The BBC is reporting that a deal has been struck to end the feud between the FIA and Formula 1’s teams. Here’s the key sentence:
But it appears a resolution has now been found and, as part of the deal, Mosley has agreed not to stand for re-election as president.
Careful, don’t all cheer at once, the planet might wobble.
The dust has now settled on the Twenty20 World Cup. I’ve been too busy to write much about it (save to laugh at the Australians), but some reflection is in order.
Firstly, England’s women’s team is awesome, particularly Claire Taylor who is one of the classiest batsmen it has been my pleasure to watch. Katherine Brunt’s demolition of New Zealand (3 for 6 in her four overs) meant that the final was not a great competition, but her rather piratical black eye helped assure viewers that this was no genteel pastime for cultured ladies, but rather a serious sporting event.
As for the men, I couldn’t be happier for Pakistan. Their country is going through an awful time right now and, as I’ve mentioned before, the country’s love of cricket is one of the things that helps unite it, especially in the face of terrorism. Here’s hoping this win does more good than simply put a trophy in a cabinet and make a few sportsmen richer.
The real winner, however, is Twenty20 cricket. Most of the games proved to be very entertaining, and ticket sales were apparently around 96%, so the tournament will have made good money. Significantly, quality bowling was what made the difference between success and failure. I didn’t bother listening to the BBC, but I’m sure Jonathan Agnew still has his head in the sand and is saying that bowlers are only in the game to make up the numbers, and that cricket as we know it is doomed. This tournament has made him sound even more stupid than usual, because clearly bowlers have been thinking very seriously about the game, and are fighting back well.
Not that the batsmen have been standing idle. Dilshan’s scoop shot is a wonder to behold. And this brings me to my point, which is that Twenty20 has brought with it a huge amount of innovation in playing styles and tactics.
When I was a kid, cricket was a very conservative game. The MCC published a coaching manual that explained exactly how the game should be played. In those days a player who was very successful at county level could be passed over for an England place because his batting style was deemed incorrect. You still hear people talking about playing “proper shots”, and it was only last year that Kevin Pietersen’s switch hit provoked howls of outrage from cricket journalists.
Now of course there’s a place for all that. There are good reasons why young players are taught to “play straight”. But just as Jenson Button’s driving style is nothing like the way you get taught to drive on public roads, so the way that a star batsman like Shahid Afridi plays is by no means straight out of the coaching manual. These days that’s OK as long as it helps his team win.
The world has changed. Cricket is no longer played in an Empire on which the sun never sets, in a world whose inhabitants expect it to be the same generation after generation. We now live in a world that is ruled by innovation, and Twenty20 cricket is a marvelous example of that.
Mike Glyer reports that Japan is bidding for a Worldcon again. Here’s hoping that by 2017 I can actually afford to go.
Also the current issue of Challenger, including my article on cricket, is now available online.
A world-wide recession can be dismissed as bad luck. Electoral disasters? Everyone has them sooner or later, especially when times are bad. But presiding over one of the most embarrassing disasters in the history of English cricket? Unforgivable. Time to go, Gordon.
I am here, briefly.
The good news is that there is now a hotel shuttle from Sydney airport to the downtown hotels. It only cost me AU$24 for a return, which is about half what a single cab fare would have been. But it does mean I’ll have less time this morning as I have to fit with the shuttle’s schedule, not mine. I was hoping to get an hour or so in the QVB (that’s the Queen Victoria Building – Sydney’s splendid Victorian shopping mall), but I may not have time.
The Hilton here is very luxurious. Thank you again, reward points. As with Melbourne they have upgraded me to the executive floor. The Internet connection is fine (and indeed I could have had it for free in the executive lounge if I hadn’t needed to download all that email). I’d love to stay here for a few days and just relax, but I have a con to go to and the program officially starts this evening.
Sadly I’m missing the early-bird chocolate factory tours. I may have to mug Trudy Canavan when I get there to get some samples. I don’t appear to be listed on any program items as yet, so for the most part I expect you will find me in the bar with Sean Williams and Jonathan Strahan consuming those famous pink drinks and watching the Twenty20 World Cup. Thankfully England are only scheduled to lose two games while I am here, and neither of them to Australia.
Another plane flight over, another immigration process successfully negotiated. And score one for New Zealand for not having any stupid questions on their forms. People coming here don’t have to lie in order to get into the country.
On the other hand, things here are very expensive. $36 for a 5-minute cab ride from the airport to an airport hotel (and no shuttle bus). Internet access is metered, and is so expensive I’m reluctant to open my email just in case I have messages with attachments. I think I’ll be covering this event mainly on Twitter.
The con is open and I have my registration packet. We’ve been allowed to pick our own membership numbers, so I am #666. I also have a badge that says I am a biohazard, which after all of the nonsense I have been through in the past few days is entirely appropriate. No sign of Julie Czerneda yet, but there are opening ceremonies and an ice cream social later today so I’m sure I’ll find her.
The con program is full of the usual stuff. I suspect that the panel you folks will be most interested in is Norm Cates talking about what is happening at WETA these days. In the program it says that we’ll be required to eat our notes and have our brains wiped on the way out, but Norm doesn’t know that I have an iPhone and Twitter. Stay tuned.
The good news for you folks is that the Super 14 final is in South Africa and will take place at 3:30am, NZ time – and yes that’s despite there being an NZ team in the game, UK TV schedules are much more important than local fans here – so the only part of the con I’ll be missing for that will be the 24 hour bad movies track. Having jet lag may prove useful for watching it.
The final match of this year’s IPL is just getting underway in its temporary home of Johannesburg. Much to everyone’s surprise, the two teams are last year’s whipping boys, the Deccan Chargers and Bangalore Royal Challengers. The Chargers are perhaps less of a shock, as they have always had a decent team. Adam Gilchrist has finally got into the Twenty20 groove and is leading from the front. The Royal Challengers, on the other hand, have not only recovered from their disastrous form last season, they have survived a dreadful start to this year under an out-of-form Kevin Pietersen. Huge kudos is due to Anil Kumble for getting the team back on track.
Spare a thought, though for Vijay Mallya. It is a tough life being a sports-mad billionaire, especially when your Formula 1 team is always at the back of the grid. The one consolation of this embarrassing life style is that you get to go to Monaco once a year and swan around in the harbor on your yacht. This year, however, Mallya can’t go. He has to be in South Africa to watch his cricket team in the IPL final. What a terrible state of affairs.
Well, that’s the IPL done for this year. It should have been easy. The Royals had one game left, against the bottom-of-the-table Kolkata Knight Riders. All they needed to do was win, and they would be in the semi-finals. They choked. Warnie was not happy. Neither am I. The Royals had a reputation for coming good in big games. I expected better of them.
Wellington Hurricanes, on the other hand, have a reputation of messing up big games. This year was no different. Despite a pretty good season, they once again failed to make the Super 14 final. The ‘Canes have one season left to make good, because as of 2011 I expect the Melbourne Rebels to finally take their place in Super Rugby and with a Victorian team to support I will have to bid farewell to New Zealand.
And to make matters worse, Somerset have just failed to defend a score of 285 in a 50-overs match.
Oh well, at least Jenson seems to be having a good weekend.
A few days ago I was feeling very confident about the Royals chances of making it into the finals this year. Not any more. We have had two key games against the Chargers and Super Kings, and lost them both. What’s more, Warnie has picked up a hamstring injury and is doubtful for the next few games. There are just three left in the league stage. We need to win all of them to be sure of a place in the finals. Thankfully the main threat, the Kings XI Punjab, have a much tougher schedule than we do.
As I mentioned yesterday, I have been rather too busy of late to bring you regular reports on this year’s Indian Premier League. We are now past the half way point in the league matches, and things are starting to settle down. Here’s a quick look at the state of play.
The current league leaders are Sehwag’s Delhi Daredevils, though it is actually the Sri Lankan, Dilshan, who has been performing best with the bat this year. Dhoni’s Chennai Super Kings are also doing well, thanks to Matty Hayden being the top scoring batsman in the league at the moment. The most improved team are Adam Gilchrist’s Deccan Chargers, with Gilly himself leading the effort.
As for the Royals, they are clearly missing Shane Watson (on duty with Australia) and Sohail Tanvir (presumably due to the Pakistani government’s ban on their players taking part). They have lost three games, and had one washed out. More recently, however, they have turned things round. Superb batting by Yusuf Pathan saw the team to unexpected wins over the Daredevils and Chargers, and their most recent games, against the Kings XI Punjab and the Bangalore Royal Challengers, have been blowouts. Pathan was also the key player when a game went to the Twenty20 version of extra innings, a “super over” played against Kolkata when the teams ended their regulation innings on 150 runs each. I’m now starting to feel confident that they’ll make the semi-finals, and if they do that then a second title is by no means impossible.
Urk, I’ve just realized that I haven’t posted anything here all day, and it is almost midnight in the UK already.
OK, so I have been busy doing other things. Today I’ve been editing an article for the next Clarkesworld, and doing the real world job, and helping run the Hugo Award logo contest, and working on plans for Internet coverage of Worldcon, and helping a UK event find some SF authors for a panel. There have also been several SF Awards Watch stories today. This one was particularly pleasing.
Sooner or later I hope to write something about this year’s IPL. It is a measure of how busy I am that I haven’t been blogging each Royals game the way I did last year.
But I do have one piece of actual content, so I guess I should get on and post it.
Well, that was a good day at the office. It is, of course, a bit of a stretch to describe the Cardiff Blues as a “Welsh” side, stuffed as they are with star New Zealanders, but that’s the reality of modern club rugby, and the Blues to contain a several stars of the Welsh XV as well: Martyn Williams, Tom Shanklin, Leigh Halfpenny, Jamie Roberts, Andy Powell, Gethin Jenkins. The short version is, “we stuffed them, 50-12”. There is no longer version because I only had audio and had to leave half way through the second half before it started raining tries. Besides, after a statement like that, who needs a long version?
Next stop, Heineken Cup.
The other two Heineken Cup semi-finals were played today. I am sorry to say that the Ospreys were totally out-matched. The 43-9 scoreline was entirely fair, and actually the 9 points the Ospreys scored all came from Munster mistakes.
Thankfully the Harlequins-Leinster game was an absolutely nail-biter right to the end. It ended 6-5 in favor of the Irish, and there were a whole pile of “might have been” situations. The Leinster try came from a single bit of O’Driscoll brilliance and a lucky bounce of that odd-shaped ball. Leinster will point to the ref blowing up for a penalty when Fitzgerald looked to have a clear advantage. Quins will rue their luck in losing three (yes three) fly halves to injury during the game. Any minor twitch of fate could have tipped the result the other way.
So Leinster will play Munster in the other semi-final, and as it is scheduled for Croke Park that’s a home game for them. I still fancy Munster though, they were awesome.
It is a great weekend for rugby, with the quarter-finals of the Heineken Cup being played. And also, of course, a fabulous come-from-behind win in Perth by the Hurricanes who scored two tries in the last 10 minutes to steal a win. Go ‘Canes!
Meanwhile, back in Europe, Cardiff and Toulouse staged a rematch of the first ever Heineken Cup Final at the Millennium Stadium. Toulose won that game, and went on to win the trophy two more times, but this year are the only French side left at the knock-out of the competition. The game was a tense affair, which Cardiff eventually won 9-6. Not the prettiest rugby in the world, despite the presence of the famed Toulouse back line. Credit then to Cardiff for keeping such dangerous players quiet.
Next up was an equally tense and somewhat more exciting clash between Leicester and Bath. The game was tied 15-15 going into the last 10 minutes, and both sides had opportunities to scores. As it turned out, a brilliant break by Leicester’s French replacement scum half, Julien Dupuy, finally separated the two sides and won the game for the Tigers. Leicester now play Cardiff in the semi-finals.
Tomorrow the Ospreys travel to defending champions, Munster, with Lee Byrne and Gavin Henson both unavailable through injury. In addition BOD* leads the Leinster war band to The Stoop to take on Harlequins. I shall watch both games, and in the latter hope to spot Will in the crowd. He has promised me photos.
* That’s Brian O’Driscoll, to the uninitiated.
While I was having lunch today I was watching the end of a one-day cricket match in which South Africa were roundly thrashing Australia. The game was pretty much over when I tuned in, but I stuck around to listen because the current commentary team was billed as Greg Blewett and Claire Cowan. Blewett, of course, I knew. He had a fine career with Australia, but who was this South African woman? Indeed, not only did we have a woman in the commentary box (which must be causing MCC members to have heart attacks), but she was clearly very knowledgeable about the game, even venturing to give Punter some advice on his batting technique.
Thanks to CricInfo I now know that Ms. Cowan opened the batting for the South African ladies team in a couple of tests back in 2003. It wasn’t a stellar playing career, but she seems to have successfully talked her way into the commentary box. And she’s doing a real job as well, not just reporting “human interest” stories from the sidelines, which appears to be the “woman’s role” in most sports broadcasting.
So well done Claire, and well done South Africa. That and Claire Taylor being the first woman to be honored as one of Wisden’s Players of the Year. I await news that an earthquake has struck the Members’ Room at Lords.
I almost forgot to post about this because it isn’t online and the paper copy is in California. Issue #29 of the multiply Hugo-nominated Challenger has been released into the wild of the postal service. In it there is an article by me explaining why cricket is the ideal sport for novel readers. You are free to disagree, but you are of course wrong if you do so.
The zine will presumably appear online at some point, and I’ll let you know when it does, but why not get some paper copies. You need to read it for Hugo voting, right?
F1 roars back into life this weekend in Melbourne. Friday practice has finished, and if things stay the same way tomorrow then the front row of the grid will be — all Williams. The Ferrari and Brawn cars also did well. Heiki was 5th, so anything Lewis says about the McLaren being off the pace needs to be taken with a pinch of salt. Good to see Adrian Sutil in the Force India very competitive in 9th. Here’s hoping for a very competitive season (and fewer lawyers).
With only weeks to go until the start of the tournament, the Indian Cricket Board has announced that this year’s Indian Premier League, the hottest event in world cricket, will have to be held in another country. Apparently there is a general election scheduled in India at the same time, and the government is so concerned about the danger of political violence that it doesn’t want to allow any event that could be a major security risk. Given what happened in Pakistan recently, their concern is understandable.
It is, however, a tragedy for India. Not only are the cricket fans in the teams’ home cities going to be denied the opportunity to attend games, but it will inevitably suggest to the rest of the world that India is an unsafe place to visit. What’s more, given the lack of time available, it isn’t at all clear that an alternative venue can be found in time. The tournament may not take place at all, which would probably prove a financial disaster for all involved. Jonathan Agnew is doubtless rubbing his hands with glee.
The good news is that the BCCI hasn’t given up. They are actively talking to cricket boards in other countries about hosting the event. South Africa is probably the front runner, but England is also a possibility. And that means that I might actually be able to go and see the Rajasthan Royals play live! Oh please, please let them be based in Taunton.
Well, there’s no getting around this, we were beaten by the better side on the day. Wales very nearly won the game. They lost by a few feet, which is the distance by which Stephen Jones’s last minute penalty kick failed to get over the crossbar. The game was that close.
However, Ireland scored two good tries, while Wales never looked like scoring. They also wrecked the Welsh lineout. It was really only their own indiscipline that allowed the score to be so close.
As everyone else is pointing out, the last time Ireland won a Grand Slam was 61 years ago. Wales achieved that feat most recently in 2005 and 2008, so it would be churlish to deny Mr. O’Driscoll and his colleagues their moment of glory.
Next year, on the other hand…
Before that, however, there is the small matter of the Lions tour of South Africa.
Today I went to investigate the new Westfield Mall in Shepherd’s Bush. Bay Area folks will be used to such things, but it is a bit of a departure for London. It is, however, dead easy to get to by Tube, which is a very good thing. It is probably about the same size as Valley Fair, but with more open space inside it. Fortunately today it was pretty quiet.
I didn’t buy a Hugo dress. I did find a very nice dark blue one in Debenhams (just the color you suggested, Keri), but they had nothing between a 10 and a 20, and in any case it was £100 which seemed a bit painful after last year’s $22 bargain.
I almost bought a coat in Next. It looked great on the mannequin, but it was a bit padded and consequently made me look even more fat than I am, which is not good. But I did manage to find new stocks of Whittard’s mango tea at last. I’d been getting worried that they had stopped making it.
On the way back I stopped off at Oxford Circus to check out Hugo nominees in Borders. FAIL. Not one of the Best Novel nominees was available in the SF section. i did finally find one lost and lonely copy of The Graveyard Book in the YA section, but that was all. Tsk.
I did also check Liberty in case they had a Vivienne Westwood dress I wanted them to put aside in case I win the lottery, but no luck there either.
The other piece of news I got from the trip is that the Victoria Line will be closed all weekend. This has caused me to change my plans for tomorrow. Instead of going to find a pub for the Wales-Ireland I’m going to stay here and listen to the games on the radio instead. If we win I can watch the game on the iPlayer next week.