Posts Tagged ‘Sport’

Posted on September 30, 2009 - by Justin Hartman

England, thanks for ruining cricket for my son

First let me state that Luke, my 5 year-old, is a cricket fanatic. If we’re not watching cricket he’s bowling balls down the passage or setting his imaginary field and he’s driving me nuts with wanting me to purchase every piece of cricket equipment that has ever been made. It’s turning into a costly passion.

Over the last two days I’ve witnessed two jaw dropping incidents in the ICC Champions Trophy, both of which involved England, and these have had a serious impact on Luke. The first and most controversial was an incident involving Graham Smith and Andrew Strauss during the SA vs. England game on Monday evening.

Smith was on 124 runs with South Africa needing another 69 from 36 balls to stay in the ICC Champions Trophy and requested for a runner yet Strauss declined it. After the match Strauss explained that “He asked for a runner and the umpires took the view that cramp is a symptom of fatigue. Being tired does not qualify batsmen for a runner under the laws of the game”.

It is my belief that this decision by Strauss was a defining moment in the match and was a major contributing factor to our loss. After Strauss turned him down you could see Smith’s whole demeanor change. Couple that with the fact that he could barely walk and Smith was now forced to look for boundaries to try and steer our team to victory which ultimately lead to the fall of his wicket at 141.

If you asked me Strauss knew that Smith could win the game for South Africa and he wanted him off the field as his bowlers were pretty much ineffective against him. I believe that Strauss broke the rules of the gentleman’s game in a display of the worst sportsmanship I’ve ever seen in cricket in recent times.

The impact this had on Luke astounded me. He was in Graham Smith mode at the time, with pads on and bat in hand, trying to win the game and when he saw how upset Smith was he went from excitement to total disappointment. He got furiously angry with England and accused them on cheating and not being fair and this frustration ultimately brought him to tears. It took a long time to console him and explain to him that sometimes things happen in sport that prevent you from winning but he struggled to comprehend it all.

This was the first time that he’s ever understood and been exposed to injustice in sport and he didn’t like it one bit. When he went to bed he told us he’s never playing cricket again – a truly shattering moment for a child who just wants to be the next AB De Villiers. As parents this was a difficult moment for us and I’m not convinced we handled it as well as we could have. Be that as it may, Luke agreed to take up cricket again the next morning.

The second incident I witnessed was during the England vs. New Zealand match yesterday evening. Paul Collingwood, who had been declared run out after wandering out of his crease, went up to New Zealand captain Daniel Vettori and had a mini-conference with him. Soon after they shook hands and Vettori decided not to uphold the appeal and Collingwood was allowed to continue his innings.

To be honest I’m shocked that England expect every other team to honour the Spirit of Cricket ethos while they only really do so when the pressure is not on them.

It is true that Andrew Strauss had made a similar decision in England’s opening match against Sri Lanka by recalling Angelo Mathews however there wasn’t the same sense of pressure or intensity during that match. The truth is, when England are on the ropes they are simply bad sports.

If you don’t believe me then lets look at last year when Collingwood was captaining England when New Zealand’s Grant Elliott had been run out after a mid-pitch collision with Ryan Sidebottom. The umpires were obliged to rule him out, but Collingwood’s refusal to withdraw the appeal had infuriated Vettori and invited widespread criticism from the media.

Vettori’s decision yesterday was more significant as there was no case of obstruction in this instance, and Collingwood had no one to blame but himself for venturing out his crease. In addition, it was a do-or-die match for New Zealand yet despite this Vettori still showed outstanding sportsmanship at the time.

You make your own decisions around this but I for one am disgusted by England’s tactics and the fact that the ICC continue to back this team and the decisions taken by them on the field. What example are we setting to the youth who idolize these players and the game?

 

Posted on April 14, 2009 - by Justin Hartman

GeekCricket – a very serious affair

For a few weeks now I’ve been following the GeekCricket Wiki, an initiative started by Rob Stokes and fellow Geeks, hoping that I’d get picked to play in Sunday’s game at the Wynberg Cricket Club.

At the time I was the 6th reserve but thanks to Easter holiday’s the guys started dropping like flies and I finally made it on the list. In all honesty I haven’t felt this excited about something in a long time and seeing as the last time I played a proper match was back in 1996 I was also extremely worried.

I’m sure many of you are giggling just at the idea of a geek cricket match and while I can’t blame you I have to warn you this was a very serious affair. We had 17 professional cricketers turn up, there were many geek cricket groupies, two photographers and dedicated media coverage and that’s not even taking into account all the young wannabe cricketers learning from the masters.

First ball was bowled at around 11am and the Kaapse Klopse were off to a flying start. I got picked for the Chevrolet Nashua Mercedes Supersport Nike Chargers and we managed to contain the Klopse to a formidable 145 all out. I didn’t think we stood a chance and after only making 5 runs myself I figured it was all over. In the end though the Chargers pulled off an historic win no thanks to our esteemed captain.

As you can imagine though geeks have no concept of stopping so we decided to have a second game – this time a short 10 over a side match. Needless to say we lost a few guys in the process so our nine a side game became a six a side game. At this stage the groupies had left and all that remained was the die hards of Wynberg Cricket Club.

It was our turn to bat and the Chargers put on a seemingly impossible total of 97 in our 10 overs. I had figured the batting aspect of my game out and was top scorer with 23 not out and this time I was convinced that Rob’s Klopse team had little chance of scoring 10 runs an over.

Things were going extremely well until I had to bowl. I think the Klopse needed around 35 runs to win and I got smashed for about 25 in my over. It was, without doubt, the most expensive over of the day and I had effectively lost the match for our team. I apologised after but somehow I doubt that I’ll get a chance to bowl next time in.

And so after two grueling matches the Klopse and Chargers were all square. After more than 10 years of not playing a real cricket game I have to say that 5 hours of action packed entertainment is just a little too much for my eroding body. I have little doubt that I’ll be struggling to walk the next couple days but hell it was all worth it.

 

Posted on February 26, 2008 - by Justin Hartman

YouTube and that horrific Eduardo tackle

Not only did I watch Arsenal drop two points to Man United on Saturday but I also bore witness to a horrific tackle on Arsenal striker Eduardo which saw him fracture his left fibula as well as sustain an open dislocation of his ankle joint in the same leg. During the match Sky Sports refused to show the replay of the tackle claiming it was too gruesome to repeat.

Now I don’t know about you but I hate being censored so, on Sunday afternoon, lazing about at my parents home, I opened the YouTube application on my iPhone and did a search for eduardo tackle to see if someone had posted a video of the full footage.

Amazingly there were well over 100 results and I started to watch some of the gruesome footage uploaded by YouTube users… it was very upsetting.

Over a coffee discussion yesterday I told Gregor to do a similar search on YouTube to watch the unedited video but when he tried to click a video, any video, all he got was a message saying “This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Arsenal Football Club”.

Back in August last year we went through a process, well Gregor did, whereby The Times had a copyright infringement case and it was very interesting to see YouTube’s take on all of this.

It took YouTube about three days to remove the video in question but we were also invited to use their Content Verification Tool which allows content owners to request removal of infringing content by using check boxes and “select all” functions. A very simple interface and a seemingly immediate solution to copyright infringement.

I was just fascinated how quickly these videos of the Eduardo tackle disappeared from YouTube and it would appear that this self-managed solution is really helping all content owners combat the issue of plagiarism. It is clearly a much more efficient way of handling these types of issues than having YouTube moderate everything through a three-day lengthy process.

If you are interested in viewing images of the tackle in question I have uploaded them here and here and if you want to see the live TV footage I have a short video clip of the tackle here. I must warn you it’s not pretty which is why I haven’t embedded it into this post.

 

Posted on October 30, 2007 - by Justin Hartman

Best newspaper cover ever?

I know this is very belated but time has not been on my side however I think this cover is timeless. Originally published in The Independent on the morning of the Rugby World Cup Final this front page moved me and is the best cover I’ve ever seen yet there is barely a picture on it. If you can’t read the writing click on the image for a larger version.

If you didn’t get it (I didn’t on the first time) this is all about England. The Independent would have all of us believe this is about SA but the clever play on words ring true to what has been happening of late in the UK.

The part that really interests me is that while our politicians are all complaining about transformation in South African sport there isn’t a single country that isn’t plagued with similar issues. Bloggers, the media and even political stalwarts have all agreed that politics should be left out of sport and this cover I think, highlights just how shallow these transformation claims are in our country.

 

Posted on October 16, 2007 - by Justin Hartman

Can Bolton Deventer win us the World Cup?

Gregor and I have created this awesome game for The Times! I’m hooked.

Brought to you by The Times

Grab the embed code for your site below.

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<div style="width:410px; text-align: left;"><a href="http://www.pictogame.com/create.php?from_blog=1&template=13" target="_blank"><strong>Make games</strong></a> | <a href="http://www.pictogame.com/game.php?from_blog=1&game=3Y4go0BpLpvt" target="_blank">Share</a> | <a href="http://www.pictogame.com/gallery.php?from_blog=1" target="_blank" title="play free online games" >Play free online games</a> | <a href="http://www.pictogame.com/?from_blog=1" target="_blank" title="user generated games" rel="tag">User Generated Games @ Pictogame</a></div></div>
<br /><br />
Brought to you by <a href="http://www.thetimes.co.za/">The Times</a>

 

Posted on September 20, 2007 - by Justin Hartman

Career Opportunity, London SW6

• Could you manage a football team with only a measly £500m budget?
• Have you got the stamina to sign cheques morning, noon and night for any player you want?
• Can you sulk in a sickening manner whenever referees don’t award you five penalties every game?
• Are you capable of spouting utter nonsense at press meetings?
• Can you say ‘Yes sir, of course sir!’ whenever your boss makes a suggestion, however unhelpful?

Yes?

Then come to Stamford Bridge!

Chelsea – A Proud History of Buying Silver Since 2005

 

Posted on September 17, 2007 - by Justin Hartman

As entertaining as it is twenty20 is flawed

Last night South Africa narrowly escaped a loss by beating England in the ICC World Twenty20. Had England fielded better or even had a better batting line-up we would have lost that game miserably. This got me thinking about a very apparent flaw I’ve noticed in the shortened version of the game.

The flaw is that if you win the toss and decide to field first you will inevitably give yourself about a 60% chance of winning the game than if you batted first. Now winning a toss in cricket has always been a very important factor but nothing quite like the 20 over game.

If you look at the current World Twenty20 tournament we’ve already had 15 games played. Of those 1 game has been tied, 5 have been won by the team batting first and 9 have been won by the team batting second.

Similarly in the Standard Bank Pro20 series there were 16 games played between February and March this year. Of those 4 were won by the team batting first while a massive 12 games were won by the team batting second. This means that in the domestic version of the game batting second gives you a 75% chance of winning.

These stats are all down to one thing – pressure.

The problem with batting first is that you have no real choice but to throw down the gauntlet and go for the big runs as you become the pace setters for the match. Unfortunately, the team batting second always has an advantage as they know exactly what they have to chase down and they can then set their innings’ pace accordingly.

When West Indies scored a massive 208/2 I’m pretty sure they thought the game was in the bag but careful planning by the South Africans (along with some poor fielding) allowed for a comfortable victory in the end.

Imagine what would have happened had Zimbabwe batted first in the match against Australia which they won by 5 wickets. Assuming they did, I think Zimbabwe would have felt that they needed to score close on 180 runs for any chance of beating the Australians. As it turned out the Aussies only got a mere 138/9 which took a lot of pressure off the Zimbos and allowed them to win with ease.

With 12 World Twenty20 games left only time will tell if the team batting second really does have the better advantage or not.

 

Posted on February 15, 2007 - by Justin Hartman

How I spent my Valentines Day

As is the trend lately my current news seems to be stale news by the time I get around to blogging about it but nonetheless it’s one post I still feel relevant and somewhat important to me.

Yesterday my wife Colette and I decided to take my 3 year old son to his first live sporting event, and share a moment together on Valentines Day, at the South Africa v Pakistan one day International cricket match. Neither of us were sure just how long Luke would last but he loves to watch cricket when it’s on the television so we figured what the hell.

We got there just after 5pm which co-incidentally was also dinner time all thanks to a shoddy performance by Pakistan who only managed to put together a measly 153 runs. The atmosphere was very intense and exciting when South Africa came out to bat but you could just see that Luke was completely overwhelmed.

While the noise was a little scary at first Luke certainly warmed up to the event and soon really started to get into the game which was great. The amazing part for me was that we stayed for the entire South African innings with little complaint from the little guy.

That all said I have to admit that this was all marred by the fact that I just realised that cricket is really not a place for children anymore. Most of the people in the stadium were pissed beyond belief and I can not tell you how many fights nearly broke out in the area that we were sitting in.

One such incident involved a very large white man and an even larger Pakistani man. The Pakistani was standing in front of the large white male, who was directly in front of us, and it turned very ugly indeed. It ended with the white guy pushing the Pakistani and him leaving cursing spitting and screaming. Quite disgusting in truth.

As adults, or even teenagers, we can somehow comprehend what is happening when these things break out but for a three year old it is simply scary. I watched this incident through the eyes of my child and I’m ashamed that I subjected him to this. It just seems to me that people in South Africa simply don’t care about the sport and more about getting pissed and causing chaos in a stadium. It happens in all sporting matches in our stadiums and it simply isn’t good enough.

What is really ironic is that I spent quite a bit of time in London last year watching some very big football games and despite English fans having such a bad reputation for hooliganism I’d now sooner take my child to a football game in London than a sporting event in South Africa.