Category: sport

Local cricket

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While the Boy Wonder was out and about doing a thing today, he spotted some SA vs England cricket action.

A quick look at the internet determined that this was the SA U19s vs the England U19s, playing their first 45 over ODI of a 3 match series.

And then I forgot all about it.

But the cricinfo page was still open when I came back to my laptop after horseriding (not me), this evening. And it turns out that England won – somewhat convincingly – bowling SA out for 87 and then knocking off the required total with [ahem] 189 balls to spare.

Eina fok!

But you’ll notice that they still “only” won by 5 wickets. That’s because, of the 18 players who batted, only 4 of them* (2 from each side) made it into double figures. Wow.

Cricket matches are clearly going to look very different – apparently mainly much shorter – in the near future.

If you’re in or around Cape Town on Sunday, you can watch the second ODI at WPCC.

* one of them being Archie Vaughan, debutant and captain of the England side, Sheffield born, and son of ex-England captain Michael Vaughan.

Gallops

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A great morning out at The Gallops at HollywoodBets Kenilworth this morning. Ostensibly to watch one particular horse, but it was just a chilled morning out with some drinks and some bacon rolls, while the horses do their thing along the track there.

Taking photos of a ton and a bit of horse running directly at you at 60kph through the heat haze is never hugely easy, but I actually quite like this all action shot of all eight (equine) legs all airborne taken while they were about 200 metres out.

It’s just for exercise and familiarity with the surroundings for the horses, so there’s no real competition here, but you know that the jockeys don’t want to come in second on any of their rides, so the speed is very real.

I’m not heading back to the races in the foreseeable future, not least because the next meeting there is The Met, and I haven’t got a stitch to wear.

(I know, it’s gruesome that someone so handsome should care, but I do.)

Tough stuff

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Incoming from one of my wife’s horseriding friends earlier, this:

And yes, I get it. I’ve often lamented the diving in football. Not least here. I hate it, and I hate the reputation that it’s giving the best sport in the world.

That said, the football part of this image is a mash-up of a couple of photos from Italy’s 1-1 draw against Romania in Switzerland at Euro 2008. And the players on the left were lying on the turf at the end of the match, with Romania having given it all, but having missed a huge opportunity to beat Italy, due to a penalty save in the last 10 minutes.

And that orange shirt top right belongs to cheaty ref, Tom Henning Øvrebø.

Anyway, like I said, sadly, I understand the reputation.

But then, ironically, there was a bit of rain this afternoon and evening, and while my daughter’s horseriding was cancelled, my football went ahead. Because actually, we footballers are clearly made of tougher stuff than the local pony club.

So there.

If anything, the pain is getting worse

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A surprise double header for our 5-a-side team on Tuesday night. We literally found out about the second game just as we were heading onto the pitch for the first game. And while we love playing football, a double header is never great when you are a) old and… well… that’s about it, really.

We are the oldest team in the league by some distance. Some of the guys we play against weren’t even born when our team was founded, and I’d wager that I was older than each of the opposition’s dads in our second game.

But we played well. The first game was a really tight affair. It finished 7-8, and we were incredibly unlucky not to get something out of it.

Something other than getting completely knackered, that is.

I had a family thing I needed to get to. The Chilean had a restaurant to go and manage. At least several of our players would like to have gone and drunk some beer.

But no.

It was straight onto the other court and straight back into battle.

Dead on our feet, we somehow, bewilderingly managed to get to 3-0 up at half time. But then, playing into the blinding sun and the (actually rather pleasant) breeze, their comeback came back. Before too long, it was 3-3 and the momentum was only heading one way.

Courage, belief, attitude and an unwillingness to concede again kicked in. It was all automatic: there was absolutely nothing left in our respective tanks. But we threw ourselves in front of every shot, dragged every last ounce of energy to block a run; we left everything out there.

And we got a goal just before the end.

4-3, and our first win since September (it’s complicated, ok?). And it could not be sweeter. We struggled off the pitch to a cold beer. We staggered off to our respective destinations. And then yesterday morning, we reminisced on just how good it felt to win, and just how completely broken we all were when we woke up.

Imagine my dismay then, when I awoke this morning, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and then tried to get out of bed. Oh my deity.

If anything, the pain is getting worse.

I’m suddenly dreading tomorrow.

I beat Geowizard without even thinking about it

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Geowizard – the pseudonym of Youtuber Tom Davies – was [probably the guy who got me back into Geoguessr a few years back. At that time, he was one of the world leaders at playing the game, and his sense of humour really added to his entertaining offerings.

But I’ve always enjoyed his videos rather than trying to play along. And once you’ve watched the video, you know the answers, so you can’t play along. So when I realised that I had just a few minutes spare this afternoon, rather than starting his latest video, I decided to click through and play the same game, blind.

And I did OK, considering. This was a single point photosphere, so you couldn’t move. There was a Masjid in Timor L’Este, an airport in China, mountain viewpoints in Liechtenstein and Pakistan, and a mining settlement in Papua New Guinea. And I didn’t spent much time on it: only about 8 minutes in total, but came out with a very decent score of 23,499.

And with a bit more effort (and time), it could have been even better. I guessed a bit, instead of taking the time to plonk my marker down really accurately.

But it was only a couple of hours later than I actually clicked through to see how Tom had done.

16,758. Wow.
Sure, a big error on the last one in PNG, but even without that, I’d still have outscored him.

And this isn’t me being smug. Or me saying that he’s rubbish, because he’s really not.

But if you are going to try to be good at something like this game, and you start learning how to play it, then managing to achieve this sort of thing is a real milestone, and I was amazed to have done it.

I’m still some distance from learning bollards, or challenging the real stars of the game, but I am getting better.

So this was a pretty big moment, and I am well chuffed with it.