? Really?. Basketball? Meh? Baseball? I suppose. Women’s Softball? I can detect a pulse Doctor. Cricket? Where have you been all my life?!

I just finished watching New Zealand claw out a win from South Africa. They pulled it out at the very end on a “6” from Kane Williamson, their captain, on the last over.

Believe it or not, it’s not that difficult a game to follow. There is a lot of insider language and jargon in the game that is best ignored until you become familiar with the game. I’m growing into the idioms of the sport.

And tomorrow? Australia vs Bangladesh. You’ll find me at home, sitting in my comfy chair, eyes fixed on the 📺 telly.

Whitsunday

09 Sunday Jun 2019

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It is Whitsunday, the Solemnity of the Holy Spirit. The chant Veni Creator Spititus is chanted on this Sunday, if you are fortunate enough to attend a parish that still does chant. I was not Catholic at the time of Vatican II. The Latin Mass was the rule. Now the novus ordo Mass rules the day. One can attend Mass and not hear a word of Latin.

There is an AA meeting in town where the ongoing topic is “How is God working in my life.” As a Christian and Catholic, it is easy to understand this topic to be about the working of The Holy Spirit, the Third Person of The Most Holy Trinity. It is depicted as the dove descending.

As I write, I am watching India vs Australia in the World Cup competition from London. The British Empire lives on, in spirit, at the very least. Both sides have extraordinarily talented cricketers. The tranquility we see on this sunny day is in contrast to the turmoil Britain faced seventy five years ago.

And so this game, as trivial as it is, is testimony to the human yearnings for freedom and of peace, desires that the vanquished of that time held in disdain.

The Holy Spirit at work?