Good Cricket

*no pictures because of my slow ass connection speeds today.

As a result of the holiday I probably will not be posting anything else until Monday. That is unless I get so bored at home that I decide to come back in to work. Yesterday I had the pleasure of watching the One Day International Cricket match between India and England. It was the first of a 7 match series. There are no local or cable channels you can get this game on. The only possibilities are that you have a satellite dish that provides you with a wide variety of Indian channels (which I have) or you subscribe to Super Sport, which is a South African channel. The only bars I know of in Jakarta that televise live cricket are Sportsman’s in Blok M and Aphrodite in Taman Rasuna.

Yesterday’s game was quite interesting. England took the field first leaving India to bat. I only got home close to the end of the first half to witness India’s measly accomplishment of 203 runs, all out, in something like 47 overs. With a score like that it seemed very unlikely that they would win the first match on their home pitch in Delhi. However when India took the field, Pathan immediately took down 2 crucial wickets. From there the battle was on and England’s batters were belting out one boundary after the other maintaining a steady climb to their attainable goal. I must admit that I was very impressed with their regularity and confidence.

I recall they had reached around 117-3 when things took a turn for the worse. Until then it seemed highly unlikely that they would not reach their target. The man of the match, Harbhajan Singh took down 5 wickets with his notorious spinners. There were some awesome catches by Gambir and Kaif as well. It is mind blowing how these guys can react to a shot in under a second and stop this rock hard ball that is flying at them. I was ecstatic watching the English wickets fall as the possibility of a win seemed to materialize into reality. The English were stopped in their tracks and the Indians won the match by 39 runs.

It was an extremely lucky win for the Indians and they are really going to have to shape up if they plan to win this series. They have a magnificent team right now with solid bowlers like Shreesanth, Harbhajan, Pathan, and even Yuvraj. The batting line up is equally strong with multi talented players like Yuvraj, Shewag, Khaif and Dhoni at bat. Unfortunately the master blaster Sachin is out of commission due to a knee operation and that tends to affect the Indians confidence. Their batting in this game was horrible and I hope to see some serious changes in the next game on Friday, namely I want to see Dhoni up to bat in the 4th or 5th spot at least.

Watching a cricket game requires a certain level of patience, dedication, and a high level of tolerance for alcohol. You are committed to sitting in front of your TV set for at least 6 hours so if you don’t pace yourself you could be lying face down on the carpet before the second inning begins.

So for reading all about cricket I guess you do deserve some reward. Here are 3 awesome games that you can play in succession. They are point and click puzzlers. Some things have to be clicked more then once and others only at the right time. This is a long weekend and some of us got time to burn so this is a healthy way to go about it. Have a good one!!! Let me know if you get stuck or if you finish. I am still stuck!

Hapland 1

Hapland 2

Hapland 3