Snowed In

Not much to write about right now, cricket wise…England won at Kolkata and India are in CRISIS.

Cricket is the only sport where a team loses a match or two and OH MY GOD THE WORLD IS ENDING…DROP EVERYONE. I am not sure if it is a regional or cultural thing, but I doubt it, because it happens in Australia and South Africa and England as well as in India and Pakistan. It just might be because teams play so few Tests, and the matches have such profound impact due to their scarcity.

Or not.

Or maybe cricket fans and pundits and boards simply enjoy a good old fashioned knee jerk reaction, and maybe they just like to over-use the phrase “in crisis.”

What I know is this, India will be okay. They are going through a transitional phase as the old guard retires but I firmly believe they have plenty of good solid young talent to bridge the gap. And let’s not forget they won in Ahmedabad, and could still very well win at Nagpur, which means the series ends in a draw. And considering India were whitewashed by England in England just last summer and while I understand that these are Indian conditions, it does not change the fact that a vastly different Indian squad is doing better against a vastly similar England squad, and that’s something. 0-4 could be 2-2 and that’s improvement.

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Elsewhere, not a whole lot. Bangladesh beat the West Indies in a five match ODI series, which is great for the health of the game, globally speaking. Unfortunately, Bangladesh’s Test form is still abhorrent, and considering they are only scheduled to play four Tests in 2013, that’s not going to change any time soon.

The above is the basis for a future post to come later this week.

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We are still a few days away from the first Test between Australia and Sri Lanka, and I must say that I am very much looking forward to it: because it is going to be played at Hobart, my absolutely favorite Test ground.

Expect a lot of Hobart related gushing around here over the next week and a half, including a post later in the week.

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It is snowing here. And not just a flurry or a few inches, but one of those all day fourteen inchers that locks you inside for an entire day. I spent the day reading Jeffrey Eugenides’ brilliant novel “The Marriage Plot” (been taking a lovely break from non-fiction for the last six months) and thinking about what to write a blog post about. But I felt completely uninspired and lazy and bored and now it is after four so it will be dark very soon; and so I am going to have a beer and will leave you with a few links, for outside reading:

Re: Alastair Cook: If you have not read Minal’s posts about Alastair Cook for The Corridor of Certainty as well as for the Sightscreen, then do so now. If you have read them, then read them again.

I’ll wait…

Minal is a great supporter of my site and I felt terrible for not including her in my Ode to the Cricket Blogger piece. Please know: support like hers is invaluable, and it was a main source of inspiration for my words on cricket blogging’s fantastic community.

She wrote a follow-up/response to mine, as did Devanshu, read them both, they both say it better.

Re: Ricky Ponting: The Cricket Couch compiled a sizable handful of the blog posts about Ponting’s retirement. Check it out.

Re: Snow: I was in New York City in February of 2006 for what was then known as the Storm of the Century. I still have the New York Times from that day and it includes one of my favorite articles of all time. It’s not cricket related but it is worth a read. That, friends, is a template for how I want to write about cricket: informational and interesting with bits of poetry:

“for most of the day, the storm provided a rare chance to see what New York is like when it is forced to settle down, take a deep breath and go suddenly quiet.”

Re: Snow (part 2): Speaking of snow, in June of 1975, play was stopped at a County Championship match…because of snow. Unbelievable. Read all about it here.

Right, that’s your lot, more soon.