Click to ENLARGE. From my old blog, from 9 years AGO.Click to ENLARGE. THE letter.
They no longer can play cricket, especially Test cricket. They proved it again, this week, with their amazingly inept performance at (my beloved) “Lord’s”. They are a disgrace to International cricket.
They are not a cohesive, unified team — & NOW never will be. You can’t play for a country that doesn’t exist. A fake country. That is my WHOLE point. There is NO country called the ‘West Indies‘ — never have been & never will be.
That is why they play like pillocks. Yes, it did NOT used to be like & I speak of one who has a son named after ‘SIR Gordon Greenidge‘. But, now they have quite literally LOST IT. No identity. No team spirit. Time to kick them out.
Very simple. Only genuine, bona fide countries belong in the ICC.
Yes, I am in the process of watching the warm up game, viz., ‘Ind v Ban’. The Indian batting, following up from the just finished ‘IPL‘, was superb. Not so for poor, outclassed ‘Bangladesh‘.
Though I have known about it for years, I still can’t get my head around a CRICKET World Cup happening in the U.S. WOW. Amazing. Cricket, thanks to all the Asian ex-pats, is taking off in the U.S.
A lot taking place. Too much even for I to follow — though I will confess I am kind of busy & distracted. A portable stadium in New York! Some very serious security risks! Yikes.
Yes, I did THINK about going to a match in New York — but the logistics were a tad to overwhelming. IF I had been 20-year younger.
I just wanted to make sure YOU knew that a bona fide, ICC World Cup is happening, even as we speak, in the U.S. of A. WOW.
I haven’t watched ‘Willow TV‘ in weeks (though I have a fully paid up annual subscription) because, alas, they don’t have the streaming rights to the T20 World Cup. Instead, I have been watching all the World Cup games on ‘ESPN+‘. Though the cricket watching experience with them is nowhere near even close to that of Willow, they, to their credit, have done a fairly decent job with the World Cup. Much to my delight & relief we do have 15- to 16-minute highlights of all the matches. Those are what I watch. I don’t have the time to watch 3- to 4-hour long match.
But, with the World Cup ending on Sunday, i.e., November 13, 2022, Willow will be back in the streaming business. Hence, why I wanted to share the upcoming schedule with you. They sent it to me in the form of an e-mail. Enjoy.
I still can’t get used to the notion of the U.S.A. playing ICC sanctioned international cricket matches — & NOT just T20Is. Even ODIs! Wow.
Yes, I know they, i.e., the U.S.A., has played a few matches here & there.
But, BANG, suddenly — now — we have a full-blown series with T20Is & ODIs against Ireland. Yes, it is NOT one of the real BIG names, but Ireland is up there now — one of the 12 Full ICC members with Test playing rights. Wow. So, this is quite serious.
I just can’t get used to it, though way, way back, in the 1980s I did belong to a cricket club, in the U.S., in Massachusetts. Much has happened since, in particular a DRAMATIC increase in sub-Continentals settling in the U.S. I took a quick look at the current U.S. squad. There were three Patels! As far as I can see there are no Sri Lankans. But, this is all good.
When COVID is finally out of the way I should try to go and watch an international match in the U.S. It will be wild. I am happy. More cricket the better. SMILE.
I knew the name ‘Namibia‘ — but had not heard it in years, if not a decade. I knew it was near ‘South Africa‘, BUT if you had asked me to point to it on a map I would have been 800 miles off — horizontally (i.e., roughly the right latitude, but I would have been way off to the east). Wow. That is bad. I am dreadfully embarrassed & kind of sad. I was good at geography at school — but in the 1950s/1960s the world, quite literally, was a simpler place. There wasn’t as many countries. It appears that we had 104 countries in the world in 1950. Today’s we have 195!
That means the number of countries in the world have nearly doubled in my adult lifetime! That is sobering.
Something now bothers me about Namibia’s T20 cricket squad. How come it is nearly all white? Only 7% of the population is white. Initially, when I watched them bat (all under helmets), I did NOT notice any non-whites. But, when I saw them field I saw one. Appears that maybe they have two non-whites on the team. I won’t even mention the composition of the South Africa team — because there is the touchy issue of quotas, i.e., they have to select some non-whites. Hhhhmmm.
Click to ENLARGE. I ‘borrowed’ this from the ‘t20worldcup.com‘.
I would also have had trouble getting ‘Oman’ right on a map. This is bad — & it is a BIG country. I really need to spend some time staring at a NEW world map.
I did know where ‘Papua New Guinea’ was. That at least was good.
The truly global reach of cricket is becoming humbling. There are at least 106 countries that are now registered as cricket playing nations — that wish to be recognized as such. That is 54% of all the countries in the world. Not bad for what used to a sport restricted to countries with a British heritage.
