My tweets

• Thu, 16:24: RT @LSEpublicevents: Imran Khan will speak at LSE about Pakistan: A Personal History on 20/9 http://t.co/WPbbBcP #lsepakistan
• Thu, 16:33: RT @richardjgodwin: One of the finest London shop fronts I've ever seen: http://t.co/jgoX35u
• Thu, 16:33: RT @ESPNcricinfo: Wow. Wasn't expecting this: RT @telegraph_sport Aus cricketers banned selector Greg Chappell from dressing room.http:/ ...
• Thu, 16:36: RT @Exploring20CLdn: Superb photos of London by LIFE magazine: http://t.co/XvoF3W2
• Thu, 19:27: Tuition fees are making law conversion courses less attractive | Alex Aldridge http://t.co/5NJ90Gn via @guardian
• Thu, 19:45: It is David Cameron who is 'twisting and misrepresenting' human rights | Benjamin Ward http://t.co/Gz7rVss via @guardian
• Thu, 19:56: Who are the real looters – rioters or MPs? | John Harris http://t.co/DhKxlxi via @guardian << FANTASTIC ARTICLE!! >>
• Thu, 20:14: Bloody hell, it's chilly like. It should be illegal for the temperature to fall below 12 degrees in the summer. #london #enfield #weather
• Thu, 22:34: India's Selective Rage Over Corruption: http://t.co/nlwwowu << GOOD ARTICLE! >> #corruption #india #annahazare
• Thu, 22:39: Kaushik Basu Says Make Bribe Giving Legal in India http://t.co/8rqB4ZU || A FASCINATING IDEA TO CUT CORRUPTION! #india #corruption

( Read more... )

A Trip Down Memory Lane

Click on picture for link to book on Amazon UK.

There are several reasons why I fell in love with the game of cricket and this book is one of them. It was probably the first dedicated book about cricket that I ever bought and I remember the occasion clearly. My dad's favourite bookshop in the UK was Dillon's on Gower Street in Central London, now a branch of Waterstones. It felt massive then and even today it's the largest academic bookstore in Europe! I used to enjoy going to Dillon's on our biennial visits to the UK while growing up in Oman. On my first-ever visit there in the summer of 1992 (when I was eight) I bought this book. I wasn't a huge fan of cricket yet but I was slowly getting into it. For better or for worse, this book hooked me for life. I spent hours poring through every one of its 256 pages, the prose about the game's history and the tables of statistics detailing every record worth knowing.

Pakistan were touring England that summer and people who followed that series will remember it well. I know we were in town when Aamir Sohail scored a double century, at Edgbaston if memory serves. And I think he scored 205, possibly not-out. But the series made headlines for all the wrong reasons, what with ball-tampering allegations against the Pakistanis and what not. That was probably the first Test series that I had ever followed. Two years earlier I had been aware of India's tour of England and even bought my first-ever plastic cricket set during a trip to Snowdonia in Wales with some family friends, who also bought a set for themselves. But I know I didn't follow that series. I have a vague memory of watching part of a Test on the same family friend's TV, then going out into the driveway with their two boys and trying to emulate the players with our new cricket sets. Don't think we broke any car windows but our dads did break the bank to catch some action at Lord's. They also went to Wimbledon and caught some Centre Court action. So much for taking their boys along!

The emphasis in this book was obviously on Test cricket and though I probably wasn't aware of who he was at the time, it should come as no surprise that it was compiled by Bill Frindall. When I tried searching for the book (just out of plain curiosity) before I started on this entry, his name just popped out of nowhere. I couldn't remember the name of the book nor who had written it, but merely by recalling the image of the book in my mind, the first name that my memory bank associated with it was the Bearded Wonder. Lo and behold, it was by Frindall. I'm sure it's still stored somewhere in our house in Oman but I wish I had it in front of me right now!

(1992 was probably the year I fell in love with the game. You can read about another memorable formative cricketing experience from the same year that I posted about in March 2005).

BBC Two's India on Four Wheels

I love the fact Aunty Beeb commissions a fairly regular stream of programmes based in India but this one is pretty ordinary. There are some good bits and it is almost saved by the sultry Anita Rani (of The One Show fame) but it's an hour long programme that could've been squeezed into half that. However I'm not really the target audience. I'm sure many Brits (especially those who've never been to or know much about India) will find it interesting and possibly even fascinating. Luckily for me there's only one more episode to sit through next week. I know I don't have to watch it but it's almost worth it for the eye candy alone and besides, it's about India.

(The programme did remind me of another one the Beeb broadcast in 2009 and that I wrote about here. It was titled The Maharajas' Motor Car: The Story of Rolls-Royce in India. Indeed in the new programme Anita Rani meets the Maharana of Udaipur and even gets to drive around in his 1924 Rolls-Royce which featured so prominently in the earlier programme. The earlier programme was much better and possibly more educational.)