Tag: cricket

Stoked

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There will be better photos taken of Newlands Cricket Ground, but there will be few better days for visiting teams than this.

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England piled the pressure on to SA with Ben Stokes lashing the ball all over Cape Town’s Southern Suburbs, as beautifully documented by Brian Micklethwait.
And that view, via England’s Barmy Army Twitter feed. You’d be forgiven for thinking that the view might only be improved by the removal of that factory behind the scoreboard. Until, that is, you learn that the ‘factory’ is actually a brewery, producing about a million litres of beer a day. And suddenly everything makes sense.

Because hey, we get thirsty in the heat.

P.S. I didn’t get tickets for the Test because of family stuff, but I have secured a few for me and the smaller 6000s to get to the T20 in February.

I found this under my hotel door

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“Something tells me I wasn’t supposed to get the South African cricket teams plan/strategy for the New Zealand team batsmen and bowlers under my hotel room door… I wonder if this means Dale thinks he’s sleeping in my room tonight?..”

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Well, that’s blown their plans wide open…

After: http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/aug/19/south-africa-dossier-new-zealand-cricket

[PDF]

Not just a river in Egypt…

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It seems that there is an element of denial in the national psyche over here after South Africa lost in the semi-final of the ICC Champions Trophy to England yesterday. Now, I don’t want to harp on about this, although the self-flagellation amongst the locals shows no sign of abating, so it’s obviously still relevant (and raw).

But there was this on the IOL news website:

crickTry, if you can, to ignore the formatting issues and look at those options. Because the blame game must be played.

Might I suggest a fifth option though (even though there’s blatantly not even room for that fourth one)?

How about “England“?

Maybe it wasn’t the best SA cricket performance ever, but then, maybe they weren’t actually allowed to play well. I mean, perish the thought that the opposition were actually better than them. We could never admit that though, could we?

Come to think of it, where is the story here? The Proteas lost to a better team, a team that is above them in the ICC rankings, a team that played better cricket than they did yesterday. ‘Choking’ (in this context, rather than a buxom celebrity cook context) is when you lose a game that you were expected to win – or you lose from a winning position. That didn’t happen here.

Oh – and Dale Steyn was injured, you say? – well, we’ll be sure to make a footnote in the history books for you.

Catch of the Day

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I actually spotted this on Sky News last night while looking out for the draw for the FA Cup 4th Round – something my boys like to toy with occasionally. And then I forgot about it while attempting to sleep in the heat and humidity of Cape Town.
But then I was reminded of it by the Insurance Guy via the medium of Facebook. Yay for him and that.

As one comment notes:

It’s a shame it will go down in history as c Mason b Nethula. It doesn’t do justice to the job that Small did at all.

That could be said for United’s 3rd round exploits as well. While the scoreline will forever read 3-1, it doesn’t do justice to the 74,316 shots we had at Salisbury’s goal. Nor for the amazing job their goalkeeper did.

Still – all’s well that ends well – a win is a win and a wicket is a wicket.

Mental!

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Yesterday’s cricket at Newlands was a bit mental and broke all sort of records. And even those records that it didn’t break, it threatened with physical violence and actual bodily harm.
Cricinfo’s chief statistician S Rajesh was watching it all from the safety of Bangalore and produced this wonderful summary of what happened, what didn’t happen and what nearly happened.

It’s worth a read.

And even today, it’s been a bit odd:

Lots of silly hype about 11/11/11 and especially about 11:11 on 11/11/11.

In the cricket at Newlands, SA messed up by being 111/1 11 minutes early at 11:00 on 11/11/11.
However, they made up for it 11 minutes later by needing 111 to win at 11:11 on 11/11/11.

*cue twilight zone music*