For those trying to keep pace with what’s occurring in cricket its rather like living on the surface of a fast expanding balloon – where you are moving away from everywhere else at an accelerating rate.
On this day:
Cricket Sri Lanka has been forced for financial reasons to hand over three of its newly built or recently redeveloped cricket stadia to the Army (Mahinda Rajapaksa International Cricket Stadium, Hambantota), Navy (the Pallekele Stadium, Kandy) and Air Force (The R Premadasa stadium in Colombo).
Their inappropriately job-titled media manager said, “We are not in a position to afford the maintenance costs.” Worrying news.
Meanwhile the Sri Test team, playing at Sharjah, are 237 runs ahead of Pakistan with five second innings wickets remaining in a match which they must win to square the series.
In New Dehli, Test cricket has finally come toIndiain the eleventh month of the year – a comment on the place of Test cricket in the modern game.
Chanderpaul, who many may last have seen piling on the runs at the Rose Bowl for Warwickshire against Hampshire is now piling on the runs against one of his favourite sides. His 111 not out is his 24th three figure score in Tests and his seventh against India. The West Indies scored 256 for 5 at 2.81 an over on this first day of the first of a three Test match series.
There is no reference to the numbers attending – a statistic that football would never omit.
At Cape Town, the Australians are preparing for the start, in three days time, of the first of their two Test series against the Proteas.
And in Bulwayo, yesterday, a bold Zimbabwean run chase fell 35 runs short of the 365 run target set by New Zealand in the only Test being played on their tour.
The Squire is taking refuge in the library where he is using the Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker metric to make a scale model of the universe.
It is all enough to send Third Man to the Ice House in search of a cold towel.
Down At Third Man 