Been a weird day in the world of cricket (just ask the proprietor of Deep Backward Point): I woke up to see the spot fixing story making front page news on Twitter, as well as a vague story on the Australian squad having some sort of booze fueled romp on the Perth wicket (or something.)
Not to mention the fact that the ECB was meeting behind closed doors to decide the future of County Cricket, and that Australia and India were set to play the pivotal third test in their series (well, pivotal for India, anyway).
And, finally, I had a post I had written on the Associates (a favorite topic of mine) posted over on The Sight Screen. Check it out.
So, really, I had a ton of ideas for today’s blog. A review of the Morgan report, putting the spot fixing in to a wider sport context, some notes on athletes and booze, or maybe simply link to the article above and call it a night.
I’ve decided to save the first three topics for another day, and go with number four: please do check out the link above, read the story, and let me know your thoughts.
The Associates are a huge part of the cricket playing world, so hopefully the ICC will sooner or later sort out how exactly to handle them.
Before signing off, a few quick notes on India v Australia:
1. Australia won the toss and elected to field: and promptly took Sehwag’s wicket rather cheaply.
However Gambhir is looking quite comfortable tonight (finally) and Dravid looks his usual calm and collected self.
So despite Sehwag, there is hope that this test might at the very least be competitive for the entire five days.
I am a confirmed neutral, of course, but right now I am firmly in India’s corner. Give us a match. will ya?
2. Perth is such an impressive stadium, what a great setting for sport. It seats almost 25,000 and just like yesterday in Paarl, most of those seats are filled – always great to see.
3. I found myself looking forward to this match all day. Despite the fact that it very well could be an uneventful five days, despite the fact that I support neither country, despite all of the bad news in the world of cricket, despite the fact that I had just a simply terribly day at the office.
Nothing makes everything else disappear quite like a test match.
And with that: until tomorrow.
Limited Overs 
Matt,
Being a neutral watching a test match is the best thing these days – you must’ve enjoyed Warner’s knock. If the opposition was anyone other than India or maybe if India had 300+ on the board – I would’ve really enjoyed it too – but given the last 7 matches away, India is currently killing me and leaving me devoid of feelings wherein I can gather my senses and appreciate the opposition’s game:-( Not to say I haven’t appreciated the opposition camp before – have seen India lose to Aus/Eng/SA/Pak/SL at home – but there India had shown glimpses of a fightback – and that is all we crave as fans don’t we? Results don’t matter – the manner of play does.
The post I am planning on writing tonight is about what it must be like to be an India supporter right now, so I appreciate the insider info.
Thanks for reading and commenting!