Snippets
Mark Waugh was known as "Afghanistan" since he was often the forgotten Waugh. He was also he was known as "Audi" after he got 4 ducks in a row which were recorded in the scorebook as 0000.
Please note that all cricket bats need oiling every 6/8 months to prevent cracking caused by drying out. To prevent disappointment of bats breaking due to lack of maintenance, we advice you to refurbish your cricket bat as given below. This will prolong the life of the bat. Your cricket bat requires a service to ensure that it still maintains its original performance.
- Remove any anti scuff and tape
- Sand the blade
- Oil the blade once
- Fit a new anti scuff and edge tape
- Replace rubber grip to the bat handle
England cricket squad have begun The Ashes tour of Australia. The Ashes is a Test cricket series played between the two countries. It is international cricket's most celebrated rivalry and dates back to 1882. It is currently played biennially, alternately in the United Kingdom and Australia. Cricket being a summer sport, and the venues being in opposite hemispheres, the break between series alternates between 18 and 30 months. A series of "The Ashes" comprises five Test matches, two innings per match, under the regular rules for Test match cricket. If a series is drawn then the country already holding the Ashes retains them.
The series is named after a satirical obituary published in a British newspaper, The Sporting Times, in 1882 after a match at The Oval in which Australia beat England on an English ground for the first time. The obituary stated that English cricket had died, and the body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia. The English media dubbed the next English tour to Australia (1882–83) as the quest to regain The Ashes.
During that tour a small terracotta urn was presented to England captain Ivo Bligh by a group of Melbourne women. The contents of the urn are reputed to be the ashes of an item of cricket equipment, possibly a bail, ball or stump.
Whichever side holds the Ashes, the urn normally remains in the Marylebone Cricket Club Museum at Lord's since being presented to the MCC by Bligh's widow upon his death.
Since the 1998–99 Ashes series, a Waterford Crystal representation of the Ashes urn has been presented to the winners of an Ashes series as the official trophy of that series.
England currently holds The Ashes, after defeating Australia 2–1 to regain them in the 2009 Ashes series which took place in England.
The first test match of the 2010 - 2011 tour is played at Brisbane.
When China hosted the Beijing Olympics two years ago, its efforts to master sports not traditionally played by Chinese athletes paid off with a haul of medals for the host nation. On Friday in the city of Guangzhou in southern China, another major sporting event kicked off - the 16th annual Asian Games.
Making its debut at the games is cricket - a sport that used to be played in China many years ago only by foreigners, but which is now enjoying a revival.
At Shanghai's Tongji University some of the country's first generation of cricketers meet to practice every week after class.
In the middle of a football pitch a coach armed with a cricket bat is testing the mettle of his budding fielders, betting balls towards them to see if they can catch.
It is a scene you would see at cricket clubs and universities in countries across the world - but not until recently in China. The game was revived here only about five years ago.
Dedication
“I'm just a student but I think in about 10 years we will beat other Asian countries” - Bill He
There is a cheer from his team mates for one of the players, Bill He, as he makes a difficult catch.
The marketing student - tall with broad shoulders - says he likes cricket because of the teamwork involved.
"It's a gentle game," he says. "It's very interesting and challenging, we enjoy it." But did he not find it difficult to pick up the rules, and master the technique needed to play cricket well?
"I think the important factor is whether you like this game or not. If you like this game you will play well," he says with a grin.
In a test match in Faisalabad in 1998 Pakistan versus South Africa, Mushtaq Ahmed was bowling to Pat Symcox. Symcox missed the ball,which went on to hit the middle stump. However, the heat had fused the bails together and they did not fall off. Symcox went on to make 81,his second highest test score.
The first testicular/abdominal guard ('box'), was used in cricket in 1874. The head protection helmet was first used in 1974. It took 100 years to realize that the brains could also be important.
When two spectators standing on the boundary at a cricket match saw an object hurtling down from the sky, their first instinct might have been to applaud.
However Jan Marszel, 51, and Richard Haynes, 52, were not witnessing a six, but an extremely rare meteor strike.
The rock, a few inches long and believed to be up to 4.5 billion years old, broke in two when it hit the ground in front of them close to the pitch.
The pair – both Sussex members – were sitting square of the wicket watching the England player Luke Wright bat with Monty Panesar when they spotted the black, five-inch rock hurtling towards them.
Mr Marszel, an IT consultant, said: “We were sitting at the boundary edge when all of a sudden, out of a blue sky, we saw this small dark object hurtling towards us.
"It landed five yards inside the boundary and split into two pieces."
"One piece bounced up and hit me in the chest and the other ended up against the boundary board."
"It came across at quite a speed – if it had hit me full on it could have been very interesting."
The pair have kept the seemingly extraterrestrial pieces of rock for posterity and said they would be happy for experts to examine them.
Retired Mr Haynes, said: “We were quietly supping our pints, both looked up at the same time and saw a black object coming towards us – we didn’t know what it was.
“If it had come from the other direction we might have suspected someone had thrown it, but we saw it come in straight over the ground from quite a way out – it was definitely a meteorite.”
Dr Matthew Genge, a meteorite expert at Imperial College, London, said: “If this turns out to be a meteorite it’s very exciting and would be the first fall in the UK since 1992.
"Potentially it contains secrets as to the formation of our solar system."
by Richard Alleyne
www.telegraph.co.uk
With contribution of Banat Lions Cricket Club
A number of words are thought to be possible sources for the term "cricket". In the earliest known reference to the sport in 1598 (see below), it is called creckett. The name may have been derived from the Middle Dutch krick(-e), meaning a stick; or the Old English cricc or cryce meaning a crutch or staff. Another possible source is the Middle Dutch word krickstoel, meaning a long low stool used for kneeling in church and which resembled the long low wicket with two stumps used in early cricket.
According to Heiner Gillmeister, a European language expert of Bonn University, "cricket" derives from the Middle Dutch met de (krik ket)sen (i.e., "with the stick chase"), which also suggests a Dutch connection in the game's origin. It is more likely that the terminology of cricket was based on words in use in south east England at the time and, given trade connections with the County of Flanders, especially in the 15th century when it belonged to the Duchy of Burgundy, many Middle Dutch words found their way into southern English dialects.
First definite reference
Despite many prior suggested references, the first definite reference to the game is found in a 1598 court case concerning dispute over a school's ownership of a plot of land. A 59-year old coroner, John Derrick, testified that he and his school friends had played creckett on the site fifty years earlier. The school was the Royal Grammar School, Guildford, and Mr Derrick's account proves beyond reasonable doubt that the game was being played in Surrey c.1550.
The first reference to it being played as an adult sport was in 1611, when two men in Sussex were prosecuted for playing cricket on Sunday instead of going to church.[6] In the same year, a dictionary defines cricket as a boys' game and this suggests that adult participation was a recent development.
Source: Wikipedia
