south africa

Dickie Knees

Submitted by rickeyre on January 5, 2006 - 5:00am

It all makes sense, you know...

Makhaya Ntini injured his knee during the Second Test at Melbourne
An injured knee is known as a "dicky knee"
Dickie Knee was a puppet on the 1990s Channel Nine variety program "Hey Hey It's Saturday"
The voice of Dickie Knee was played by prominent Melbourne radio identity John Blackman
Shane Warne called Makhaya Ntini "John Blackman" because he was batting with a dicky knee.

Shane, you may be, as you told the world in 1998, "naive and stupid", but we're not. Even if that is all there is to the remark, how utterly dopey was it to use the word "Blackman" to a black South African opponent in any context?

Warne should have been disciplined for disrepute for the sheer insensivity of the remark, and it reflects poorly on all those in the Australian camp who condoned it.

Anyway, take a look at this article in the Sunday Herald Sun for a startling revelation about the real Dickie Knee.

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Some day my Ashwell will come

Submitted by rickeyre on January 5, 2006 - 2:23am

It was great to see Ashwell Prince bring up that century at the SCG yesterday, if only to see a South African with personality do so well...

The partnership of 219 for the fourth wicket between Prince and Kallis, though a little slow by contemporary Test standards, has put South Africa in the box seat for this game, and let's face it, it's healthy for the sport any time Australia is made to struggle these days.

Watching Shane Warne bowl to Prince yesterday gave me this perverse image of the same bowler with a slightly plumper girth and longer blond hair being smashed around by Ravi Shastri on this same ground fourteen years ago, almost to the day.

On the morning of Day Three, the start of play (at the absurdly early TV-driven hour of 10am) has been delayed. It's gloomy and overcast in Sydney and barely drizzling. Goodness, if this were Old Trafford or Headingley they'd be saying conditions are ideal for cricket!

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Sydney Test starts today... probably

Submitted by rickeyre on January 3, 2006 - 12:27am

Yesterday it was 44.2 degrees in Sydney, the second-hottest day in recorded history. Today it's in the low twenties, very dark outside, and drizzling. No real complaints about that, they've had some hideous bushfires near Gosford over the past couple of days, but there's a Test match due to start at the SCG in a couple of hours.

The webcam at the SCG doesn't appear to be operating at the moment. I'll be blogging about the Test this week as time permits. Feel free to comment.

Happy new year.

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Another surrealistic technicolour yawn masquerading as entertainment

Submitted by rickeyre on February 9, 2003 - 4:00pm

Opening/closing ceremonies of major sporting events stopped being fascinating a long time ago. I think it was the Lillehammer 1994 Winter Olympics where they irretrievably crossed the boundary into the realm of surrealistic technicolour yawns masquerading as cultural ballets. After Sydney 2000 (the one where Captain Cook discovered Australia on choreographed bicycles) I thought that wanky, over-indulgent sports ceremonies could go no further. Cape Town 2003, the opening ceremony of the Cricket World Cup, in fact proved that.

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South Africa defeats India for first time

Submitted by rickeyre on March 11, 2002 - 5:00am

South Africa has taken a 1-0 lead in their historic one-day series against India with a win in a rain-affected match at the North West Cricket Stadium, Potchefstroom, on Sunday March 11. The win, by 29 runs under the Duckworth-Lewis method of calculating revised targets, follows the washout of last Thursday's historic series opener at Lenasia.

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Indian team arrives in South Africa

Submitted by rickeyre on March 5, 2002 - 4:00pm

The Indian women's cricket team commenced its first tour to the African continent when it flew into Johannesburg on Monday March 4. The tour is, in fact, the first official visit by any international women's team to South Africa since 1972.

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