Have you got six months off? Do you fancy a long walk? If so, World Expeditions may have just the holiday for you. They have become the only trekking outfit to offer a guided trip along the first completed section of the Great Himalayan Trail (GHT).
Stretching for 1,700km along the length of Nepal, the GHT will take you a mere 157 days to complete. You’ll see eight of the world’s 14 peaks over 8,000m, including Everest, and cross passes reaching up to 6,000m, climbing a total of 150,000m. That’s a Snowdon every day for half a year. Oh, and it will set you back £20,500.
The GHT isn’t the world’s longest long-distance footpath. The Continental Divide Trail in the US is 5,000km and the Trans Canada will be three times that. But this steroidal version of the Pennine Way looks like being the most coveted of all. Eventually, the trail’s originators hope it will stretch from the mighty 8,000m peak Nanga Parbat in Pakistan, considered the westernmost outlier of the Himalaya, to Namche Barwa in Tibet. It will connect five Asian countries – Bhutan, China, India, Nepal and Pakistan. More:
Click here to watch the IPL matches live on YouTube
The IPL, six weeks of razzmatazz and TV with a little sport, is predicted to double last year’s takings. Jason Burke in The Guardian:
It is already big and brash. It is about to get substantially bigger and brasher. At 8pm on Friday, hundreds of millions of people in India, from tea shops in Mumbai slums to plush Delhi suburbs and thousands of villages in between, will sit down to watch the Deccan Chargers play the Kolkata Knight Riders in the opening match of the third season of the Indian Premier League (IPL).
“If you thought the first two seasons were the ultimate cricket-meets-entertainment blockbusters then you haven’t seen anything yet,” enthused the Financial Express newspaper.
The IPL phenomenon cuts across all barriers of class, caste and income. At the exclusive Tollygunge Club in Kolkata – or Calcutta as it is often still known – staff will take a few hours out while members halt their golf, squash and riding. Both clientele and staff (more surreptitiously) will watch the fast and furious 20-over cricket shown on a big screen on the wall of the main bar. “It doesn’t matter who wins. It’s the game that counts,” said Sajad Mundal, the chief steward. For 10-year-old Anvam Najpal, sipping a soft drink that Mundal had just brought him, the tournament has already started. At his exclusive private school, a mini IPL, with just 10 overs played, is already under way. He is a Deccan Chargers fan. His dad however supports the Delhi Daredevils.
“But we will all watch it together,” he said. “Mum’s not that interested, but she’ll watch it with us. I really like seeing all the different people from all over the world playing together in unity.” More:
A nation led more by frenzy than reason had anointed Sachin Tendulkar as the greatest cricketer ever a long time ago. No matter that Donald Bradman’s batting average, at 99.94 runs per innings, is almost double that of Tendulkar. So how do we decide who was the ‘greatest’?
Tendulkar is the front-runner if volume of runs scored, the number of hundreds notched up, the sheer amount of matches played across all formats of the game, and the years spent on the field all go into the making of a yardstick. His double century against South Africa last month, the first ever in the one-day game, has once again triggered that old debate of ‘Who’s better, who’s best?’ This time round, even the conservative international media are willing to acknowledge that the Mumbaikar could well be on par — if not better than — the man who till now was considered ‘untouchable’ as a cricketing icon, Sir Don. More:
India superstar Sachin Tendulkar superbly smashed one-day cricket’s first 50-over double century. Below, from The Indian Express (click on the image to read the Express report on how Sachin prepared for the knock):
In the end, there seemed to be only one force of nature that could have stopped Sachin Tendulkar from reaching the first double century in one-day internationals: Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s inability to get the delivery away for anything less than a boundary. That was apt. Tendulkar owns many records, but they have never been just a matter of numbers. So it is that he again affirmed his special place in cricket by not allowing, in those final overs, any anxiety about the record change the drift of play. His partner was straining to give him the strike, but Tendulkar’s batting did not betray a temptation to get the strike by passing up an opportunity for a run. More:
From The Times of India report headlined “Sachin Tendulkar immortal at 200″:
If devout worshippers had any reason to quibble, it was that there was no one record-shattering innings – Brian Lara has the highest Test score of 400 and Saeed Anwar and the little-known Charles Coventry shared the ODI record of 194.
Just 147 balls later, Tendulkar set the record straight in emphatic fashion. A staggering 2,961 matches and almost 39 years after the first ODI was played – and remember, many ODIs in the early years featured innings of 60 overs each, which gave batsmen more scoring opportunities – the Little Legend finally became the first cricketer to score 200 in a one-dayer, propelled by a record 25 fours in one knock. More:
Update: Mumbai calls Sena bluff as movie opens to full house
Multiplex chains in Mumbai will have only a limited release of Shah Rukh Khan’s new film “My Name Is Khan” following threats of violence by the ultra Hindu-nationalist Shiv Sena party. As things stood on Friday noon, single-screen theatres will not show the movie.
Bal Thackeray, the leader of the party, has warned that he will not allow the movie to be released unless the actor apologises for opposing the party’s call to boycott Pakistani cricket players.
Shah Rukh Khan is the owner of the Kolkata Knight Riders Indian Premier League Twenty20 cricket team. He had said Pakistani stars should be included in the Indian Premier League teams. Shiv Sena supporters say that Pakistani players are not welcome in the city after the 2008 terror attacks.
Thousands of police were guarding Mumbai’s cinemas on Friday.
The movie is a classic love story set in the US after the 11 September 2001 attacks, and the Times of India’s critic has given it a rare five-star rating:
Ok, let’s get this straight from the very beginning. It’s Khan, from the epiglotis (read deep, inner recesses), not `kaan’ from the any-which-way, upper surface. In other words, it’s the K-factor — Karan (Johar) and Khan (Shah Rukh) — like you’ve never seen, sampled and savoured before. My Name is Khan is indubitably one of the most meaningful and moving films to be rolled out from the Bollywood mills in recent times. It completely reinvents both the actor and the film maker and creates a new bench mark for the duo who has given India some of the crunchiest popcorn flicks.
Liverpool emerged as a takeover target for the seventh-richest man in the world last night as the pressure mounted on Tom Hicks and George Gillett Jr to cut a deal to sell Anfield.
Mukesh Ambani, the wealthiest man in India, is one of two tycoons from the sub-continent competing to buy a stake in the Merseyside club.
The Sahara Group’s chairman, Subrata Roy, and Ambani’s Reliance Industries have each tendered similar bids to pay off Liverpool’s £237 million debt in return for a 51 per cent stake in the club.
Last night Christian Purslow, the Liverpool chief executive, denied any knowledge of either bid, but The Times understands that approaches began as early as November and that some preliminary talks have taken place.More:
Update: Liverpool have denied that there has been any contact with either of the two Indian businessmen linked with buying a 51% stake in the club.
What can one say about Imran Khan? A great former cricketer, a compassionate philanthropist … a sorry excuse for a politician. But his continuing forays into bad politics and tactical blunders can be excused, for he is yet to understand that politics is not a game of cricket, and that the democratic election process does not follow the selection policy he enforced as the captain of the Pakistan cricket squad.
The truth is, Khan’s penchant for picking up talented players seemed to have gone haywire when he decided to pick his early political mentors.
Coming from a highly educated, cultivated, and somewhat liberal background, Khan had slipped into reverse gear by the time he decided to enter politics in the early 1990s. In other words, instead of looking forward to becoming an integral part of a new, democratic, and General Zia-less Pakistan, Khan struck an ideological partnership with shadowy characters who were hell-bent on keeping the country stuck in the 1980s – a decade when Pakistan pulled and damaged all of its important political, economic and social muscles under the stressful weight of a myopic dictatorship and the damaging jihad that a dictatorship sponsored in Afghanistan. More:
James Zug in Squash Magazine [July 2004]. From 3quarksdaily:
Hashim Khan, who I think can fairly be described as the greatest squash-racquets player of all time, made his American debut in the winter of 1954.
Hashim Khan, may his tribe increase, completely changed the course of events in the game of squash racquets.
The more I think about it, the more firmly convinced I am that the greatest athlete for his age the world has ever seen may well be Hashim Khan, the Pakistani squash player.
That was how Herbert Warren Wind led off his three epic articles on squash in the New Yorker, in 1973, 1978 and in 1985. Being the New Yorker, the articles were rigorously fact-checked, and all hyperbole was stricken with a red pen. These three sentences were true then and are true today.
Call it the curious incident of the forgotten cricketers. After nearly two hours of a keenly watched auction on Jan. 19, the Indian Premier League’s eight cricket teams bought 11 of the 66 players from 11 countries on offer. But not one Pakistani player was picked.
India and Pakistan have long been enemies on the pitch, but such a public rejection of some of Pakistan’s best players (who are also some of the region’s best players) represents a dangerous new low. The auction process is an important part of the Premier League’s “Twenty20 cricket,” an entertaining, made-for-television, abbreviated form of the sport played in 16 countries.
Twenty20 cricket is not the traditional, seemingly endless version where men in white take a break for tea. Here a match lasts around three hours, with each team playing only 20 overs, trying to amass as many runs as possible and using unconventional techniques. Busty cheerleaders encourage them. And international players are traded just like they are in Major League Baseball or the English Premier League. The changes have drawn new, younger crowds and attracted millions of dollars of television advertising and a recent deal with YouTube. More:
Ayaz Memon in Mint-Lounge on India-Pakistan cricketing relations:
My late friend Omar Kureishi (whose crusty voice on radio brought Pakistan cricket alive for millions of followers from the 1950s till his death in 2005) had a simple solution for the subcontinent’s most vexing issue. “Keep the ruddy politicians out, and cricket will keep the people of India and Pakistan together.”
This came shortly after the Karachi one-day match had been disrupted by young men who had run on to the field and assaulted India captain Krishnamachari Srikkanth, ostensibly to advocate the “Kashmir cause”. Like a quintessential cricket romantic, Omar, despite his privileged education and understanding of realpolitik, could be reduced to utter dismay at the volatility of Indo-Pak relations, in which cricket would often become the first casualty.
“In 1961-62,” he related to me, after the Karachi incident, “Hanif Mohammad had his hand slashed by a ruffian’s blade. Why would anybody want to deprive millions of people from watching a master like Hanif, or a young prodigy like Tendulkar (who was making his international debut then) play unless they have been weaned on prejudice?” More
The editorial in Dawn, Karachi: The IPL uproar
It may well be true that reasons of politics sealed the fate of Pakistan’s T20 celebrities. Even so, there is no cause whatsoever for the Pakistani government to question the workings of a private venture in India that is first and foremost a moneymaking enterprise. And even if New Delhi is being duplicitous, as some allege, Islamabad should show more grace and refuse to mix politics and sports. Pakistani fans and players have every right to be outraged. Not so the Government of Pakistan. More:
Also from Dawn: News and comments from the Indian press in the aftermath of the exclusion of Pakistani cricketers from the Indian Premier League.
A film retelling mountaineer Reinhold Messner’s legendary ascent of Nanga Parbat, in which his younger brother was killed, has reignited a bitter mountaineering row and prompted fellow climbers to attack as “false” the version of events being portrayed on the screen.
A group of climbers who accompanied Messner, now 65, and his brother Günther on the 1970 expedition have criticised the makers of Nanga Parbat for telling only one side of the story – and have threatened legal action.
The film, by the director Josef Vilsmaier, is being advertised under the slogan “two brothers, one mountain, their fate” and promises to reconstruct the events when Günther disappeared after apparently following Reinhold down Nanga Parbat in Pakistan, the ninth highest mountain in the world and one of the most treacherous to climb. From the start the film, much of which was shot on location, makes clear that it is telling the story “from the point of view of Reinhold Messner”. More
Distant and mysterious, the mountain is perhaps the most feared and respected climbing peak in the world. A traveler journeying there discovers an icy world as perilous as it is beautiful. Graham Bowley in the New York Times:
One day last June, I roped up to a porter and we leaped over crevasses until we reached the side of K2, the second-tallest mountain on earth and one of its deadliest. We scrambled up a few hundred yards to the Gilkey Memorial, a rocky, sandy promontory at K2 Base Camp that commemorates climbers who have died on K2’s dangerous slopes.
The air was loud with the sound of ravens. Metal mess plates, punched with the names of some of the fallen climbers, tinkled gently in the breeze. About 12,000 feet above us, the top of the mountain was hidden by cloud; only its vast toes of black and brown rock were visible, stretching down onto the frigid boulder-strewn rubble of the Godwin-Austen Glacier a few hundred feet below.
It was just below freezing. Descending quickly, I tried not to look at the warren of rocks around me where some of the bodies, blasted by storms down K2’s slopes, were buried. Parts of some of the bodies were visible, and occasionally I glimpsed a piece of ripped climbing suit or an old boot, or smelled something sickly on the air. More:
The only proper answers to the greetings “How do you do?” “How are you?” or “How are you doing?” are “Fine,” “Great,” or “Very well, thank you.” This is not a request for information about your well-being; it is simply a pleasantry.
Americans are generally uncomfortable with same-sex touching, especially between males.
Americans smile a great deal, even at strangers. They like to have their smiles returned.
Men and women will sit with legs crossed at the ankles or knees, or one ankle crossed on the knee.
Americans are often uncomfortable with silence. Silence is avoided in social or business meetings.
Never begin eating until everyone is served and your hosts have begun. Offer food or drink to others before helping yourself. Serve all women at the table first.
Click here to read the full list of cultural etiquette tips.
And here for the list of dos and don’ts when visiting India.
An example, “When an Indian smiles and jerks his/her head backward — a gesture that looks somewhat like a Western “no” — or moves his head in a figure 8, this means “yes.”
In Mint-Lounge, Salil Tripathi reviews Imran Khan: The Cricketer, The Celebrity, The Politician (HarperCollins):
Khan’s is a fascinating saga: A world class sportsman who propelled his country to the top of the cricketing world, albeit briefly; lover of many women whose hearts he broke easily; a quixotic politician who failed to translate his personal popularity into political appeal in a country crying out for heroes; a man deeply affected by the death of his mother, which prompted him to make a herculean effort to raise nearly $60 million (around Rs281 crore now) to build a world-class cancer hospital in Pakistan.
In fact, his mother had a deep impact on his life. Early on in Imran Khan: The Cricketer, The Celebrity, The Politician, his new biography of Khan, author Christopher Sandford writes, quoting him: “‘Once, when I was 13,’ Imran recalls, ‘I was stopped by the police while I was driving my father’s motor car. Of course, I didn’t have a licence. So I did the only thing possible under the circumstances. I bribed the policeman. He took the money and I drove away again scot-free. But later that day the chauffeur, who’d been sitting next to me in the car, reported the incident to my mother. She was livid.’” More:
Suresh Menon on why Rahul Dravid is the intelligent man’s guide to what a sportsman ought to be. In Tehelka:
In his first Test, as indeed in his latest, Rahul Dravid invited both congratulations and commiserations. In fact, the one often came with the other in his career. He made 95 on debut at Lord’s, and it was impossible to congratulate him without commiserating with him; likewise after his brilliant 177 against Sri Lanka in Ahmedabad – great innings mate, but tough luck, you missed a sixth double century.
To be defined by what he has missed has sometimes been Dravid’s fate. When he made 180 in a Test match, he was upstaged by a man who made 281; that innings by VVS Laxman is rated as the best by an Indian batsman. When Dravid made his then highest one-day score of 145, Sourav Ganguly made 183 in the same innings; when he topped that by making 153 against New Zealand, Sachin Tendulkar made an unbeaten 186. Is Rahul Dravid the best supporting act in the history of the game or a great player born in the wrong decade?
He is the best supporting act in the history of the game (a world record 78 century partnerships in Tests) and a great player (over 10,000 runs in both forms of the game). It is tempting to conclude that he was born in the wrong decade, forcing him to play in the shadow of Sachin Tendulkar, but that hardly matters to the man who is in competition with no one but himself, and who was secure enough to say at one time, “Most people want me to get out quickly so they can watch Sachin bat.” More:
Bal Thackeray, the leader of the Hindu nationalist Shiv Sena, has criticised cricket icon Sachin Tendulkar over his remarks that Mumbai belonged to all Indians. The right wing party champions the rights of local people, the Maharashtrians, often with violence and intimidation. Sena offshoot the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), run by Thackeray’s nephew Raj Thackeray, has also taken up the “Maharashtra for Maharashtrians” cause.
Sachin Tendulkar had said, “I am a Maharashtrian and I am extremely proud of that. But I am an Indian first. And Mumbai belongs to all Indians.”
Now, in an open letter addressed to the cricketer in the Sena mouthpiece Saamna, Thackeray has slammed Tendulkar for “hurting Marathi sentiments.”
The Indian Express has the full text of Thackeray’s ‘open letter’ translated from Marathi:
Dear Sachin,
You have played like a king on the playground. You have got international fame, lots of money. You have not only become a lakhpati or crorepati but also an abjopati (billionaire). But nobody is complaining about it. Instead, we are proud (of you)! On the playground you are shining with a new glow. But before the Marathi mind could come to terms with your straight drive, you made a statement — “Though I am proud of being a Marathi and a Maharashtrian, I am a Hindustani first” — at a press conference, leaving cricket and venturing into politics. You have said something more: “Mumbai is not the monopoly of anyone. All people of Hindustan have an equal right over Mumbai.”
Sachin, the Marathi mind was shattered after hearing this. Was it necessary to say this when everyone is poised to grab Mumbai? Why did you take this ‘cheeky-single’ while talking about your Marathi pride? Here you are ‘run out’ on the pitch of Marathi Manoos. We don’t understand why only the Marathi Manoos get such epileptic fits? (You don’t know) how Marathi Manoos secured Mumbai, as you were not even born then. Maneater Murderji Morarji Desai had gone on a rampage. This rampage resulted in Marathi Manoos bleeding on the streets. Hundred-and-five Marathi people sacrificed their lives for Mumbai. This Mumbai can’t belong to the father of any parprantiya (people belonging to another region). More:
The man considered the greatest mountaineer of his generation, who had been told 10 years ago that he would never walk again, was found dead in the Himalayas today after breaking his leg and becoming stranded on his latest extraordinary adventure.
Slovenian Tomasz Humar, 40, contacted his base camp on Monday to say he had broken his leg while climbing solo in Nepal. Satellite phone contact was made with him the following day, but a source at the camp reported Humar had sounded very weak and said: “This is my last.” It was the final contact he made.
The father-of-two, once rescued by the Pakistani air force in a celebrated mission, scaled the world’s toughest mountains and had been attempting to climb Langtang Lirung, a 7,227m (23,710ft) peak. Rescuers in Kathmandu said that four Sherpa guides with rescue equipment had flown to Langtang Lirung base camp, 6,000m up, earlier in the week and had trekked the slopes where Humar was supposed to be, but could not find him. Heavy snowfall on Wednesday and Thursday also forced climbers to postpone searches. More:
TOI: Please go back in time to when you met Sachin for the first time…
ANJALI: (Laughs) We’ve not really told many people this. I first met him at the Mumbai airport when he returned from his first tour of England in 1990, after scoring his maiden Test ton. In fact, when I first saw him at the airport, I didn’t even know who he was. It was purely by accident! I was there to pick up my mother and Sachin was arriving with the Indian team. That’s where we saw each other for the first time… we had a courtship of five years and got married in 1995. We had got engaged a year before that in 1994 and that was in New Zealand.
TOI: Do you believe in destiny?
ANJALI: Yes, it is destiny and I believe in that.
TOI: Sachin has been known to go out in disguise sometimes. Did he ever use a disguise to meet you?
ANJALI: Yes he did, just once. We had gone to see the movie Roja. I was studying medicine then and a couple of my friends planned it. Sachin did try telling me that that it would be difficult, but I insisted that he come along. To make sure nobody recognised him, we even got him a beard. He wore specs as well and we went in late. We watched the first half of the film, but during the interval Sachin dropped his specs and people immediately recognised him! It was a bit of a disaster and we were forced to leave halfway. More:
What was the atmosphere like at home? Did they not mind your playing the whole day?
They gave me a lot of freedom, especially my father. My brother was instrumental in making everything possible. Father was very understanding, he would give the green signal, but the ideas were definitely my brother’s.
Did your father believe you were good enough to play for India?
He encouraged me. The first year of school cricket was not that big for me. In the second year, I managed to score a hundred and I believed I was good enough…
How did it feel to be talked about as the boy who would become the greatest?
It felt wonderful. I took confidence from all the positive statements made about me and with the help of that confidence I looked to climb the ladder. I would only look at the positives and not worry about negatives. Every individual will have faults, I would rather… I used my strengths, my energy in the right direction. I would think of factors that would help me contribute. I took that confidence along whenever I went out to bat. I did not read any newspaper — I sort of avoided reading them!
You still play with child-like passion. What motivates you now?
Honestly, it is within me. I don’t think any external factor is needed to motivate me. Playing for India is in itself a huge motivation and I take a lot of pride in playing for India. I care about cricket. This is all I ever wanted to do.
Have you ever thought that someday, you will have to give up cricket? Does that thought frighten you?
Not at this stage, I am enjoying my game and there is cricket left in me.
They are the two biggest icons of the country; they are also unabashed admirers of each other. Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan speaks about the genius of Sachin Tendulkar, who completes 20 momentous years in international cricket. From the Times of India:
You are a legend yourself and have been in the limelight for so many years now. Do you appreciate the way Tendulkar has handled pressure, both on and off the field?
AB: I am no legend, but Sachin is a consummate artist and all such artists are gifted in handling pressure under all circumstances. Indeed, I believe if there were to be no pressure in an artist’s life, his best would never emerge.
Have you ever delayed a shoot, or postponed an appointment, just because Tendulkar was going great guns during a match?
Sachin Tendulkar on Thursday produced one of the best innings in the history of one-day cricket. Soumya Bhattacharya, whose new book on how cricket defines India, All That You Can’t Leave Behind, will be out in bookstores next month, in the Hindustan Times:
So he made us eat our words. And didn’t we love the taste.
There we were, as India came out to bat against Australia on Thursday evening, the chaps who have spent more hours of our lives than we can bear to count watching him bat and atomising his each innings, there we were, shaking our heads and looking at the TV screens and mumbling into our coffees and saying: “No, he shouldn’t have opened the innings.”
No, Sachin Tendulkar should have left it to Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir, we’d thought. He should have come in at No. 4. What were they all up to? Did they not remember the number of balls from which he had not scored in just the previous innings? Chasing a score we had never chased down, did we not want to make best use of the first ten overs?
Fans will be fans. They will always ask questions. They will tend to be unforgiving. They will ask more from their heroes than their heroes can give them. So we’ll still say that had there not been so many dot balls in Tendulkar’s innings in the game before this one, we would not have been behind in the current one-day series. Oh, well. It’s in the nature of fandom. Not much you can do about it. More:
At the outpost of Sandakphu, along the border of India and Nepal, the snow-capped peak of Kanchenzonga glistens as the rising sun bathes it in fiery orange. But it is the towering pinnacle of Mount Everest, far in the distance and almost forgotten, that first captures the morning light – and the imagination of the local people. Their most revered hero is “the other guy,” a man that the rest of the world remembers, if they remember him at all, for coming in second: Everest summiteer Tenzing Norgay.
The sherpa who some locals say beat Sir Edmund Hillary to the summit of the world’s highest mountain is omnipresent along this popular trekking route, as well as in the nearby hill station of Darjeeling – the adopted home which he helped put on the mountaineering atlas. Virtually every home here displays a poster of Norgay in his youth with the overly optimistic legend, “Tenzing Norgay: Hero of the World,” or a calendar featuring the region’s dozen-odd Everest summiteers from the sherpa ethnicity that Norgay first made famous. More:
A new training manual that extols the benefits of sex before matches has India hot and bothered. Jason Overdorf at GlobalPost:
Gary Kirsten, the coach of India’s cricket team, has some advice for his players:
Have sex before matches, boys. And if no partner is available, then “go solo.” It says so, right in the team’s training manual leaked to Indian media.
“From a psychological perspective, having sex increased testosterone levels, which causes an increase in strength, energy, aggression and competitiveness,” the manual reads in pseudoscientific jargonese.
Breaking from decades of tradition, the story has sparked a national debate that threatens to erupt into a full-fledged “masturgate.” India, of course, is a traditionally conservative society that – while known throughout the world for the encyclopedic contortions of the Kama Sutra – has banned sex education in schools. A U.S.-based Hindu religious leader has already called for the South African Kirsten to resign, and Kirsten himself has blamed trainer Paddy Upton for the naughty bits in the manual. Meanwhile, a growing number of Indian commentators seek to explain why the boys needed “the talk.” More:
Saad Shafqat reviews “Imran Khan: The Cricketer, The Celebrity, The Politician” by Christopher Sandford (Harpercollins) at cricinfo:
Don’t be fooled by what you read in the press and hear in the media. In Pakistan it was decided long ago that he can do no wrong. He took those 12 wickets in Sydney, bowled that immortal afternoon spell of reverse swing in Karachi, stared the West Indies down on their home turf, led the cornered tigers in 1992. In short, he ushered Pakistan cricket into its golden era. And then there is the man. As any number of women would say, just look at him.
You would think this makes Imran Khan an irresistible biography subject – and you’d be right. There are very few autobiographies of Pakistani cricketers, and fewer biographies. Imran has become the focus now of a second worthy book (after Ivo Tenant’s Imran Khan, which appeared in 1994). The latest effort is by Christopher Sandford, a seasoned biographer who has previously tackled Godfrey Evans and Tom Graveney in addition to an august list from the world of music and film.
It is not strictly a cricket book, because Imran is not just a cricketer. There is naturally a great deal of cricket in it, but it is so seamlessly interwoven with general experiences of the human condition that this book can be read with equal enjoyment by die-hard fans and casual followers alike. Indeed, Imran transcended cricket in that many people with little interest in the game found themselves absorbed by his public image and personality. This book will appeal to them too. More:
The Forbes magazine has named Indian cricketer Mahendra Singh Dhoni as the top earning cricketer in the world last year. Forbes said that Dhoni earns $8 million in endorsements, from the brands like Reebok, General Electric and Pepsi, and the rest from his cricket salary and fees.
With its deep-pocketed owners and global appeal, the Indian Premier League (IPL) has shaken up professional cricket, luring top players from five continents with paychecks as big as $111,000 per three-hour match. That’s a stunning sum in a sport where domestic leagues have traditionally been an afterthought to the international version of the game.
While cricket is one of the most popular sports in the world (it’s played competitively in more than 100 countries), before the IPL launched last year, no domestic league was truly run as a business. But with IPL teams now paying top players as much as $1.55 million for just a five week season, versus $500,000 to $1 million, depending on the country, for an almost year-long slate of national team games, cricket is in the midst of a dramatic shift. More:
The public-address announcer was advising everybody to drink a lot of fluids (presumably those sold on the grounds) to avoid dehydration. On a warm, mostly sunny day, that seemed like a good idea.
Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi of Pakistan had a few bottles of water arrayed below his chair on Court 10, although it is the holy month of Ramadan, when many Muslims abstain from food or liquid from sunrise to sundown.
“I have to give the answer to God,” Qureshi said after he and his latest doubles partner, Jarkko Nieminen of Finland, beat Andrey Golubev of Kazakhstan and Denis Istomin of Uzbekistan, 4-6, 7-6 (11), 6-4, at the United States Open on Thursday.
In Qureshi’s continuing search for doubles partners, this was the first match the two had played together. Qureshi has shown his independence by playing doubles with Israeli and Indian players, asserting that he considers them brothers of the tour, and of life itself. More:
Somini Sengupta from Trivandrum in the New York Times:
Mangte Chungneijang Merykom
The girls punched hard.
From across India they came to this big, steamy government-run gym. Before entering the boxing ring, they bowed their heads to the floor, as though entering a temple. A sweet-shop owner’s daughter let loose a right hook. A construction worker’s daughter leaned against the rope, streams of sweat dripping from her face. Bouncing, ducking, like a grasshopper on speed, was a short girl from Calcutta with close-set eyes; she had forsaken her sister’s wedding for a chance to come here and fight. The thud of glove against glove echoed against the cavernous walls.
In a country with numerous obstacles for them, young women are gearing up to punch in the big league.
The International Olympic Committee earlier this month announced the entry of women’s boxing in the 2012 London Games. India was among the countries pushing to break the gender bar.
“This is my dream come true,” Mangte Chungneijang Merykom, 27, India’s most acclaimed boxer, better known as Mary Kom, said this week. More:
The Good Men of Manila Cricket Club was founded in 1992 by a group of single expatriate men in the Philippines. It has since turned into a global affair, hosted its own version of the World Cup and even made an appearance in cricketing journal, Wisden. Jo Wadham reports in the National:
There is something quintessentially English about the scene at the Bank of England Sports Club in London on this July day: 22 men dressed in their whites, an immaculate green grass pitch, under a blue sky dotted with white clouds, accompanied by the sound of leather on willow. But this is far from a traditional English cricket team. The team have not played together for 12 months; the members have travelled from places as disparate as Almaty, Guernsey, Hong Kong, Delhi, Singapore and the UAE, just to play here today. These are the Good Men of Manila.
It may sound like the title of a Graham Greene novel, but the story of the Good Men of Manila is one of cricket, friendship and the ties that bind, particularly among expatriates. It is about cricket as a leveller, crossing class and cultural boundaries.
Watching the players are their ever-supportive and tolerant families, the varied nationalities of the wives reflecting the nomadic lifestyles the men have led and some continue to lead. Children run about as their mothers, from the Philippines, Russia, the UK, France, Australia and India, catch up on family news. Players waiting to bat watch anxiously wearing the team’s green and white striped jackets and caps. More:
When Pakistani journalist Abid Shah visited Sri Lanka, everyone wanted to talk to him about the attack on their national cricket team in Lahore, and Shah began to see South Asia’s differences through the prism of the sport. From the National:
Something was wrong. The heat was there, the sun strong; the streets were hustle-bustle, the bazaars too; and clogging the roads were freewheeling three-wheeler taxis which in Pakistan I called rickshaws, but here are called tuc-tucs. Everything told me this was still South Asia, that Colombo was not very different from Lahore, that somehow our regional bond held. Yet, something was very different, and I was struggling to pinpoint it.
On the train, its carriages rattling as it hugged Sri Lanka’s western coast and chugged south, I fell into conversation with the man next to me. Arriva deSilva was a retired medical technician with spectacles, a short-sleeved shirt and wispy hair. He was a man of firm opinions, and he started grilling me about Pakistan with growing indignation.
Why, he asked, were so many Pakistanis illiterate, when Sri Lankans were so educated, when Sri Lanka boasted a literacy rate above 90 per cent? How could a democracy work with so many illiterate people?
It was not, I assured him, because Sri Lankans ate so much fish, but because of Pakistan’s feudal history, because of its unstable dictatorships and its ingrained class system. This was unacceptable to deSilva; no wonder Pakistan was such a mess. More:
