Category: Sports

You can take the boy out of Australia..

I was hugely amused to watch Australian kayaker Robin Bell being interviewed after winning the bronze medal in the C1 competition at the olympics.

When asked by an australian journalist where he was going to hang the medal he paused, and gave the immortal australian response: “this is going straight to the pool room”.

Priceless!!

The proud, the few…

Following the Black Caps’ victory over the south africans the other day I decided to display a bit of patriotism and wear my Beige Brigade shirt to work.

Now since I’m working nights the change in dress formality level was hardly noticed, although one patient did see the emblem and joke that perhaps he sould be asking for another doctor, one who supported the right team…

If only I wasn’t working

Last year, when our Italy trip was still in the ideas stage, my friend Phil put forward an idea to go to the Caribbean to watch the Cricket World Cup, and now that it’s here I’m quietly wishing that I had more holiday leave up my sleeve so that I could go and do it (after my Italy holiday). It’d be great to go to the Caribbean, and the cricket so far seems to have been pretty good to :-).

Apparently Phil has a favorite island where one of his favorite authors lived, and he thought that this would have been an excellent excuse to entertain both his fascination with the island and his enjoyment of cricket. I think we could even convince the girls to come along too, with promises of tropical beaches and exotic cocktails (although I’m not sure how many matches we’d get them along to).

Ah well. Dreams are free.

The summer game

The ashes are in town and I’m having my annual re-awakening to how much I love cricket.

It’s been nice seing some good competition (OK, so maybe not the first test, but even then there was some good individual performances that weren’t necessarily reflected in the outcome), and while I am far from being a die hard sports fan, I love being able to flick on the TV and watch bits and pieces of cricket, and not need to devote my full attention to it (while concurrently reading a book, or doing some housework, or playing on my computer).

There has also been a couple of shows on TV that have added to my interest. The ABC in, conjunction with the Australian Cricket Board, have made a series of Documentaries entitled “Cricket in the…” with each one focusing on a different decade of Australian cricket.

Now some of you may recall me previously mentioning a DVD called Calipso Summer, which dealt with the 1960-61 West Indies cricket tour of Australia, and the “Cricket in the..” series is made by the same people, and is almost as enjoyable.

I watched Cricket in the 50’s last week, and am looking forward to cricket in the 60’s which is on soon. They interview the players and have archival footage and the whole thing is generally fun and informative, giving a good insight into the matches and the dominant personalities and characters of the day.

Howzat!!!

Like so many people I talk to at the moment I have been eagerly watching the Ashes Cricket tests. Having grown up for twenty odd years in NZ it is hard to resist the urge to just support anyone playing Australia out of sheer force of habbit, and while Simone does accuse me of bashing her country’s sports teams, the truth is that far more than supporting one team or another I am simply revelling in the fact that for the first time in what seems like more than a decade there is genuine competition within the Cricketing world.

Ultimately if one team wins every time (as the Australians have done for many years now) it take all the fun out of watching the sport. Now however you don’t know what is going to happen. I I mean the other day I found myself thinking that if I had been anywhere near england I would have been buying tickets to the first day of the test (which is usually completely unlike me, because traditionally the first day of any test is relatively slow and tactical) because the matches of the current tour are hard fought, skillful, and most importantly exciting.

I can only hope that it is the start of a broader trend. It really would be fantastic to see some good indian, pakistani and West indian teams get back into the fray as well.

Classic Cricket

A while back I watched a fantastic documentary on the ABC about the 1960-61 West Indies cricket tour of Australia. Today I was reminded of it, and went looking to see if I could get a DVD of it, and while I had no success on the DVD front I did find the website of the show, which in itself is quite a good read. Here it is:

http://www.abc.net.au/calypso/history.htm