The First Test between Pakistan and India is now hours away and, as usual, the broadcast arrangements within India have only just been finalised this week. And there are winners and losers, as usual.
For the first time in India, and perhaps in the cricketing world, podcasts will be available to cricket aficionados to download and listen to at their convenience.
- Yahoo! India teams up with Gavaskar for podcasting and more, sourced from Indiantelevision.com, 10.1.06
Well no, Sunny won't be featuring in the cricketing world's first podcast, though he may well be the first leading player to appear in one.
Snogging match gets guard hot under collar
(Bruce Cutler, Hawkes Bay Today, 9.1.06)
I've added a handful of pics from Sunday's Twenty20 game to my flickr site. Possibly more to come but I've chosen a representative sample for now.
I attended my first Twenty20 game yesterday. While I won't be hanging out for the second, there are plenty who will. And that's a good thing.
Plane finds people playing cricket on runway
“I was playing cricket with my friends as usual on the strip. We heard the plane, but didn’t care, as no plane lands here daily. But suddenly I saw a plane rushing towards us and we began running to save our lives,”
Saturday's Indian Express tells the rest of the story.
The Australian: Giant man on a road less travelled [January 07, 2006]
The Australian's Mike Coward spoke to Vincent van der Bijl, one of the forgotten legends of South African cricket, at the Sydney Test this week. Van der Bijl is part of the South African official party on this tour.
Ricky Ponting's historic match-winning century at the SCG yesterday made the front page of all today's local papers, as the collage below demonstrates.
Reuters photographer David Gray captured Ponting's moment of ecstacy after scoring the winning boundary. Competing broadsheets The Weekend Australian (top left, owned by News Ltd) and the Sydney Morning Herald (bottom right, owned by John Fairfax and Sons) displayed their intense rivalry by publishing the exact same shot.
Have we just witnessed Ricky Ponting's finest hour (to date)?
That was a bold declaration by Graeme Smith this morning, but full credit to him for doing it and keeping the match alive. South African captains and sporting declarations usually come in the same breath as leather jackets and personal cash bonuses, so infrequently have they occurred.
Never let the facts get in the way of a good statistic. It's Ricky Ponting's 99th Test against teams not called the "ICC World XI", but that doesn't devalue a great century that looks as if it will save Australia from a tricky situation against South Africa.
Currently 4/206 needing another 46 to avoid the follow-on, with the real Dickie Knee lookalike Andrew Symonds at the other end.
