Cricket

I found Rone Tempest's article (March 19) concerning the remnants of the British Raj in India very interesting. The piece was well-written and, for The Times, mercifully short. It was, however, unfair to English cricket when it cited India's dominance in the so-called World Championship of Cricket (recently played in Australia) as an example of the students' mastery over their teachers. As I'm sure Tempest is well aware--but for some reason failed to mention--only days before the Australian one-day matches began, England completed a long and exhausting tour of the subcontinent.

  For 15 years, Pakistanis exalted Imran Khan as a cricket legend but largely ignored his politics. When Khan discussed cricket, the public hung on his every word. But when he campaigned for office, they dismissed him as an outsider. Now, asPakistan'stopsy-turvy political landscape careens into an election season, Khan the politician has emerged for the first time as a major force, his ascent directly proportionate to the rising tide of frustration Pakistanis feel over woes such as seemingly endemic corruption, poverty and shortages of power and natural gas. At an Oct. 30 rally in Lahore, he stunned the political establishment by drawing more than 100,000 people.

The game of cricket may seem slow-paced to some, but it does not involve "a bat that the English call a wicket." It involves a bat that the English call a bat. The wicket is the target at which the bowler aims the ball, and which the batsman tries to protect. Drake's mistake would be roughly equivalent to an English theater critic referring to baseball as a sport "involving a bat that the Americans call a plate." MICHAEL PEARCE Long Beach Since no one knows how cricket is played, as a dubious public service we include the following from a famous English dishtowel that aims to explain the inexplicable: "You have two sides, one out in the field and one in. Each man that's in the side that's in goes out and when he's out he comes in and the next man goes in until he's out. When they are all out the side that's out comes in and the side that's been in goes out and tries to get those coming in out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out. When both sides have been in and out including the not outs that's the end of the game."

A rally in Karachi organized by cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan drew a massive crowd of supporters Sunday, bolstering his image as a potent force in Pakistan's turbulent political landscape. Pakistani news reports estimated that as many as 100,000 supporters crammed into a field next to the iconic white marble mausoleum of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, on the anniversary of Jinnah's birthday. Looking out on a sea of red and green flags for Khan's Tehreek-e-Insaf party, Khan told backers that, if his party came to power, he would ensure that the rule of law was applied evenly and would work to eradicate the taint of corruption found at every layer of Pakistani society.

Combine two of India's favorite pastimes, cricket and politics. Add allegations of corruption, greed, and tax evasion. Throw in the implosion of a highflying political career and it's not difficult to understand why India's hyperactive broadcast media are on a tear. On Monday, India's finance minister announced an investigation of the funding and sources behind the nation's top cricket teams, suggesting that more bombshells are to come. The scandal underscores the cost of operating a business on steroids without creating adequate safeguards, analysts said.

In a nation pummeled by stifling poverty, homegrown militancy, and most recently, epic flooding, the game of cricket is supposed to serve as salve, a getaway from Pakistan's daily diet of trauma and crisis. Now, in the wake of allegations of match manipulation made against the national team, that salve is fast disappearing. And that has Pakistanis worried. "In all this chaos that our country faces, there should be some source of romance," said Chaudhry Ishtiaq Ahmed, a lawyer from the city of Lahore.

The first thing you notice about the baseball field at Weltevreden Park Primary School is that there is no pitcher's mound. There's no infield either. No backstop. No dugouts. When one team arrives early for its scheduled Sunday morning game, the players have to borrow a baseball from two kids playing nearby just to warm up. "Welcome to Fenway Park," Ashley Petersen says with a shrug and a smile. Petersen, a youth baseball coach, might be the most avid Boston Red Sox fan in South Africa.

There's a cricket in the kitchen. Chirps all night long, like he's trying to sell me something. I'm not sure how the cricket got into the house, though I suspect he was carried in by some kid. In my experience, children are vessels for any sort of unpleasantness. Bugs. Mucus. Bad breath. Were there no kids, there would be no germs. It's not a coincidence that cold and flu season start in the fall, when kids are running rampant. Anyway, we have this cricket in the kitchen. I think he's a teenager, for he's up all night.

Apparently, chaos reigns in cricket's Indian Premier League, and we're not talking about a few grass stains on those spiffy white pants they wear. First, on Friday, spinner Harbhajan Singh, captain of the Mumbai Indians, slapped an opposing player after a loss. He was given an 11-match suspension and fined 100% of his game fee. The next day, the Daily Telegraph reported that cheerleaders would be banned from a Premier League tournament in Mumbai. State Home Minister Siddharam Mhetre told the paper, "The scantily clad foreign girls' dances are obscene and do not gel with Indian sensibilities, culture and ethos.

Scantily clad women are part and parcel of sports in America, but in Sri Lanka such frivolities are frowned upon, as evidenced when locals protested the addition of skimpy-outfitted cheerleaders to a recent Sri Lanka-India cricket series. "It's not in keeping with our tradition," said Cultural Minister Yapa Abeywardena. Humbug, said the New Zealand Herald, stating: "Clearly, that tradition has nothing to do with the 5th century Sigirya rock fortress, a World Heritage site near the [cricket]

  As the sun set over Angkor Wat, the temple built for King Suryavarman II in the 12th century, I nosed my Vespa out into the line of three-wheeled tuktuks, bikes and cars. In my pink crash helmet and Gucci bike goggles, I felt as frivolous as an extra in the '60s movie "Quadrophenia," but my mission was a serious one: I was planning to travel the nearly 200 miles from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh in three days, stopping on the way to sample some of the weirdest and most wonderful foods Cambodia has to offer.

Once the foreign policy face of Pakistan, Shah Mehmood Qureshi has severed ties with the country's ruling party and is now eyeing a new political life, possibly with a rising party led by former cricket-star-turned-politician Imran Khan. Qureshi, a former stalwart within President Asif Ali Zardari's Pakistan People's Party, announced his departure from the party and his resignation as one of its lawmakers. At odds with the PPP since his ouster as foreign minister in February, Qureshi has been talking with Khan about joining his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI)

Can sari-clad "cheer queens" stand up to short-skirted pom-pom girls? That's a question Indian cricket fans are pondering after a team here introduced a cheerleading squad wrapped head to toe in traditional garb, its members eschewing high kicks and splits for complex hand waves and traditional dance steps. "The concept of cheer queens is an extraordinary way of showcasing our national artistic heritage to the world," says Abhijit Sarkar, director of the Pune Warriors. Others say it's a nice idea, done somewhere else.

Jacob is a golden retriever. Like many goldens, his favorite activity is retrieving a tennis ball. We throw the ball; he brings it back and drops it at our feet. It can go on for hours. Actually, we don't know how long it could go on because we always give up before he does. But Jacob sometimes gets stuck when we play this game at my in-laws' pool. This is because of two fixed, internal rules he has. The first rule is that he must stay on land until he is as close as possible to the ball and then swim the rest of the way. The second rule is that he must enter the water gradually.

As their countries headed toward victory and disappointment in the final hour of the much-anticipated Cricket World Cup 2011 semifinal match, Waleed Ishtiaq and Nikunj Jajodia were dozing side by side. Wearing their respective countries' team colors — green for Pakistan and blue for India — the 20-year-old USC students had nodded off in their chairs at an on-campus screening of the game. Not even the intermittent cheering of their compatriots could rouse them. It was past 10 a.m. Wednesday in Los Angeles when India took the prize, after a nail-biting eight-hour contest.

Wednesday's semifinal Cricket World Cup match between nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan is the hottest ticket in town, with national pride and claims of sports superiority on the line. Mix in geopolitics, the threat of a terrorist attack and warnings against match-fixing and you've got an event that is captivating the subcontinent. "Every roadside shop will be watching," said Ayaz Amir, a Pakistani columnist and lawmaker. "Basically, India and Pakistan will be closed on Wednesday.

Castigating their public healthcare system may be a national pastime for the British, but it's not one they care to share with Americans, thank you very much. In fact, Britain's oft-maligned National Health Service today was on the receiving end of an outpouring of love and affection it hasn't felt in years, owing to a growing backlash against what many here see as lies and calumnies being spread about the NHS by conservative critics of President Obama's healthcare reform plan in the U.S. Those critics have branded the NHS as "evil" and "Orwellian," an example of socialized medicine to be avoided at all costs.

Cricket Radio Tuning In the Night-Singing Insects John Himmelman Belknap/Harvard University Press: 260 pp., $22.95 "The game is to listen," Rachel Carson wrote in 1956 of the night-singing insects. "Not so much to the full orchestra, as to the separate instruments, and to try to locate the players. " In this ear-opening book, John Himmelman shows us not only how to identify the songs these insects have sung for 250 million years but what those songs mean and how they are made.

In a nation pummeled by stifling poverty, homegrown militancy, and most recently, epic flooding, the game of cricket is supposed to serve as salve, a getaway from Pakistan's daily diet of trauma and crisis. Now, in the wake of allegations of match manipulation made against the national team, that salve is fast disappearing. And that has Pakistanis worried. "In all this chaos that our country faces, there should be some source of romance," said Chaudhry Ishtiaq Ahmed, a lawyer from the city of Lahore.