Century In Cricket Quotes

Suddenly, in the space of a moment, I realized what it was that I loved about Britain - which is to say, all of it. Every last bit of it, good and bad - Marmite, village fetes, country lanes, people saying 'mustn't grumble' and 'I'm terribly sorry but', people apologizing to me when I conk them with a nameless elbow, milk in bottles, beans on toast, haymaking in June, stinging nettles, seaside piers, Ordnance Survey maps, crumpets, hot-water bottles as a necessity, drizzly Sundays - every bit of it. What a wondrous place this was - crazy as fuck, of course, but adorable to the tiniest degree. What other country, after all, could possibly have come up with place names like Tooting Bec and Farleigh Wallop, or a game like cricket that goes on for three days and never seems to start? Who else would think it not the least odd to make their judges wear little mops on their heads, compel the Speaker of the House of Commons to sit on something called the Woolsack, or take pride in a military hero whose dying wish was to be kissed by a fellow named Hardy? ('Please Hardy, full on the lips, with just a bit of tongue.') What other nation in the world could possibly have given us William Shakespeare, pork pies, Christopher Wren, Windsor Great Park, the Open University, Gardners' Question Time and the chocolate digestive biscuit? None, of course. How easily we lose sight of all this. What an enigma Britain will seem to historians when they look back on the second half of the twentieth century. Here is a country that fought and won a noble war, dismantled a mighty empire in a generally benign and enlightened way, created a far-seeing welfare state - in short, did nearly everything right - and then spent the rest of the century looking on itself as a chronic failure. The fact is that this is still the best place in the world for most things - to post a letter, go for a walk, watch television, buy a book, venture out for a drink, go to a museum, use the bank, get lost, seek help, or stand on a hillside and take in a view. All of this came to me in the space of a lingering moment. I've said it before and I'll say it again. I like it here. I like it more than I can tell you.

Century was an occasional thing in cricket, Sachin made it frequent.

This story takes place a half a billion years ago-an inconceivably long time ago, when this planet would be all but recognizable to you. Nothing at all stirred on the land except the wind and the dust. Not a single blade of grass waved in the wind, not a single cricket chirped, not a single bird soared in the sky. All these things were tens of millions of years away in the future. But of course there was an anthropologist on hand. What sort of world would it be without an anthropologist? He was, however a very depressed and disillusioned anthropologist, for he'd been everywhere on the planet looking for someone to interview, and every tape in his knapsack was as blank as the sky. But one day as he was moping alongside the ocean he saw what seemed to be a living creature in the shallows off shore. It was nothing to brag about, just sort of a squishy blob, but it was the only prospect he'd seen in all his journeys, so he waded out to where it was bobbing in the waves. He greeted the creature politely and was greeted in kind, and soon the two of them were good friends. The anthropologist explained as well as he could that he was a student of life-styles and customs, and begged his new friend for information of this sort, which was readily forthcoming. ‘And now’, he said at last, ‘I'd like to get on tape in your own words some of the stories you tell among yourselves.’ ‘Stories?’ the other asked. ‘You know, like your creation myth, if you have one.’ ‘What is a creation myth?’ the creature asked. ‘Oh, you know,’ the anthropologist replied, ‘the fanciful tale you tell your children about the origins of the world.’ Well, at this, the creature drew itself up indignantly- at least as well as a squishy blob can do- and replied that his people had no such fanciful tale. ‘You have no account of creation then?’ ‘Certainly we have an account of creation,’ the other snapped. ‘But its definitely not a myth.’ ‘Oh certainly not,’ the anthropologist said, remembering his training at last. ‘Ill be terribly grateful if you share it with me.’ ‘Very well,’ the creature said. ‘But I want you to understand that, like you, we are a strictly rational people, who accept nothing that is not based on observation, logic, and scientific method.’ ‘"Of course, of course,’ the anthropologist agreed. So at last the creature began its story. ‘The universe,’ it said, ‘was born a long, long time ago, perhaps ten or fifteen billion years ago. Our own solar system-this star, this planet, and all the others- seem to have come into being some two or three billion years ago. For a long time, nothing whatever lived here. But then, after a billion years or so, life appeared.’ ‘Excuse me,’ the anthropologist said. ‘You say that life appeared. Where did that happen, according to your myth- I mean, according to your scientific account.’ The creature seemed baffled by the question and turned a pale lavender. ‘Do you mean in what precise spot?’ ‘No. I mean, did this happen on land or in the sea?’ ‘Land?’ the other asked. ‘What is land?’ ‘Oh, you know,’ he said, waving toward the shore, ‘the expanse of dirt and rocks that begins over there.’ The creature turned a deeper shade of lavender and said, ‘I cant imagine what you're gibbering about. The dirt and rocks over there are simply the lip of the vast bowl that holds the sea.’ ‘Oh yes,’ the anthropologist said, ‘I see what you mean. Quite. Go on.’ ‘Very well,’ the other said. ‘For many millions of centuries the life of the world was merely microorganisms floating helplessly in a chemical broth. But little by little, more complex forms appeared: single-celled creatures, slimes, algae, polyps, and so on.’ ‘But finally,’ the creature said, turning quite pink with pride as he came to the climax of his story, ‘but finally jellyfish appeared!

Archie Henderson has won no awards, written no books and never played any representative sport. He was an under-11 tournament-winning tennis player as a boy, but left the game when he discovered rugby where he was one of the worst flyhalves he can remember. This did not prevent him from having opinions on most things in sport. His moment of glory came in 1970 when he predicted—correctly as it turned out—that Griquas would beat the Blue Bulls (then still the meekly named Noord-Transvaal) in the Currie Cup final. It is something for which he has never been forgiven by the powers-that-be at Loftus. Archie has played cricket in South Africa and India and gave the bowling term military medium a new and more pacifist interpretation. His greatest ambition was to score a century on Llandudno beach before the tide came in.

In the first Test of the 1938 Ashes series, Eddie Paynter and Stan McCabe became the first players on opposing sides to score double-centuries in the same match. Bill Brown and Wally Hammond repeated the feat in the very next Test at Lord’s. How quickly the once-unprecedented accumulates its precedents.

I linger near Galileo’s telescopes, then round the corner and stand transfixed: I did not expect this- a dark, cool room full of globes of the night sky from the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. Globo celeste, they are called in Italian: ‘celestial globe,’ maps of the night sky… I imagine him making another globo celeste, this one smaller, yet still exquisitely painted, still breathtaking in detail. It’s a map of the earth still flowing with creation, one you can spin and when you stop it with your finger, there is some tiny detail…some miraculous beauty, some wonderful example from each location at night. The white flower of a night blooming saguaro cactus, the feathers from a great-horned owl, the crunched, smiling face of a particular bat- here, I’m spinning it, I stop it at in the north, where I want there to be something still- he’s painted the black-and-white feathers of a loon…or a globe of night sounds, so that by touching your location you hear the night there- the cricket song, the ocean surf, the frog mating calls.

Roger left the cricket stumps and they went into the drawing room. Grandpapa, at the first suggestion of reading aloud, had disappeared, taking Patch with him. Grandmama had cleared away the tea. She found her spectacles and the book. It was Black Beauty. Grandmama kept no modern children's books, and this made common ground for the three of them. She read the terrible chapter where the stable lad lets Beauty get overheated and gives him a cold drink and does not put on his blanket. The story was suited to the day. Even Roger listened entranced. And Deborah, watching her grandmother's calm face and hearing her careful voice reading the sentences, thought how strange it was that Grandmama could turn herself into Beauty with such ease. She was a horse, suffering there with pneumonia in the stable, being saved by the wise coachman. After the reading, cricket was anticlimax, but Deborah must keep her bargain. She kept thinking of Black Beauty writing the book. It showed how good the story was, Grandmama said, because no child had ever yet questioned the practical side of it, or posed the picture of a horse with a pen in its hoof. "A modern horse would have a typewriter," thought Deborah, and she began to bowl to Roger, smiling to herself as she did so because of the twentieth-century Beauty clacking with both hoofs at a machine. ("The Pool")

The cream of the Negro musicians then in France, like Cricket Smith on the trumpet, Louis Jones on the violin, Palmer Jones at the piano, Frank Withers on the clarinet, and Buddy Gilmore at the drums, would weave out music that would almost make your heart stand still at dawn in a Paris night club in the rue Pigalle, when most of the guests were gone and you were washing the last pots and pans in a two-by-four kitchen, with the fire in the range dying and the one high window letting the soft dawn in.

In an interview that a Benedictine monk had with His Holiness in Scotland, he asked the Dalai Lama, “Do you think your sitting on the mountain will be of any good to these twentieth-century people?” The Dalai Lama answered him right away, “Of course. Definitely it is good.” It’s good because places of meditation are charged with the feeling and the sound of the cricket, or the breathing of the whale, or just our Zen breathing, and this creates a very powerful life force that affects the life of our environment.

Kapil Dev’s unbeaten 175 was his first one-day international century and also the first century ever by an Indian in ODIs.

fact when the going is good everyone does well, but when the going is tough that’s when you separate the men from the boys, as with the cricketers who do wonderfully well on the subcontinent but fail on bouncy wickets, with the reverse being just as true. This is as true in the stock market as it is in sport. Warren Buffet said, ‘Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.’3 Of the hundreds of companies that sprung up during the internet boom, the solid IT companies survived and flourished despite the stock market crash (around the turn of the century), while several ‘get rich quick’ dotcoms bit the dust, their fancy ESOPs reduced to mere scraps of paper.

The other distinctive thing about them, and the reason I like to go to Hazlitt's, is that they cannot bear to admit that they don't know the location of something they feel they ought to know, like a hotel, which I think is rather sweet. to become a London cab driver you have to master something called The Knowledge--in effect, learn every street, hospital, hotel, police station, cricket ground, cemetery, and other notable landmarks in this amazingly vast and confusing city. It takes years and the cabbies are justifiably proud of their achievement. It would kill them to admit that there could exist in central London a hotel that they have never heard of. So what the cabbie does is probe. He drives in no particular direction for a block or two, then glances at you in the mirror and in an over casual voice says, “Hazlitt’s–that’s the one on Curzon Street, innit, guv? Opposite the Blue Lion?” But the instant he sees a knowing smile of demure forming on your lips, he hastily says, “No, hang on a minute, I’m thinking of Hazelbury. Yeah, Hazelbury. You want Hazlitt’s, right?” He’ll drive on a bit in a fairly random direction. “That’s this side of Shepherd’s Bush, innit?” he’ll suggest speculatively. When you tell him that it’s on Frith Street, he says, “Yeah, that’s the one. Course it is. I know it–modern place, lots of glass.” “Actually, it’s an eighteenth-century brick building.” “Course it is. I know it.” And he immediately executes a dramatic U-turn, causing a passing cyclist to steer into a lamppost (but that’s all right because he has on cycle clips and one of those geeky slip-stream helmets that all but invite you to knock him over). “Yeah you had me thinking of the Hazelbury,” the driver adds, chuckling as if to say it’s a lucky thing he sorted that one out for you, and then lunges down a little side street off the Strand called Running Sore Lane or Sphincter Passage, which, like so much else in London, you had never noticed was there before. Hazlitt’s is a nice hotel, but the thing I like about it is that it doesn’t act like a hotel. It’s been there for years, and the employees are friendly–always a novelty in a big-city hotel– but they do manage to give the slight impression that they haven’t been doing this for very long. Tell them that you have a reservation and want to check in and they get a kind of panicked look and begin a perplexed search through drawers for registration cards and room keys. It’s really quite charming. And the delightful girls who cleans the rooms–which, let me say, are always spotless and exceedingly comfortable–seldom seem to have what might be called a total command of English, so that when you ask them for a bar of soap or something you see that they are watching your mouth closely and then, pretty generally, they return after a bit with a hopeful look bearing a potted plant or a commode or something that is manifestly not soap. It’s a wonderful place. I wouldn’t go anywhere else.

Like many, I haven’t totally abandoned the idea that I will one day become a professional cricketer. And if I’m not dreaming about playing first grade, or gaining selection as an overage player in the newly formed Futures League, I’m dreaming about the coveted ‘triple C’: the Century, Circuit, Chop. To score a hundred during the day, get drunk with your mates all night, and then have sex with a woman later that evening — all within a 12-hour period — is to achieve the holy trinity of amateur sport. If I am honest, it’s the slim chance of nailing this mouth-watering trifecta that drives me to continue playing cricket. I have never done it, not yet, but I desperately want to.

Mumbai Indians’ game against Mohali Kings XI was probably the most thrilling match. Batting first, Kings XI made 189 helped by what was by now a routine Shaun Marsh half century. Tendulkar

We never knew Jim's surname but to us, as youngsters, he was "Jim Bool the Fool". It may not have been respectful but Jim Bool was the most outrageous liar you could ever meet. If it was test cricket time Jim would tell, in all seriousness, of how he played for Australia, of the centuries he had made and he wickets he had taken. In the football season he would describe the days when he had captained Melbourne. He had won King's Prizes for rifle shooting, the gun championship at Monte Carlo and when Melbourne Cup time came around we were treated to a vivid account of how he had won the Cup in his jockeying days.

Freddie, who still played football every chance he got and who had once bowled a century at cricket, was big and hard.

that there’s a rhythm, if not an algorithm, to cricket that many South Asians identify with. No one’s fully defeated; no one’s fully victorious. Just when you think you’re fully defeated, someone scores a double-century.

Foxes are considered vermin by landowners, have a population inflated by modern farming techniques, and may be shot or snared by anyone—which is not clearly less cruel than hunting them with dogs. Nor was the ban a blow for class warfare, contrary to the belief of many Labour antis, who considered the “so-called sport” an exclusive preserve of cruel toffs. It never was. And by then fox-hunting, with village cricket and the Sunday service, was a fading vestige of the class-based, yet not wholly class-bound way of much of British rural society for centuries. “If the French nobility had been capable of playing cricket with their peasants, their chateaux would never have been burnt,” the historian G.M. Trevelyan wrote. Had they ridden to hounds with their tenants, as 19th-century English gentlemen huntsmen did, then cheered them as they sent in the terriers,

JANUARY 24 Miracle Thinking There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. —ALBERT EINSTEIN There is no end to worry, because there is no end to what exists out of view, beyond our very small eyes. So worry is a way to gamble with what might or might not happen. It reminds me of a friend who had a flat tire on a country road. After finding he had no jack, he began walking, hoping to find a nearby farmer who would help him. It was getting dark and the crickets were getting louder. As he walked the overgrown road, he began to throw the dice of worry in his mind: What if the farmer's not home? What if he is and won't let me use his jack? What if he won't let me use his phone? What if he's frightened of me? I never did anything to him! Why won't he just let me use his phone?! By the time he knocked on the farmer's door, my friend was so preoccupied with what could go wrong that when the friendly old man answered, my friend bellowed, “Well, you can keep your Goddam jack!” Being human, we struggle constantly to stay with the miracle of what is and not to fall constantly into the black hole of what is not. This is an ancient challenge. As the Sufi poet Ghalib said centuries ago, “Every particle of creation sings its own song of what is and what is not. Hearing what is can make you wise; hearing what is not can drive you mad.

A cricketer who hits a century in one match may score zero in the next, if he does not have the same outfit, shoes and bat that he used in the first match. In fact, many sportsmen keep some kind of talisman in their pocket that acts as a lucky charm for their game. Here the talisman or the outfit doesn’t possess any magical power that helps the player to perform better. But it is their own subconscious reliance on the charm, that makes them give their best.

The streets of downtown Shanghai likewise seemed a continuous freak circus at first, unbelievably alive with all manner of people performing almost every physical and social function in public: yelling, gesturing, always acting, crushing throngs spilling through every kind of traffic, precariously amidst old cars and new ones and between coolies racing wildly to compete for ricksha fares, gingerly past "honey-carts" filled with excrement dragged down Bubbling Well Road, sardonically past perfumed, exquisitely gowned, mid-thigh-exposed Chinese ladies, jestingly past the Herculean bare-backed coolie trundling his taxi-wheelbarrow load of six giggling servant girls en route to home or work, carefully before singing peddlers bearing portable kitchens ready with delicious noodles on the spot, lovingly under gold-lettered shops overflowing with fine silks and brocades, dead-panning past village women staring wide-eyed at frightening Indian policemen, gravely past gambling mah-jongg ivories clicking and jai alai and parimutuel betting, slyly through streets hung with the heavy-sweet acrid smell of opium, sniffingly past southern restaurants and bright-lighted sing-song houses, indifferently past scrubbed, aloof young Englishmen in their Austins popping off to cricket on the Race Course, snickeringly round elderly white gentlemen in carriages with their wives or Russian mistresses out for the cool air along the Bund, and hastily past sailors looking for beer and women—from noisy dawn to plangent night the endless hawking and spitting, the baby's urine stream on the curb, the amah's scolding, the high falsetto of opera at Wing On Gardens where a dozen plays went on at once and hotel rooms next door filled up with plump virgins procured for wealthy merchants in from the provinces for business and debauch, the wail of dance bands moaning for slender bejeweled Chinese taxi dancers, the whiteness of innumerable beggars and their naked unwashed infants, the glamour of the Whangpoo with its white fleets of foreign warships, its shaggy freighters, its fan-sailed junks, its thousand lantern-lit sampans darting fire-flies on the moon-silvered water filled with deadly pollution. Shanghai!

Young fops and lordlings of the garrison Kept up by England here to keep us down . . . And doubtless, as they dash along, regard Us who stand outside as a beggarly crew. ’Tis half-past six. Not yet. No, that’s not he. Well, but ’tis pretty, sure, to see them stoop And take the ball, full gallop . . . Polo was still dominated by British cavalry officers, and the stretch called Nine Acres was seen by militant nationalists to be an offensive appropriation of public land—a little enclave of England—as was the cricket ground. Phoenix Park’s statues—the robed figure in the People’s Garden commemorating an earlier lord lieutenant, the Seventh Earl of Carlisle, as well as the bronze equestrian memorial of the war hero Lord Gough—were further reminders of British rule (both demolished by twentieth-century nationalists). Ferguson’s verses, however, express more than national resentment. The poet, later to be worshipped by the young W. B. Yeats, cannot have known about Patrick Egan’s plan for James Carey, and yet, with remarkable insight, he reveals it: “Lord Mayor for life—why not?” Carey muses,

High, high in the Chinese hills, there was once a monastery where a distinguished Taoist guru lived with his disciples. In the evenings the monks would gather in the Great Hall to listen to their leader’s teachings and to meditate. But there was a stray cat that had adopted the monastery, and each evening it would follow the monks into the hall. It would mewl, scratch, and generally be annoying throughout their silent meditation. It did this every night until the great teacher became so irritated by it that he told his followers to put a collar on the cat and tether it on the far side of the monastery each evening. This worked well and, for a while, teacher, cat and monks all went through their nightly routine. One day, the learned teacher died. But the monks continued to tie up the cat each evening. More years passed. And eventually the cat died. So the monks went down to the nearest village, found a replacement cat, and tied it up each evening instead. Two centuries later, religious scholars write learned essays on the importance of tying up a cat prior to evening meditation. This is how much of cricket works.

Richards double-century

Mark Waugh, the most fluent and aesthetically pleasing batsman of his generation but also one of the most frustrating to watch. Often, when he appeared to be a class above the rest and to have the bowling at his mercy, he would play a lazy shot to what appeared, more often than not, an innocuous delivery. And just like that his innings would be over. To make matters worse, he didn’t seem to care; he would nonchalantly wander off the field. No shaking of the head or staring back at the pitch to apportion blame. His fans had to learn to accept 30s and 40s instead of centuries and 150s. His concentration, some would say his interest, never seemed to be there in the Test arena. Despite playing some match-winning Test innings, Waugh was never quite able to shake the ‘lackadaisical’ tag.

Yet Azhar also had it tough. When India played Pakistan, the pressure on him to perform was enormous. Indian Muslims needed his runs for inspiration; Hindu nationalists needed them to be convinced of his loyalty. When Azhar once scored a match-winning century, Thackeray declared him a ‘nationalist Muslim’, a phrase that was doubly insidious.

Mate, I’ve only been here for a few weeks, but I don’t think anyone even knows my name. I’ve already slipped three spots down the batting order. I’ve got no idea what the lyrics to the club song are. And every time I get a hit at training, I hear the faint sound of blokes whispering that one word under their breath: “Yuck.” What am I doing wrong?’ I began, nervously. Nuggsy paused, took a long swig of his Reschs schooner, and reclined languidly into his seat. He scratched his bald head for a moment, seemingly in deep thought, before embarking on the long-winded response that would indeed shape my cricketing future. ‘Listen, bud. You’re a grade cricketer now. And it’s time you learned a little bit about what that means. This isn’t club cricket, “Shires” cricket, or that stupid school shit that you wasted your time on for all those years. This is grade cricket: the highest level of amateur cricket in the world,’ he said with pride. Just for those who don’t already know, I should quickly provide a bit of background on the grade cricket competition. Grade cricket (or ‘Premier cricket’, as it is known in some states/territories) is the level directly below the state competition.  Despite this close proximity to the professional arena, it is nonetheless an amateur competition. Sure, one or two first graders might get paid a little bit under the table, but everyone else must pay a registration fee in order to play. Normally, each club has four to five grades — first grade being the strongest; fifth grade the weakest. Those in first grade enjoy a status that the fifth graders can only dream about. Being a first grader is like being a celebrity to 50 blokes whose names you’ll never know — or never even need to know — unless you end up playing with them after a severe run of poor form (or a serious disciplinary breach). The rest of the club — seconds, thirds, and fourth grade — is basically an assortment of talented youngsters and ageing desperates. The common denominator between the young and old brigade is that they were all once told they were ‘good enough to play for Australia’. In many cases, it was the first and last compliment they ever received — and the reason why they’re still playing. In all cases, it was the worst thing that could have ever happened to them. The ultimate grade cricketer, therefore, will possess the perfect balance of good and not good enough that will haunt them for all of their playing days. All this of course, is something that can only be learned with experience. At this early stage in my grade cricket career, I considered these young players to be ‘cool’ and the older players worthy of my respect. Nuggsy tilted his head to one side as he lit up a cigarette. He took a deep drag, holding it in for what seemed like hours, before launching his head back to expel a thick plume of smoke towards the ceiling. ‘Listen, great man,’ he began. ‘Success in grade cricket has nothing to do with skill, ability, or even results. It’s all about the social ladder, bud. You’ve got the big dogs up top, the peasants down the bottom, and everyone in between is just trying to stay relevant,’ he offered. In many ways, grade cricket social hierarchy bears great similarity to the feudal systems that first appeared in the Middle Ages in Europe — something I’d learned a bit about at high school. As I remembered, kings and monarchs sat at the top, enjoying their pick of the land, women and food. They were the ones who established the rules that everyone had to live under. The barons leased their land from the king; the knights leased their land from the barons; and the knights granted the lowly peasants their land.  The peasants were not allowed to marry, nor could they even leave the manor without permission. Basically, they were the fifth graders of the 8-12th Century.

Words in the Woods All the words that have been spoken here Over time, over centuries: they stay. We hear occasional echoes, think A bird has chirped or a cricket, But it was a moment of laughter Happy enough to be here still Even as the years themselves are gone. A glint in someone’s eye, a quality of light— Something, something made one say words To another, and they laughed. Words spoken have some slight weight: As they go forward from the mouth, they fall In a slow arc over time. But they do not go— In falling they are in the humus that feeds the trees, And in their time they enter the trees And are the trees, so that the limbs And the leaves of these trees, this shade Is that conversation, so pleasant, so long ago.

Young cricketers reading this must understand that most of the game is played in your mind. You can spend hours and hours perfecting your technique at the nets but no doors will open for you until you have sorted the issues in your head and can deal with pressure. Don’t run away from the tough stuff Heroes are made when you confront an uncomfortable situation head on. Have you ever heard of a hero who sits at home, goes to office in late afternoon after having sleep

Darryl and Det lay together until morning, slept spoons until morning beneath the Mississippi moon. Listening to the crickets. Listening to the owls. Listening to the soft smooth hum of the Earth turning on its gimbals, turning and turning ever further into the twentieth century. They are young, their blood runs hot, and they never doubt their ability to change everything.

Shahid Afridi uses Sachin Tendulkar bat to hit the one of the fastest ODI’s century. Shahid Afridi, the Pakistani player was flown in to play against the West Indies in 1996 and didn't