And my streaming went down the drains (I’m in Denmark - no cricket on telly, so please forgive me). Now I can literally say “I can’t watch this”. Crap!
Well done India.
Pakistan; a team which drops SIX catches does not deserve a place in the final.
After showing the final out of the game…
Exact quote: “and Virender Sehwag, pitching for India, closes it out with a wicket and a win.”
He wasn’t pitching (or bowling, for that matter). Good research staff they must have! Sheesh!
Bless 'em.
I had a conversation with a US colleague where I was asserting, good-naturedly, that cricket was more of a man’s game because the fielders didn’t use gloves, the ball bounced unpredictably and bowling at the person was positively encouraged.
He was dismissive of this because he thought the cricket ball was rather squashy and rather akin to a tennis ball. :eek:
On the whole, the US are pretty badly informed about cricket which is a huge shame as I reckon they would love something like 20:20 (and as we know, any sort of cricket is the gateway drug to the hard stuff)
Yesterday, on the main US ESPN site, there was a large Outside The Lines featureon cricket in India to tie in with the semi final. As befits most OTL features, it sought to go beyond the game much more, investigating what the game itself means to India and talking a bit about how Indian culture is tied up in the game and what it means for the country. It’s interesting that it was promoted on the main site - I don’t think it will ever be anything more than a curiosity in the US, outside the immigrant communities, but that’s not an issue in my view.
The article does contain quite a lot of tortured baseball parallels though; I understand that the writer has to put things over in a way that his audience cvan understand what he is on about, but, if you know the game, some of his analogies were pretty poor!
It’s interesting, the history of cricket in the US. I’m fairly certain that the first international game of cricket was the US v Canada. Up to a certain point, cricket was as popular a bat/ball game in the US as baseball but it was usurped by baseball around the time of the Civil War - probably because it’s easier to find somewhere to play than cricket, what with the need for a decent wicket, and the US never looked back (at cricket at least - I’m sure there’s lots of looking back at the Civil War). I think there are even books on this sort of thing actually - not that I’ve read any of them, but I sometimes see copies of weird cricket histories when thumbing through stuff in Waterstones.
I guess my issue was that ESPN already partners with or owns Cricinfo, and their website shows all the scores. You would think that the writer for Sportscenter would be able to describe what is going on with language that American audiences can understand AND also correct.
Plus, there no reason to confuse Sehwag with Harbajan Singh. Now I just realized that the clip they showed was of Singh, who wasn’t even the bowler when the game ended. So they actually showed the wrong out.
They butchered it even more than I thought.
I guess you’re all watching the game rather than commenting on it… 
And what a game it was! I woke up at 5am and watched the whole game via the website that Tapioca Dextrin provided. I would love to be in Mumbai tonight!
My Indian family and friends are all going nuts on Facebook… and I don’t even know what happened (well, other than India winning).
Class told in the end.
I didn’t see it (as I was taking my family round Duxford air museum) but they seemed to show their true form. Worthy winners I’d say.
And maybe Sachin is saving that ton for the England tour…which is nice of him.
I forgot it was on. I watched Dominick Donne when I could have been watching cricket.
Well done India. Worthy winners. Defeated the best teams in the tournament.
I am going to be sick.