When Sri Lanka had to ‘mankad’ Buttler and Co.

Rex Clementine, in Sunday Island, 31 March 2019, where the title runs “Marvan on ‘Mankading’ Buttler in 2014”

There are certain places visiting teams would hate play overseas. As for Sri Lankans, they avoid Wanderes in Johannesburg like the plague as it always seams around there. So is Edgbaston in Birmingham where the seam bowlers come into the equation all the time. Sri Lanka have played at Edgbaston on five times but won only once. That win came in 2014 in a bitterly contested ODI. These days teams tend to make most of the scheduling and invariably the hosts would want to play the final game of a series at a venue that favours them, just in case if that happens to be a decider. So was the case in 2014. The five match ODI series was squared 2-2. Sri Lanka won a low scoring thriller with Lahiru Thirimanne and Mahela Jayawardene posting half-centuries to wrap up the series 3-2. Rather than celebrating a famous series win, the cricketing world was busy discussing the ‘Mankading’ of Josh Buttler. Some ex-England players found fault with the Sri Lankans.

Sachithra Senanayake gestures to the umpire after ‘mankading’ Jos Buttler.

Unforgettable Moments for Royal-Thomians

Mevan Pieris, in Daily FT,5 March 2019, where the title runs thus: “Moments that make memories of the Battle of the Blues”

Cricket that had germinated among schoolboys of Britain received prominence in the 19th century when leading public schools such as Eton played Harrow as a big match and a few years later in 1837, the only two universities of that time, Oxford and Cambridge played each other for the first time to be labelled as England’s Battle of the Blues. About the same time in Ceylon, an academy sprang up on top of San Sebastian Hill and a few years later in 1851, Bishop James Chapman, an Etonian cricketer himself, started S. Thomas’ College (STC) on top of Mutwal Hill.

Harry And Doug Today

Harry Who? Doug Who?

None other than Harry Solomons of Galle & Sydney and Doug Walters of Sydney, NSW and Australian cricket in yesteryear. Are we not glad to see  them downing beer, signing autographs, chatting about old times, et cetera …. and still retaining some of their hair!

Maturing: ESPN reaches 25

Original Title: = “The A to Z of ESPNcricinfo” …..http://www.espncricinfo.com/25/content/story/1151771.html

This is an updated version of an article originally published to mark ESPNcricinfo’s 20th anniversary in 2013

QUIZ: identify these stars

Amateur
Cricket’s early amateur spirit was reflected in ESPNcricinfo’s first avatar. Students, in American universities, and also in the UK and Australia, starved of cricket and desperate for scores of matches being played across the world, used Internet Relay Chat to post and search for score updates. After Simon King, a student at the University of Minnesota in the early 1990s, who was the first to realise the value of automated updates, developed the CricInfo bot that would send users a private message every time they asked for scores, several people in various universities volunteered to keep the scorecards updated, later taking the time to add old scorecards, match reports and other information to Cricinfo’s database.

How will Australia and India Face-Off?

Sidarth Monga in ESPNcricinfo, 5 December 2018 where the title is “Is this the tour when Australia-India “rivalry” grows up?”

Australia the country and the cricket team have held a special place in the minds of Indians of a certain age. That certain age happens to be roughly that of the people playing in this team. We grew up watching Australia dominate world cricket. Everything about Australian cricket – the glitz, the hard hits, the bounce on the pitches, the sunburnt venues, the zinc cream, the commentary, even the advertisements – was loved in India. People barely remember the 1987 World Cup, but 1992 they do in photographic detail. Kids wanted to be like Australia, play like them, win like them, look like them.

Virat Kohli and David Warner exchange words Getty Images

Cricket Fanatics’ Priorities in a Nutshell

Kevin Roberts pitches in –within Galle Fort

Open season –Kevin as non-striker