1Xtra, the BBC's digital black music radio channel, aired a documentary last Monday entitled "Men in White", which was essentially asking the question: "Is England a white sport dominated by class?" Considering that there are currently no players of Afro-Caribbean or Asian heritage in the England Test team, it's a salient point.
http://sport.guardian.co.uk/cricket/comment/0,10070,1552951,00.html
Thought-provoking opinion piece in today's Guardian by former New Statesman editor Peter Wilby on the controversy over English Test cricket TV rights. Wilby argues that Government intervention to keep Test cricket on free-to-air television would be inappropriate. "But sport is just entertainment, for heaven's sake."
If it finishes with a winning margin of two runs then it must be The Greatest Game Ever. Right? Wrong.
It's a Wednesday in the middle of winter in Centurion. So why aren't the South African fans thronging in their thousands to see the latest figment of Jagmohan Dalmiya's cash register... er, imagination?
Play had begun on a bizarre note when Smith, the Scots wicketkeeper and also a policeman, was forced to miss the opening 40 minutes of play after being called to Aberdeen Sheriff Court as a witness. Smith headed for court but soon returned after the hearing was abandoned because the accused had slept in.
- David Kelso, The Scotsman, 16.8.05
http://www.supercricket.co.za/default.asp?id=3922&des=sportstalk
Neil Manthorp's take on the Afro-Asian extravaganza, which starts this Wednesday.
(And continuing on the subject of columnist archives, here is Supersport's Neil Manthorp page.)
The women's Ashes Test series began at Hove on Tuesday. I don't know why the ECB insists on scheduling women's tours in parallel with their male compatriots. Australia had to do it in 2001 and England toured Australia as the men's tour was winding up in early 2003.
It's a hundred years since Bart King, America's greatest cricketer of all time, graced the playing fields of both his own country and of England as a world-class all-rounder. It was Sunday, August 6, 1905, that five thousand people watched a New York XI lose by fifty runs to the MCC in a two-day game at the Staten Island Cricket Club.
You can take your Border-Gavaskar, Compton-Miller, Chappell-Hadlee, even your Peden-Archdale... I am now unveiling, belatedly but otherwise as promised, the name of my award for the Ashes Player of the Tournament.
Presenting: the Midwinter-Midwinter. Who needs to invoke the names of two legends when you can honour one person twice?
Whew. It's taken up every minute of my spare time these past few days, but I've completed a thirteen-minute cricket podcast which may or may not be the first of a series.
I've gone for a simple title: "The Net Sessions". Although most of the first edition is the sound of my dulcit tones, interspersed with a few cricket-related sound bites, I hope to do a few interviews in the future and obtain correspondents' reports.
