Posted in Musings, tagged combined table, cricket, The Hundred on July 27, 2021| Leave a Comment »
| NAME | P | MW | ML | MT | NR | WW | WL | WT | NR | Points |
| Invincibles | 4 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 7 |
| Phoenix | 4 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 4 |
| Rockets | 4 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 4 |
| Superchargers | 4 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 |
| Spirit | 4 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 3 |
| Brave | 2 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Fire | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Originals | 4 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
I have, so far, quite mixed feelings about The Hundred. (more…)
Posted in Musings, tagged Alcibiades, cricket, Kevin Pieterson, Thucydides, war on February 16, 2014| 1 Comment »
Is there any topic that a Thucydides quote cannot illuminate? In this morning’s Observer, Vic Marks turns to the Melian Dialogue (what else…) to comment upon the current state of world cricket:
I suppose that if the notion of “might is right” was good enough for the Athenian Empire, it will do for the ICC. As dear old Thucydides pointed out in the pre-Boycott era, “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” Let’s not dress up the machinations at the ICC in any other way.
It’s tempting to think of other Thucydides quotes that might be of assistance in this matter (of course, the best line on Kevin Pieterson clearly comes from the same war but a different author; Aristophanes on Alcibiades, “Best not to rear the lion’s whelp within your gates; but if you do, it’s best to learn to tolerate its little ways”). And at the same time, the analogy with cricket can work in the other direction, shedding light on Thucydides’ narrative technique. Both war and cricket, as his account shows, proceed within an apparently clear and straightforward framework (the alternation of summer and winter echoing the change of the bowler’s end every over), the combat is the accumulation of countless individual events, which are rarely in themselves absolutely decisive – even the catastrophe of Sicily did not prevent the Athenians, as we see in Thucydides’ eighth book, from mounting a successful rearguard action and comeback, so we should see it not as the fall of the final wicket but as the unexpected (well…) collapse when both batsmen had seemed to be well in, leaving the question of whether the brilliant but thoroughly unreliable Alcibiades can forge a successful long-term partnership with the number eight, or will simply throw his wicket away and start sending chummy text messages to the opposition…
Sphinx 