Attributed to Percy Abeysekara, an avid cricket fan and staunch supporter of Lankan cricket. He is otherwise known as “Pissu Percy” and cut his teeth in this field as a cheerleader at St Aloysius College Galle.
but also note other moments in Percy’s life world …
Martin Williamson, in ESPNcricinfo,
from PA Photos
The current Test, being played under cloudless skies and with temperatures nudging 90°F, is the hottest Ashes match at Lord’s in almost four decades. While 1976 set 20th century temperature and drought records, the previous summer had been almost as warm. Although snow fell days before the start of the World Cup in early June 1975, thereafter the country basked in weeks of sun. The nation shed its clothes and basked. Some shed a few too many. The World Cup replaced a planned tour by South Africa and left the second half of the summer empty, so it was filled with a four-Test Ashes series. England had been thrashed the previous winter but the public wanted to see the Australians and the next series was not scheduled until 1977, so the move made commercial sense. Continue reading
Aleem Dar—Three Howlers and OUT he should be
Michael Roberts
There is a striking moment in Ian Fleming’s Goldfinger when the criminal mastermind tells James Bond that once is coincidence, twice is happenchance and thrice is war ending in the dungeon. Well! On this comparison umpire Aleem Dar should be consigned to the umpiring dungeons or refuse bin. He has the distinction of committing the same type of horrendous umpiring error not once, not twice, but THRICE!
When a batsman nicks or plays a ball to one of the slips most human beings can perceive the splice of the process so to speak. But not Dar… Not once, not twice, but THRICE. I have a vivid mental image of all three moments. Continue reading
Gideon Haigh, in The Australian, 16 July 2013
TUCKED away in a corner of the program for the Trent Bridge Test is a series of potted interviews with the match officials in which they are asked among other things whether they remember games for “decisions or players’ feats”. It’s great performances that count, avers Marais Erasmus. “If I’m not noticed,” he says, “it means I have got things right!” It’s good advice, and worth citing not only because of Erasmus’s inability to keep to it on the Friday of this Test. This was a wonderful game of cricket that deserves to be remembered for the excellence of its skills and the drama of its moments. But there’s also a danger that those recollections will be overshadowed by the umpiring – not because of its quality, although that was assuredly an issue, but because of its involuted complexity. Continue reading
Filed under Australian cricket, cricket and life, cricket governance, DRS, Gideon Haigh, IPL, sportsmanship
Michael Roberts
In watching this televised series on and off Iwas struck by the care with which the TV commentators avoided any refrence to that dreaded term DRS. There was at least one horrible decision when Iwas watching –Pujara in the Third Test; and another understandable but yet poor decision in the Fourth Test (Wade). But what did we receive from the venerable analysts behind the media presentation: RESOUNDING SILENCE on this issue. Obviously a decison from up above one can surmise.
But does it not indicate complicity in the obstinate idiocy on this point in India and the position of imperial domination they have establsihed in the cricket world? A RESOUNDING YES in my opinion. To be expected that answer — my question was rhetorical! Continue reading
Christopher Martin-Jenkins, writing after the England-Pakistan Test series in 2012 for the Times … and reproduced once again here as a Requiem for a MAN the cricket world will miss
Have you tuned in these last two weeks to the strangest sporting spectacle of the winter? Were we watching proper Test cricket in the entrepot and melting pot of Dubai, that fantastical oil-fired architects’ playground in the desert? Do three matches, decided in eleven days, more often than not before sparse crowds on neutral territory and producing a record 42 leg before wicket decisions constitute a genuine Test series? Continue reading
Pistol-Packing Paul Reiffel
Mahinda Wijesinghe, whose favours this title for his article “The Umpire who said ‘HURRAH! We won’,”
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Filed under Angelo Mathews, confrontations on field, cricket and life, DRS, fair play, Lords cricket ground, Sri Lanka Cricket, technology and cricket, television commentary