Sport

A Day Out

~ Cheryl

I spent much of today in London, much of it, in fact, in transit. The easy way to get from Farah’s house to central London is on the Victoria Line, but today it was closed for engineering work, so I had to take buses instead. Have I ever told you how much I hate buses? Especially in London. The Tube can be packed solid as well at times, but it runs on nice flat, straight rails. The buses are forever rolling over bumps, turning sharp corners, accelerating and braking. They go all around the houses, and get stuck in traffic. It is a horrible experience.

Not quite as horrible, however, as being a French supporter in London today. I saw the game from the comfort of a pub in Covent Garden, and a I have to say that if we hadn’t had the commentary (and known the players) we would all have assumed that the guys in blue were the leaden-footed, unimaginative English while the guys in white were the talented, creative French. There was no there there in the French side today, and England took full advantage of their good fortune.

Meanwhile I did some shopping. I have come back with a pile of books. The book porn posts are all on my Twitter feed if you want to know what I bought. Sadly it seems that Amberville won’t be out over here until August.

Due partly to my own slowness and partly to the slowness of the buses I didn’t have time to do any clothes shopping. I was also disappointed that Neal’s Yard Dairy isn’t open on Sundays. But of course I’m here for another week. I’m thinking of going to see Watchmen at the IMAX on Wednesday. Anyone else interested?

Italy 15-20 Wales

~ Cheryl ~ 7 Comments

Well, that was not the desired result. Yes, we won, but it would have been good to win by a much wider margin, and in a much more convincing manner.

As I recall, Wales got into a good try scoring position three times in the match. Two of those they converted, fairly easily. The third might have ended in a try with a less observant referee (not that there was any deliberate foul play, just a question as to whether a ball went forward out of a tackle). Italy, in contrast, spent much of the match camped in the Wales half, but never once looked like scoring a try.

So why didn’t we win by a bigger margin? I think mainly because we were not taking the game to the Italians. Way too much possession was wasted by aimless kicking and silly penalties. The Italians, in contrast, were much more disciplined than usual. They didn’t give away penalties, they didn’t drop many high balls, and they kicked well from hand. They also did well at the breakdown and in the scrums, and kicked what penalty opportunities came their way.

Meanwhile Ireland won in Edinburgh, and continue to look favorites. But they do have to go to Cardiff next weekend, so the championship could well come down to points difference. It will be good to beat them anyway, because there is the matter of the Triple Crown at stake (a trophy for beating all three other “home” British/Irish countries). But to win the championship we have to end up with a bigger overall points difference than the Irish. They are currently on +46, and we are on +21. Fortunately, because we are playing each other, each +1 for us is also a -1 for them, so we need to win in Cardiff by a clear 13 points. That’s doable, but difficult.

Don’t rule out the French either. If they win at Twickenham tomorrow they will be well placed to challenge for the championship. Their points difference is only +5, but they can add to that tomorrow and have a final game against Italy. It should be a very interesting last weekend.

America Under Attack

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

Dear American readers, I am sorry to have to inform you that your very way of life is under threat. Foreign forces are attempting to undermine all that is good and wholesome about the American way of life. No, this is not another warning about reds under the bed, about the gay agenda, or about terrorism. The threat is much worse than that:

Conservative suburban families, the backbone of America, have turned to soccer in droves.

Alex Massie has the sorry details. Please do not be alarmed, people of America. Rest assure that your government is doing all that it can to protect you from this hideous foreign threat.

World Champions!

~ Cheryl

One of the things about Sevens rugby is that because the games are so short you can get lots of them in during a day. However, I wasn’t expecting the final to be played today. I was wrong. Here are the results.

Semi finals: Wales 19 – 12 Samoa; Argentina 12 – 0 Kenya.

Final: Wales 19 – 12 Argentina.

You can find a report on the game, and pictures of happy Welsh players celebrating, on the official web site.

Update: Congratulations to the Aussie girls who beat New Zealand in extra time in the women’s final. And commiserations to the USA who lost narrowly to the Kiwis in the semi-finals.

Sport and Colonialism

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Today’s Guardian has an interesting article (which from the byline appears to have been written by Pakistanis) on the different attitudes towards cricket in Pakistan. Imran Kahn explains how success at cricket helped the country feel proud of itself in the past:

“The colonial hangover was removed by the cricket team,” he said. “When I started we were the generation that couldn’t possibly think of beating England. Then we began beating England. Much more important than beating other teams was to beat England because they were considered the master, the ex-colonialists. It was a country regaining its honour and pride through cricket, getting that self-esteem that colonialism destroys.”

And yet earlier this week the unthinkable happened. Pakistani terrorists attacked a a visiting cricket team, clearly intending to kill them all. Why? Because the terrorists regard cricket as a colonial import:

Among militant groups, though, cricket is considered an imperial throwback. The banned Lashkar-e-Taiba, suspected of involvement in the recent Mumbai and Lahore attacks, called upon Pakistanis to give up the sport. “The British gave Muslims the bat, snatched the sword and said to them: ‘You take this bat and play cricket. Give us your sword. With its help we will kill you and rape your women,'” the LeT said in its magazine.

The situation is similar in the rest of the Indian subcontinent and the Caribbean. Some of the greatest cricketers the world has ever known have come from India, the West Indies, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. What is more, the most high profile domestic cricket tournament in the world – the one with the most money involved, the one that players from all over the world want to be part of – is the Indian Premier League. Australia’s players might still be on top of the world, but when money and politics are taken into account it is India that runs the game. This infuriates stuck-up Englishmen.

Clearly I’m not a Pakistani, or indeed from anywhere in the former British Empire. I have no voice in their internal debate. Some of my ancestors, however, are from a part of Britain that was conquered by the English around a thousand years ago and was treated as a colonial possession for hundreds of years. Rugby is a game that was invented in an English public school, and is very much a creation of the upper classes (lower class English people are supposed to play soccer instead). And yet rugby is a game that the Welsh took to their hearts – particularly in the coal mining valleys of the south – and is now as much a part of our national psyche as cricket is of India’s. Nothing gives us greater pleasure than beating the English. And if a bunch of religious extremists were to tell us that we had to stop playing rugby because it is a colonial import I like to think we’d give them pretty short shrift.

Wales 15-14 All Blacks

~ Cheryl ~ 6 Comments

OK, so it was only Sevens, but it was the Sevens World Cup, and how often do we beat the All Blacks anyway?

For the benefit of non-rugby folks, Sevens is a 7-a-side variant of the game played on a full-size pitch which values speed and quick thinking over strength. Rather like Twenty20 cricket, it is a fast and furious game that gives less talented sides a much better chance of an upset. The quarter-finals have been played today (the matches don’t last that long because the action is non-stop and exhausting) and all four games have provided surprises. In addition to the Welsh win, Samoa beat England, Argentina beat South Africa, both in really close games, and the reigning World Champions, Fiji, were destroyed 26-7 by Kenya.

Lots of other games are going on, including a women’s tournament. Official web site here.

Cricket Under Attack

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

I woke up this morning to the terrible news that a bus taking the Sri Lankan cricket team to the ground for their game against Pakistan had been attacked by well-armed terrorists. Thankfully none of the team is seriously injured, though Thilan Samaraweera and Tharanga Paravitarana have been taken to hospital with shrapnel wounds to the thigh and chest respectively (see CricInfo). However, five Pakistani policemen who were part of the security team for the cricketers died protecting their charges. The Sri Lankan team was only in Pakistan because both Australia and India had declined offers to tour, claiming the country was “too dangerous”.

For the benefit of those of you in non-cricket-playing countries who may not be familiar with the politics, this appears to have been nothing to do with the Sri Lankans per se. Indeed, as Sanath Jayasuriya has been quoted in The Guardian, in all the years of conflict between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tigers, cricketers have never been attacked. Nor is this an Islam v Secular issue. The Pakistani team and government include many devout Muslims all of whom are cricket lovers as well. The Pakistani High Commissioner to the UK, speaking on Sky News this morning, talked about extremists who believe that cricket is un-Islamic: that is, he was talking about fundamentalists.

If you are looking for an analogy, the best one I can think of is to imagine what would happen if a bunch of well-armed Christian fundamentalists attacked a bus taking the Washington Redskins to a game against the Dallas Cowboys, complaining that playing football on a Sunday was sinful.

Of course there is more to it than that. There is a whole pile of politics involved, including the war in Afghanistan. Tariq Ali takes a look at the issues in The Guardian. But the core issue here is that this is a terrorist attack that will outrage ordinary Pakistanis in a way that attacks on Western tourists in India, or support for the Taleban, will not. As Alex Massie says in The Spectator, “the real intended victim is Pakistan itself.” And because of that I hope that we will discover that this time the terrorists have shot themselves in the foot.

6 Nations Update

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

Scotland and Italy managed to make each other look good this afternoon. By being more on the same level, they produced a competitive game that was most notable for the fact that the Scottish backline actually scored a try (and almost scored a couple more) for the first time in what seems like several millennia. (Yes, I know they have scored some recently, but they haven’t looked like they could, save for the odd bit of Evans brilliance.) The fate of the wooden spoon now appears to have been settled. The 26-6 win by Scotland will probably be their only win of the winter, and Italy still have to play Wales and France.

The Ireland – England match was no better. Having been installed as favorites for the championship thanks to the Welsh loss last night, Ireland developed an extreme case of deer-in-the-headlights syndrome. O’Gara in particular had a dreadful game, leading me to wonder whether he was down with flu or something.

Fortunately for the Irish, Brian O’Driscoll was not going to allow them to lose, despite various attempts by English players to send him to hospital. Furthermore, the English team appeared to be determined to throw the game away. I worry about poor Martin Johnson’s blood pressure. As it turned out, England actually woke up in the last 10 minutes and the final score was 14-13. If they had played like that the whole match they would have won. As it is, that narrow result will suit Wales and France very well as the championship may be decided on points difference.

There Goes the Grand Slam

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Well, these things would not be winning if they were not hard to get. And boy was that a hard-fought game.

I have no complaints. The French side were magnificent throughout. They coped well with playing part of the match with a make-shift fly half, and all of the match with a make-shift goal kicker. Their energy and commitment were faultless. Wales also played very well, and in the last 10 minutes of the match I counted four line-outs inside the French red zone. Any one of those could have resulted in a match-winning try. As it was, we lost by 5 points, and the Grand Slam dream is over for another year.

The championship, on the other hand, is still wide open. Every team except Ireland has now lost a game, but they still have to play England and Wales, each of which have lost only once. England still have to play France. There is still everything to play for, and if the rest of the championship produces games that are as bruising as this one we’ll be in for a lot of entertainment.

A US F1 Team?

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Today’s BBC news brings a report that a new Formula 1 team may join the circus in 2010. It will be headed by none other than Peter Windsor, who is a former manager of the Williams team as well as being one of the sport’s best known journalists.

The team is apparently to be known (at least for now) as USF1. The cars will be built in North Carolina and the drivers will all be American. Names being suggested include Scott Speed, Marco Andretti and Danica Patrick.

Now if only someone would get on and buy the Honda team so that our Jensen was guaranteed a drive for this year.

No World Record for Younus

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

I’m sorry to report that Younus Khan failed in his attempt to set a new world single-innings batting record. He was out for 313 early in the morning session. That puts him 13th on the all-time list, and only 3rd amongst Pakistani batsmen.

Records Go Tumbling

~ Cheryl

Last week we had a wonderfully competitive Test Match in Antigua where West Indies’ final pair of batsmen just managed to hold on for a draw. This week a very different kind of draw is being fought out in Karachi, Pakistan. The match is between Pakistan and Sri Lanka, and it is being played on a pitch that gives no help to bowlers whatsoever. The result long since ceased to be a question, but the match is fascinating nonetheless because of the records being broken.

Earlier in the game, Mahela Jayawardene and Thilan Samaraweera of Sri Lanka put on 437 together, setting a new world record for a 4th wicket partnership. Cricket lovers will doubtless know that Jayawardene, along with Kumar Sangakkara, also holds the record for the highest partnership ever – 624 for the 3rd wicket against South Africa in Colombo in 2006. But the Pakistan team did not fold under the pressure of Sri Lanka’s massive first innings total of 644-7 declared. They have fought back, and at the end of day four were 574-5. Younus Khan finished the day on 306 not out. With one day to play he has his sights on Brian Lara’s word record of 400 for a single innings. If the pitch keeps playing the way it has, he’s in with a chance.

You can find a BBC report and the full scorecard here.

Cricket Trivia

~ Cheryl

The great cricket statistician, Bill Frindall, was proud of the fact that he was born on the first day of the longest ever test match – a game between South Africa and England in 1939 which they planned to play to a finish no matter how long it took, but which actually had to be abandoned after 10 days because the English team had to catch their ship home. As I have reported, Frindall died earlier this year. His funeral took place last Friday, which by coincidence happened to be the first day of the shortest test match every played (the 10-ball farce in Antigua). As Test Match Special producer Adam Mountford notes, Bill would have loved that.

A Little More Rugby

~ Cheryl

It took Ireland a while to get going in Rome, but eventually they ran out easy winners 38-9. Despite the scoreline, Italy actually looked a lot better this week. Having an experienced scrum half, in the eccentrically side-burned Paul Griffen, made a world of difference. In two weeks time we have France-Wales, Ireland-England and Scotland-Italy. I think those might actually be three very close games.

6 Nations – Week 2

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

Today was something of a repeat of last Saturday – one joke game and one excellent one.

Scotland were a little better today than they were against Wales, thanks in no small part to the selection of the Evans brothers, but their pack is still getting beaten up a lot. Going in a game with only one specialist second row in your squad can’t be good. France, on the other hand, were largely incapable of capitalizing on their up front dominance, and the one try that they scored could have been ruled out for any number of reasons. Their 22-13 win was deserved, but only just.

England made a significant improvement on last week, and when they can get the ball to the likes of Flutie and Sackey they look a really good team. They were also superb in defense, snuffing out Welsh attacks in the red zone on a number of occasions. Joe Worsley really earned his man of the match award. And of course they scored two tries to the Welsh one.

And yet they lost, 23-15. They lost in part because the Welsh side is confident and disciplined; they lost in part because they were indisciplined; and they lost in part because they telegraphed their game plan. Some England fans will doubtless be complaining that Jonathan Kaplan favored the Welsh. I have no sympathy, and I think this should be a lesson for Martin Johnson. If you go into a game saying that you intend to bully the other team off the park, and prevent them from attacking by slowing the ball down, then the referee will be primed to look for infringements at the ruck, and will have his hand on the yellow card before the game has even started.

Next weekend there are no games, which will give you folks a bit of a break from my rugby fanaticism, and Shane Williams a chance to get his ankle right before the big game in Paris. I don’t expect the French to be as bad again. Here’s looking forward to a good game.

Mission Accomplished

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

For 60 minutes at Murrayfield Wales were totally dominant and playing some of the best rugby I have seen from them in ages. The fact that the scoreline was only 13-26 is due partly to some woeful place kicking from the Welsh, and partly due to wholesale substitutions on 60 minutes that caused the team to take their eye off the ball rather, and let the Scots back into the game. It could easily have been a massacre. More analysis follows..
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In Which I Am Brave and Adventurous

~ Cheryl

As per the Twitter comments, I have been outside. And returned safely with all of my limbs intact. There are parts of the sidewalks that are really treacherous underfoot, but for the most part I was able to avoid them (sometimes by walking in the road). There’s still a lot of snow on grassy areas such as the cricket ground, but otherwise it is clearing up nicely. I’m starting to feel a bit more confident about next week.

Meanwhile, I have rugby to watch. It is time to dig out the inflatable sheep leek and settle in to cheer on Ryan and the boys. Here’s hoping that they manage to avoid slipping up too.

Match Reports

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Well, that was an interesting start to the tournament. It began with one of the worst games of international rugby I have ever seen, and was followed by an exciting, high quality encounter between two very good sides.

The short version, for those allergic to sports is as follows: England beat Italy 36-11; Ireland beat France 30-21. More detail follows.
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Six Nations Kick-Off

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Yes, it is that time of year again. And that means that those of you who are allergic to sports are going to have to put up with me wittering on about Wales for a few weeks. Sorry about that, but this is a personal blog. So as not to pollute too much of your screen real estate I’ll try to put the longer posts behind cuts. Here’s a preview of the first round of matches that take place today and tomorrow.
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