Tissa Devendra via Eric Robinson, courtesy of The Island, 17 June 2015, ….. http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=article-details&code_title=126609 where the title is “Cricket to the throb of udakki“
Have you ever been to Gunnepanē, near Kandy, on the Sinhalese New Year Day? If not make a note of it in your 195o diary. (I’ll try and meet you there, if possible). On that day for about the last thirty years there has been an annual cricket match between Gunnepanē and Amunugama, villages in Dumbara, which adjoin each other. The match, which is a local Derby, attended by the total populations of both villages, begins early in the morning, and, although it is a two innings’ game, played under the authorized laws of cricket, it is always brought to a definite decision by nightfall, which is more than can be said for a good many four or five day Test Matches. There has never been a draw yet!
This game stirs up locally all the public excitement associated with Test cricket. But, as there is room on the ground for all the three hundred or more partisans who flock to cheer on their champions, there is no need for them to rise before dawn to queue, as did so many of my friends in England, in 1948, for the England-Australia Tests. Continue reading
Cricket as warfare
Don Hodges, courtesy of SPORT, 25 November 2013, where the title is “Ashes 2013-2014: Sooner or later, arms and ribs will be broken”
The news that Jonathan Trott is returning to England as a result of a “long-stand stress-related” condition puts England’s defeat in the First Test at Brisbane into perspective. Cricket is not, as Alastair Cook said at yesterday’s post-match press conference, “a war”. It’s a game. A highly professional, intensely contested, increasingly well remunerated game. But a game nonetheless.
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