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Sun, 23 Oct 2011

Rugby World Cup roundup

Best gameCanada / Japan
Best national anthemItaly. Those of Wales and Russia are also excellent, but Italy's was better suited to the soprano-heavy choirs used.
Best Morris danceNew Zealand
Best facial hairAdam "Bigfoot" Kleeberger (Canada)
Worst facial hairLouis Stanfill (USA)'s pathetic moustache
Best hairRadike Samo (Australia)'s humungous 'fro
Best teamNew Zealand
Hardest workersJapan, against France; and Fiji, against South Africa
Most exciting teamFiji
Most exciting playersMa'a Nonu (NZ); Martin Castrogiovanni (Italy)
Most impressive playerTendai Mtawarira (South Africa)
Biggest disappointmentTakudze Ngwenya (USA) having no impact whatsoever
Biggest annoyancesNew Zealand's timezone, and scrums not being fed straight

Posted at 13:14:23 by David Cantrell
keywords: sport
Permalink | 1 Comment
Fri, 1 Apr 2011

Cricket World Cup 2011

It is, of course, not Real Cricket, but the World Cup has been good fun. I've been particularly impressed by some of the very athletic fielding, by just about all the teams apart from England.

Even though there's one more game left to play, I already know who my players of the tournament are: Virender Sehwag of India and Shahid Afridi, Pakistani captain. And my team of the tournament is Sri Lanka.

There are three men who might change my opinions, if they perform brilliantly in the final: Sachin Tendulkar, Lasith Malinga, and Muttiah Muralitharan, althoughthe last of those is injured and I don't expect him to do much.

As for the next World Cup, it's a great pity that there will be no "associate" nations. Sure, they're mostly whipping boys who can't achieve much, but the best of the non-Test-playing nations deserve to play against the best teams in the world. Without doing so, they won't improve even further - the likes of Ireland can't improve by playing Canada, Kenya, Netherlands, and Afghanistan. Sure, they'll still be in the T20 world cup, but that's even further removed from Real Cricket (even if it is jolly good fun, and I'm looking forward to the IPL 2011). Shame on the ICC!

Posted at 22:22:25 by David Cantrell
keywords: sport
Permalink | 0 Comments
Tue, 18 Nov 2008

Kayakers and Killjoys

Kayakers have been enjoying themselves by going down the 300 foot spillway at a dam in Wales. Did they hurt anyone? No. Did they damage anything? No. Is it likely that they would have hurt anyone other than themselves? No. Was it likely that they would damage anything other than their own stuff? Again, no.

So why the fuck is the dam's operator so pissed off about it? They seem to be saying that the kayakers put other people at risk, but no they didn't. They very responsibly went down individually, so they wouldn't crash into each other, and if they had a tumble half way down, all that would happen is that their bloody and mangled corpse would have got spat out into the pool at the bottom, where it could be easily retrieved by their mates - and without even contaminating the water supply with the merest hint of a smidgen of kayaker-blood.

In a free society, people should not be prevented from or punished for doing stupid dangerous things to themselves. Welsh Water need to stop being such fusspots. I'm a bit pissed off with the BBC too, for their uncritical coverage of Welsh Water's hissy-fit.

Posted at 22:25:59 by David Cantrell
keywords: bbc | sport
Permalink | 0 Comments
Sat, 20 Oct 2007

Rugby World Cup roundup

Best gameArgentina / Georgia
Best national anthemWales
Best Morris danceNew Zealand
Ugliest teamGeorgia
Best teamSith Efrika
Biggest disappointmentAustralian scrummaging
Hardest workersPortugal, against the All Blacks
Most unexpectedly good teamGeorgia
Most exciting teamFiji
Most exciting playersBryan Habana (Sith Efrika) and Takudzwa Ngwenya (USA)
Biggest annoyanceScrums not being fed straight, and referees not caring

Posted at 23:56:14 by David Cantrell
keywords: sport
Permalink | 2 Comments

Rugby World Cup Final: prediction

Some months ago, I put twenty quid on Sith Efrika to win the world cup. Those of you who have bet with me before will know that this means England will win.

Hurrah! I win either way!

Update: bollocks

Posted at 16:16:30 by David Cantrell
keywords: sport
Permalink | 0 Comments
Wed, 20 Jun 2007

Moslem martial artists

I'm very pleased to see this story about Moslem women learning martial arts. It's something I've been advocating for a long time (in the second piece, search for 'defence', it's about half way down the page. My comments are in green).

Posted at 22:59:36 by David Cantrell
keywords: politics | religion | sport
Permalink | 1 Comment
Tue, 19 Jun 2007

Won't you think of the children?

The cynic in me wonders how many times this story will pop up again in various guises, seeded in the media by the police and government to further their agenda of ever more surveillance and interference in peoples' private lives BECAUSE OF THE CHIIIILDREN, all the while carefully not mentioning that most kiddy-fiddlers are either family members or very close family friends.

They've already managed to terrify people enough that you can't even take a cricket umpiring course without that surveillance and interference, even if all you want to do is make better decisions while umpiring for your pub team. Because obviously, someone umpiring a cricket match out in the open on a village green is so much more of a threat to a child than its own parents are in the privacy of their isolated farm.

As far as I can tell, this policy means that the umpire must be responsible for interrupting play every so often to remind all the parents watching the match to slather sun screen on their brats. At least, that's the only "child protection" angle that I can come up with.

This ever-increasing surveillance and interference is going to have dire effects on civil society. Many ordinary, decent people are offended by the notion that they should submit to pointless checks on whether they're a kiddy-fiddler (and really, if the CRB knows I'm a kiddy-fiddler why the hell aren't I in jail where I can't umpire a cricket match anyway?) and so won't submit to them. So expect far less childrens' sports. And it doesn't just fuck sports up either. All kinds of volunteers have to undergo these checks now. I believe that my father has to because he delivers library books to housebound old people. Never mind that he's been married for thirty plus years and is in his sixties. Never mind that he's been doing his library round for years and volunteering to drive a bus for the oldsters for years either, all without even the slightest hint of a complaint. None of that matters. And he told me that if he was required to submit to CRB vetting, he would very seriously consider not continuing, so bang go vital services for old people as well.

Posted at 21:52:58 by David Cantrell
keywords: politics | sport
Permalink | 0 Comments
Sun, 10 Jun 2007

The day star - it burns!

After the minor disaster of a couple of weeks ago, Dad and I went to Arundel to watch Sussex play Essex. And lo, there was no rain! And while there was a some cloud, it was mostly just bright sunshine, so there was a cricket match to watch.

Essex batted first and set a target of 257. They didn't look anything special while doing it, so we all thought that it would be pretty easy. Sussex are the current champions, after all. But no. It was looking like a horrible embarrassment at 34 for 7 after some vicious Essex fast bowling, but the Sussex tail end did well, scoring another 90 runs for the last three wickets.

But the end result was still something the team should be ashamed of.

And I got horribly sun burnt.

Scorecard | BBC match report

Posted at 21:04:59 by David Cantrell
keywords: sport
Permalink | 0 Comments
Thu, 31 May 2007

Cricket, Rain and Old English

It was dad's birthday last week, so on Monday I took him to see Sussex play Ireland at Hove in the ECB Trophy. Predictably, being a bank holiday, it rained all bloody day so there was no play. Thankfully, we can use the tickets in two weeks time to see Sussex against Essex at Arundel in the same competition. Unfortunately this means that I can't go Ða Engliscan Gesiðas's Old English learning day which is at the same time. Bah.

It's a shame we couldn't see Ireland play. They did very well indeed in the recent World Cup, and it would have, I am sure, been an entertaining game.

Posted at 22:26:25 by David Cantrell
keywords: anglo-saxon | language | sport
Permalink | 0 Comments

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