Category: Uncategorized

It turns out, Graham Dilley, the England fast bowler mourned in this blog last night and who is being mourned across the cricket landscape today, was part of Mike Gatting’s rebel tour of South Africa in 1990.

That’s right, Mr. Dilley, along with several other English cricketers, defied the ECB, the English government, and most of the right thinking world, and toured Apartheid South Africa.

I am not going to speak to the reasons why the players chose to go on the tour, but it does put a bit of a damper on what would have been a wonderful, albeit short, career of a first class cricketer.  I am not calling him a racist – I am just saying that maybe it was not the best decision, career wise.

However, what do I know, as Mr. Dilley did okay for himself after his playing days (and his three year ban) were over.  Television, coaching…etc.  Maybe this just goes to show how quickly we all forget, or maybe I could learn a thing or two about forgiveness.

There are quite a few black eyes on the sport of cricket (one of them is being played out at Southwark Crown Court as I type), but it is no different in that aspect than any other sport.  Cricket might have to try to forgive and forget the rebel tours of South Africa, but FIFA is still failing at curbing the disgusting racist chants that drift down from the terraces throughout Europe. And baseball has steroids.  As does cycling, and track & field.  The NBA has a match fixing scandal of its own.  And on and on and on.

Some days, it is hard to be a sports fan.

Either way: rest peace, Graham Dilley.  I apologize if this felt like I was stomping on your grave.

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There are several domestic tournaments happening right now throughout the world.  The namesake of this post, the Castle Logan Cup, is a competition in Zimbabwe.  I plan on writing a short bit on each of them over the coming days.

This tournament, well, it doesn’t really even have its own Wiki page, which I find a little strange.  It runs now through the first week of February and is a first class, 4-day match competition.  There are five clubs involved:  Mashonaland Eagles, Matabeleland Tuskers, Mid West Rhinos, Southern Rocks, and Moutaineers.  All of which are great cricket names.

The Mashonaland Eagles (should the “the” be there? not sure) are currently at the top of the table on 13 points after two matches.

That is all I could really find on the competition. I know cricket is in its infancy in Zimbabwe, but one would think there would be a touch more history available out there.  Or maybe I am just lazy.

Other competitions to explore in the coming days: The CSA Provincial Three Day Challenge and The SuperSport Series.

Until tomorrow, come on you Tuskers!

Steve Jobs died today.

He was only 56 years old.

I read the news on my iPhone.  I am writing this on an iMac.

I love Apple.  I drank the kool-aid and I am happier for it.

God speed, Mr. Jobs, you had the greatest mind of a generation – and you have the legacy to prove it.

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To bring this back on topic: Also dead today at the age of 52 was English fast bowler, Graham Dilley.

Like most cricketers that were not superstars, per se, and reached their prime before 2007, I was unaware of Mr. Dilley until I read the news of his death on the, um, iPhone Cricinfo app.

Over an injury shortened career, Dilley appeared in 41 test matches for England, taking 138 wickets, and supported Ian Botham in the famous England Ashes victory at Headingley in 1981.

He was career, as mentioned above, was curtailed by knee problems and arthritis caused by his punishing delivery.

To wit.

(Side note, when I first started following cricket, finding videos on YouTube was a fool’s errand.  Now: anything you want, whenever you want.  Interested in watching Dilley’s innings at Headingley?  Cool, go watch it.  Sachin’s first test century? No problem. Seriously: INSANE.)

Over that career, he delivered over 34,000 balls with said punishing delivery.  When I first read that,  I thought to myself: wow, that’s a lot of deliveries.

But is it really?  Probably not, in comparison, considering his career was not all that long.

So what does constitute a huge amount of deliveries?

Well, Sir Richard Hadlee of New Zealand bowled 21,000 deliveries over his career – and those are just the ones that happened in a test match.   Muttiah Muralitharan has over 44,000 test deliveries, and Anil Kumble and Shane Warne each have over 40,000 test deliveries, as well.

But, shoot, we are just getting started.  Wilfred Rhodes had over 185,000 first class deliveries over his 32 year career, Fred Titmus over 173,000, and Derek Shackleton almost 160,000.

While looking this up, I started thinking, as I always do, about how this compares to the American sport of baseball.

Well, unfortunately, pitch count records were not kept until 1988 (yeah, I was surprised, too.)  There is a formula that exists for ball-parking (hahaha) pitch counts for players who pitched before stats were kept (3.3PA + 1.5SO + 2.2BB) and according to that, Nolan Ryan threw 89, 514 pitches over his 27 year career [(3.3*22575) + (1.5*5714) + (2.2*2795)].

Considering Nolan Ryan was a one of kind ballplayer who could pitch for days and put up HUGE strike out and walk numbers, that has to the most by an MLB pitcher in the modern era – and I can all but guarantee no current pitcher will ever get even close to that.

This was not meant to say that cricket was superior in any sense, I was just curious.

Until tomorrow.

Okay, fine, whatever, I will write a post.

It’s funny, but again, not “haha” funny, how easy it is to cease blogging.  You take one unscheduled day off, and then another, and then another, and then finally that new post is so daunting that you don’t even know where to begin.

And I really have no excuse.  Yeah, my dog died, and yeah work has been difficult, and yeah school has been, um, school, but I cannot pretend that I do not have an hour or so every day to write a quick post.

What I need to do is to start writing in the evenings.  That would solve everything.

That most frustrating part of this unscheduled and long-term hiatus has been the fact that this silly site was actually getting some readers right before I stopped posting.

Hopefully, they will come back and continue to correct my errors and give me a hard time about my American-ness.

Okay, so: cricket.

Upcoming series include: India versus England, South Africa versus Australia (on Willow.tv), Pakistan versus Sri Lanka (in the United Arab Emirates), and Bangladesh versus the West Indies (only one t20 and two ODIs, but all three are on ESPN3.)

I won’t go into too much detail on any of those right now, but I do look forward to covering each respective series as they get started.  Quickly though, the Pakistan v Sri Lanka series does start with three straight test matches – those should be fascinating to follow.  Unfortunately, the first ball of each day is at one in the morning my time, which is not really conducive to any sort of active coverage.

Oh, and the Champions League t20 tourney is lurching along.  I suppose I should read about that before commenting on it.

Okay, so, where do they play their cricket in the U.A.E.?

There is the Sheikh Zayed Stadium in Abu Dhabi.  It seats 20,000 folks and was built in 2004.  It has hosted one test – the Pakistan v South Africa match in November 2010 (the match was drawn).

Nice looking park:

There is also the Dubai International Cricket Stadium in, um, Dubai.  It seats 25,000 and has also only hosted one test (also Pakistan v South Africa, and that match was also drawn).

I will admit, it is also rather easy on the eyes:

Finally, there is the Sharjah Cricket Association Stadium.  It was built in 1982, seats 27,000, and has a more classical cricket stadium style:

It has hosted four tests, the last in 2002 (Australia v Pakistan – the “hosts” won by an innings and 20 runs), and was the home of cricket in the UAE during the sport’s hey-day in that part of the world (80s and 90s) but it has been a third choice ground since the two above grounds were built.

A couple notes:

1. The UAE really seems to benefit, cricket-wise, from political instability in Pakistan.  If I were into conspiracy theories, I could write 1500 words on this…but I am not.

2. These are really nice looking grounds – and considering I am waaaaaayyy into Stadium Porn, they make me salivate for what Qatar has in store for the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

Until tomorrow.

One of my favorite movies ever is “Zidane: A 21^st Century Portrait.”  If you are unfamiliar, it is simply two hours of watching the greatest footballer ever play, well, football, for two hours.

It was filmed in real time and features Zidane in a match for Real Madrid against Villareal.  It is just wonderful, in my opinion.  There are heroes and goats.  There is a plot arc: rising, climax, falling.  If you have never seen it, I highly recommend it.

(Via the film’s Wikipedia page, it seems the filmmakers stole the idea from a 1970 film entitled “Fussball vie noch nie” – only that film was directed by a German and featured George Best for Manchester United against Coventry.  “Fussball vie noch vie”, however, does not have its own wiki page, and therefore doe not exist).

But I digress: during halftime of “Zidane…”, the viewer sees all that is happening in the outside world during the match.  Protests, war, disease.  It is my favorite part of the entire movie.

I have always been a fan of juxtaposing history against the sports that we love.

For instance, my “one big idea” for making a movie was to use that 11 hour, three day tennis match between Nicholas Mahut and John Isner at Wimbledon 2010 as a back drop for all the other happenings in the world.  That match took place over three days, and the film, interspersed between footage of the match, will clue the reader in on everything else that happened in the world over those three days.  Births, deaths, battles…bombings in Afghanistan, Obama’s firing of McChrystal,  Australia’s first female prime minister, a bus bombing in Turkey, The World Cup in South Africe, the BP oil spill…etc.

Which brings me to my point: test cricket, since it takes place over five days, is the perfect such backdrop to world events.  And I hope to write similar posts using classic matches instead of the above tennis match. (I am saving the tennis match for the movie…even though you are going to steal it anyway.)

(I am writing this after a long work day, I apologize for its haphazardness).

But, to start, briefly:  on this day in 1939, Warsaw was surrendered to the Nazis, and in 1964, the Warren Commission finally released its report on the assassination of JFK.

While in the world of cricket, on 27 September 1939: there were no international matches.  And I am sure it was too late in the year for the county game.

And there were no matches of note taking place on 27 September 1964, either.

This is not starting off well.  And is going to take some research.

I mean, on this day in 1948, Duncan Fletcher was born, and in 1982 Eddie Hemmings took 10 wickets in a first class match, but nothing really of note happened, historically, on those days.

Okay, back to the drawing board.

Until tomorrow.

No cricket talk today.

This morning my wife and I had to put down our old dog, Murray.

He smelled bad, and was generally kind of gross, but he was still the best dog ever.

Rest in peace, bud.

I am not in the office today, and therefore I am able to write a blog post about cricket….while watching cricket.   This is  real novelty around here.

Of course, as soon as I typed that, the Willow.tv feed died on me.  So – I was watching live cricket, now I am listening to the XX and waiting for the next Champions League t20 match to start up (Aukland v Somerset in Chennai Hyderabad, hat tip, Erez).

I watched the last few overs of the Trinidad and Tobago v Leicestershire match in the same tournament, and the ground was so terribly empty it almost gave me a panic attack.   I don’t know, I think it would be oddly terrifying to be playing cricket in a massively empty stadium.  It gives me vertigo just thinking about it.  But, hey, that’s me.

Honestly, though, I have zero interest in this tournament (similar to most of Hyderabad, it seems), I am just glad that there is cricket to watch as I kill a few hours this morning.

I have babbled on for 170 words about nothing.

This is what happens when there is nothing to write about.

And, unfortunately, I was not prepared to be home today, otherwise I would have prepped for a lengthier post.   Maybe done my 2011 Summer of Cricket recap, or maybe one of my promised county cricket posts, but, alas, it’s just not in me today.

I did however, google “celebrity cricket fans” and while I knew that Mick Jagger was a huge fan of cricket, I had no idea that he had supposedly snorted lines with Ian Botham in 1986 and that he regularly wakes early while on tour in the states to watch England play.

He supports Kent County Cricket Club, which puts them right up on my list of possible teams to follow.

And, it seems, he also follows Arsenal.  Good on ya, Mick.

Here he is at a match in what looks to me like maybe…1972?

Love it.

Okay.

Until tomorrow.  

Interesting news out of India this morning, as the Kochi Indian Premiere League franchise (you know, the fellas in the bright orange kits) have been booted out of the IPL for failing to make good on a financial obligation in their contract.

Unfortunately, this might be a sign of things to come.  I do not foresee the league itself, or any of the major franchises having similar problems, but I think the smaller clubs are going to have a hard time surviving in the years to come.

I am not rooting for this, please do not get me wrong.  As I have mentioned over and over on this site, I like the IPL, despite the fact that Twenty20 is my least favorite form of the game, and the last thing I want is for the league to fold.  All things being equal: the IPL is good for the game. However the league really needs to look at successful leagues across the globe (Bundesliga, Major League Soccer, the National Football League, and County Cricket) to see how to best run a league financially.  You cannot just throw the best cricketers in the world out onto the pitch every day for 50 days and simply cross your fingers that people buy tickets and kits.  The league and its franchises need to be nursed and weaned and nursed again.

It’s not easy, but considering how wildly popular the sport is in India, I am sure the league will figure itself out sooner rather than later.  There is just too much money to be made.  Or, maybe, that is the problem.

Meanwhile, just up the road, there is a cracker of a test match happening in Colombo, Sri Lanka.  I feel like what has been a wonderful three match series is passing me by, simply because of the time zone it is taking place in.

Yeah, it stinks that I cannot watch it, but if at least it was happening during my waking hours, I could follow the ball by ball.

And after tomorrow, the series is over.  And the Zimbabwe-Pakistan series is over, as well.  Yeesh.

Another curse of the American cricket fan: the time zone.

This week on the pitch:  Ireland v Canada in ODIs today and tomorrow, as well as those positively silly make-up t20s between England and the West Indies.

I take it back, rain is not the real cricket killer, television is.

Oh, and the t20 Champions League qualifiers are happening this week, as well.  Mildly interesting, I guess.

Until tomorrow.

I was unable to post yesterday, because of a project here at work that needed special attention.  But again, probably for the best, as not very much is happening in the world of cricket.

One story I found interesting was about Sangakkara’s comments on how he dislikes two test series, and I could not agree more.  Just one more reason why he is my favorite cricketer.

I know this makes me sound like the silly American who complains about draws in European sport, but I really think it is important to at least make it likely that there will be a result when you are playing a series of matches.  Otherwise, it feels completely unfulfilling, like a bad indie movie.

But there I go again, clamoring for more cricket, when just last week (or was it the week prior?) I was clamoring for the ICC to start paying attention to the amount of cricket being played by the world’s best players, as it was degrading the quality of the games being played and players were getting hurt.  And Sri Lanka, of all countries, was one of my prime examples in that post.

But why not play three tests and two less ODIs?  Oh, that’s right, television doesn’t like tests.  I forgot.

And it is going the other way, as Cricinfo in the same article pointed out that Australia’s visit to South Africa now only features two tests instead of the three that were originally planned, in order to make room for…the Twenty20 Champions League.

So not more cricket, different cricket.  That’s all I am saying.

As Sangakkara says, “Test cricket is still, to my mind, the most important form of the game out there. There’s nothing like it, there’s nothing that comes close to it. This is the only arena where you can really make your mark as a cricketer. If you are successful at Test cricket, that is all that matters I think.”

Amen, brother.

And speaking of tests, the third test between Sri Lanka and Australia starts tomorrow (or tonight on my watch).  Sri Lanka is down one-nil but can draw even with a victory.  Goodness I wish willow.tv would cover this match.  I have a feeling it is going to be a good one.

Finally today, over on Twitter I mentioned that I need to pick a county to follow, that following ALL matches is just no fun so I end up following none.  I have tried and tried to have Sussex be my team for years now and it just has not stuck.  I think because the reason I chose them was so haphazard and rushed.

(I know all of this sounds ridiculous, that you should never choose a sport team, that you should let them choose you, but I have been waiting for that to occur for years now and it just has not happened.  So this is a process I must initiate).

A few years ago, a writer for ESPN.com went through the process of choosing a Premiere League football team, you can find the article here (it is worth your time, for reals) and I plan on doing something similar for the counties, except exploring each county individually in a single post instead of one long post.  I will write about the history of the club, the ground, the pros, the cons, the celebrity fans, the famous players, the famous matches…etc.  So: look forward to that. Or not.  At the end, I will have a team to follow, hopefully.

If you are reading this, and have a county in mind for me, then let me know.

That’s it, until tomorrow.

Well, it seems people do read this blog.  I thought I was talking to myself the entire time.

Thankfully, my new readers understood the “tongue-in-cheek” nature of yesterday’s post, and that the majority of my posts are meant to be taken as semi-jokes.

And even when I am being serious, I freely admit that my lack of knowledge opens those posts up for criticism.

Today is Tuesday, so that means a short post, which works out because there doesn’t seem to be a great deal going on.  The fifth and final ODI of the England-India series, and the last match of India’s summer in England, is on the 16^th in Cardiff.  (So, I guess, in that case, India’s tour of England ended at Lord’s on Sunday.)

Can Indian win at least one game of the tour?  That is really the only storyline left.

I will admit that I am little down about the series ending, as it means that fall is well and truly here.  But I am looking forward to what should be a great autumn and winter of cricket, lots of which I will be able to watch on Willow.tv.

In other news this morning, Trott is ICC’s cricketer of the year.  Okay.  I guess.  I have not read any of the pundits’ reaction to the selection, but the guy did remorselessly accumulate over 1000 runs in 12 tests and over 1000 runs in 24 ODIs.

Cook won test cricketer of the year, and that is well deserved, while Sangakkara (my personal cricketer of the year) won the people’s choice award and the ODI player of the year.

As Cricinfo mentioned in its article this morning, the only real snub was the entire nation of India, as they only one award despite being the number one test nation for most of they year as well as being, you know, world fucking champions.

What does this prove?  That no matter the genre, award shows are complete rubbish.

Today’s matches to follow include: the Dutch versus Kenya in a 50 over match (hey, no rain!), Ireland versus Canada in a 50 over match, both games are part of the laboriously long ICC Intercontinental Cup (see you for the trophy presentation in 2013).  There is also a whole host of county games to watch.  All in all, a nice day of cricket.  Until tomorrow.

Rain, rain, rain.

Yesterday, the fourth ODI between England and India at the Oval was marred by persistent rain, finally ending as a tie (not a draw, mind you, but a tie) on the Duckworth-Lewis method.  (Isn’t the method supposed to produce a result?  Isn’t that its only purpose?)

Meanwhile, in Sri Lanka, the fifth day of the 2^nd test between Sri Lanka and Australia was greatly shortened by rain, helping the hosts preserve a draw.

AND: in Holland, their one day match against Kenya has been delayed by rain.  The Kenyans tour of the Netherlands has been a complete washout so far.

Now, I realize that rain delays and rain shortened matches are nothing new in the sport.  They have been dealing with it for well over a hundred years now, and I am sure smarter people than myself have come up with theories on how to best combat the rain.  Domes, floodlights so matches can play into the evening to make up overs lost to weather, different colored balls…etc, and I am not saying I have any answers here, but something has to be done.

It doesn’t help that the sport is wildly popular in three of the wettest nations on the planet (India, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh) (Cherrpunji, on the eastern slopes of the Himalaya in Shillong, India, is the wettest place on Earth), and even England is infamous for its damp summers, but I still think there has to be a solution to this.  I always say that there is always so much cricket, but really, when you think about it, there isn’t.

When a minnow has a test washed out, for instance, that might have been one of only five they will play all year long.  In Major League Baseball however, by comparison, if they lose a game to weather, who cares, as they have 161 other games to play.

Get to work, ICC.  Forget about DRS or the IPL or the Associates, let’s figure out this rain issue.

I mean, for crying out, the means in which the sport decides rain shortened one-dayers (The Duckworth-Lewis Method) is the most ridiculously complicated thing ever.  I think Google’s search algorithm is easier to understand.   It attempts to understand and accurately predict the outcome of a sporting event, which is seriously insane when you think about it.

That’s it from here.  Thankfully, it looks as though the rain is going to hold off in England today, which means I have County Championship matches to follow.

Until tomorrow