The Next Wayne Rooney

One day, we might be asked a trivia question: Who is Rhain Davis? If you didn't until now, you will have after this post.

9-year old Rhain Davis used to play for Brisbane club, Redlands United. That was before his grandfather sent a DVD to Manchester United of his grandson in action. The Mancunians were impressed and now Davis is part of United's youth academy; along with 29 other nine-year-olds in this year's batch recruit. But The Sun has already dubbed him the next Wayne Rooney. For that, only time will tell. For now, enjoy the footage that has more than 3 million hits on YouTube, and impressed the good men at Old Trafford.

Day 1 @ Grace Rd (Leicester), Indians v Sri Lanka A XI, Tour game

Sri Lanka A 266. Indians 1/25. (TT Samarweera 72, RR Bose 5-51, Ramesh Powar 4-85)

Despite losing Dinesh Karthik just before the close, the Indians took the honours on the first day of their three-day tour game against a Sri Lankan A XI. The Indians rested SRT, Ganguly, Zaheer Khan, RP Singh & S Sreesanth and replaced them with pacers RR Bose and Ishant Sharma, offie Ramesh Powar, and batsmen Gautham Gambhir & Yuvraj Singh. Dinesh Karthik donned the gloves instead of MS Dhoni, who fielded at mid-on for most of the day. Karthik's 2 dropped catches, one of them a sitter, will not do his cause any good to cement his place in the Test team as first-choice keeper. The heroes of the day however were RR Bose and Ramesh Powar. Neither played in the first two Tests, but after today's performance, Dravid may re-evaluate his options for the 3rd Test at the Oval next week. The south-London ground is known to aid the slow bowlers in the latter stages of a Test match. Given the exploits of Surrey's Harbhajan Singh in this season's county circuit, and Sreesanth's erratic form in the first two Tests, it would not be surprising if the team management plumped for Mumbai's stocky offie, Ramesh Powar, for the 3rd Test.

Smelly Indian Airports?

Jeff Randall at The Telegraph has laid into the BAA (British Airports Authority), but not before describing:

"BAA's outlets are neither as smelly as airports in India, where the odour of urine is a defining feature, nor as dangerous as Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea, where there was a gang shoot-out in the terminal."
I have been to a half-dozen airports in India and this has never been a defining feature in my experience, nor has it been a defining feature in the experiences of others who have traveled extensively across India by air. Moreover, airport shoot-outs are not limited to "Third World hell-holes." I don't know who this Randall guy is, but I've been reading the Telegraph regularly since arriving here, and this is just the latest example of racial stereotyping claimed as fact. It worries me that The Telegraph is the most popular British broadsheet when I read stuff like this. Thankfully, the Tories are not in power, otherwise I shudder to think the kind of rubbish its mainstream media mouthpiece would dare to dish out. To their credit however, they have a comment option open to public response, and through it, one can read the views of those who enjoy reading The Telegraph, but also don't support the nonsense it sometimes emits.

As it happens, I agree with Randall's thoughts on the BAA's inefficiencies and his solutions.