That Bloke In The Big Smoke

When Roger Federer stepped onto Centre Court on Tuesday 30 June 2015, it marked his 63rd consecutive Grand Slam singles appearance, a record-breaking streak (for men and women) dating back to the 2000 Australian Open. If it wasn't for his losses as a qualifier in the preceding US and Australian Opens of 1999, he might easily have been playing his 67th consecutive Grand Slam tournament. Trailing him in second-place are Japan's Ai Sugiyama for the women with 62 and South Africa's Wayne Ferreira for the men on 56. Sugiyama and Ferreira never reached a Grand Slam final. In fact of all the players (men and women) who have made at least 45 consecutive appearances, only one other has played in more than two Grand Slam finals: the Swede Stefan Edberg, rather fittingly Federer's present-day coach.

On top of this injury-free consistency, can be added a record 17 Grand Slam titles (for men), a record 26 Grand Slam finals, a record 37 Grand Slam semi-finals and a record 45 Grand Slam quarter-finals. He also became the first man to reign supreme at the top of the rankings for more than 300 weeks, that included a record (for men and women) 237 consecutive weeks between February 2004 and August 2008. Even Novak Djokovic, with 154 weeks and who has dominated the men's game for the past four years, trails Federer by 148 weeks overall as world number one. While Rafael Nadal was number one for 141 weeks.

Supplant onto these: the record 10 consecutive Grand Slam final appearances between 2005 and 2007, followed by the second-best 8 consecutive appearances between 2008 and 2010 (Nadal is third-best with 5 consecutive finals); the 23 consecutive Grand Slam semi-final appearances (Djokovic is second-best with 14); the 36 consecutive quarter-final appearances (Djokovic again second-best with 25, and counting); the first man to appear at least 5 times in each Grand Slam final (the next best is 3); one of four men in the Open Era to achieve the career Grand Slam (along with Rod Laver, Andre Agassi and Nadal); an Olympic singles silver-medalist and doubles gold-medalist; 86 ATP Tour titles, surpassed only by Jimmy Connors (105) and Ivan Lendl (94); 131 ATP tournament finals (surpased again only by Connors and Lendl); the only man to win at least one ATP Tour title for 15 consecutive years (one ahead of Lendl, two ahead of Connors). And you get the picture.

As if that wasn't enough, he has won the most prize money in the history of the sport (although Djokovic should surpass him soon enough), earned the most through endorsements (which few will ever surpass), is by far the most popular player in the world, is multi-lingual, has a beautiful supportive wife and two(!) sets of twins. All this before turning 34. And yet, when Federer stepped onto court yesterday afternoon to play Britain's Andy Murray for the umpteenth time, he delivered a performance that was at once clinical and majestic. One for the Gods to savour, and the mere mortals amongst us to cherish for all-time. Many others have written more eloquently about the aesthetic pleasure derived from watching the Swiss maestro in action, so let me end simply by saying, we are privileged to be living through a period when two of the greatest players ever to wield a racquet (Federer and Serena Williams) are still willing to put themselves through the grinder, in order to satisfy their own love for the game - and by extension, ours. Long may this continue!

For about the next four weeks, depending on the episode, five excerpts of this fine book read by the author himself, will be available to listen anywhere in the world. Each episode is a delightfully compact fourteen minutes, so there's no excuse to miss out on any of them. Apparently, it was originally broadcast in 2010, repeated in 2011 and again in 2012, but I seemed to have missed them all. I guess it doesn't help that all these broadcasts, including this one, have been on BBC Radio 4 Extra.

I've blogged one of my favourite quotes from the book. I bought it many years ago but unfortunately I never finished it. Then I lent it to an Irish lass who was just getting into the sport and had quite taken to the longer forms of the game. She kept it.

"It's an individual thing, I guess. I don't know why they decided to give up on their pace. I love bowling fast, and it is my strength. I will never compromise on my pace. And it's a lot of fun to hit people on the head."

Varun Aaron says he won't compromise on pace.

This is the uncapped 21 year-old tearaway from the Indian state of Jharkhand (home to Dhoni as well) who will replace the injured Ishant Sharma for the ODIs. What's so special about him? Oh nothing much, aside from the fact he's the fastest recorded Indian bowler. Ever. During the 2009/10 Vijay Hazare Trophy he reportedly bowled a 153-kph delivery and regularly bowls above 140-kph. A succession of good performances capped by his ten wickets in three games during the recently-concluded Emerging Players Tournament in Australia has impressed the selectors enough to draft him into the one-day squad in England. Apparently Andy Roberts was his childhood hero and judging by his quote above, he seems to share an enthusiasm for chin music. Meanwhile, the replacement for the injured Virender Sehwag will be another uncapped player who did well in the Emerging Players Tournament. Mumbai's Ajinkya Rahane, who averages over 67 in first-class cricket, has just scored two centuries Down Under. The 23 year-old averages nearly 39 in List-A matches and seems a promising recruit.

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).

I must admit this was probably one of the most surreal things I've ever heard on the radio and to hear it live during yesterday's play had me doing double takes. And I'm sure I wasn't alone. But to be gifted two slog sweeps for six by Sir Geoff (he's not really knighted) on the same day was quite something. As rare as a blue moon I suppose. Enjoy them both and while you can. We may not hear anything like it for a long time to come! TMS Zindabad! And long live Mr Boycott!

You can imagine what a happy bunny I must've been when I realised not only would I be attending my first-ever Test match, and at Lord's no less, but I'd also have a camera with which to capture the special occasion!


Click image(s) to enlarge. This is probably my fave panorama to date. It was taken at 11:41am, forty minutes into the day's play from the Lower Mound Stand, described by Blowers on TMS as "like a province in India".


The problem with the cleaned and cropped up version of the picture above is that it cut off too much at the bottom for my liking, so you've got both to make your own mind up with.


This panorama was taken at 4:28pm, not long before the game ended. And as you can tell, there was a fair amount of cloud cover by this point but it was still quite warm.



And just for the sake of completion, here's the clean and cropped up version of the same panorama.

364 runs, 6 wickets. A brilliant double-century and some inept bowling barring P Kumar's stellar effort. Two performances added to the Lord's Honours Board. A decent day's cricket. I hope our batsmen get stuck in tomorrow and eke out a draw because there is only one other possible result: an England win. Ishant Sharma needs to sort himself out and Sreesanth better stop heaping praise on Twitter and prepare for Trent Bridge. He was rubbish at Taunton and will need to step it up if Zaheer is unavailable. However there were encouraging signs of Zak working out at the Lord's gym which suggests the injury/niggle is not serious. Let's hope for the best!

In other interesting developments, Lily Cooper nee Allen was the secret guest at tea time on TMS. Her knowledge of the game was surprisingly good. Moreover she attends village cricket regularly. She provides the cakes and tea! Apparently she got into the game because of her partner whom she recently married. I remember the media interest generated by her previous appearance on TMS a couple years ago. Aggers was obviously having a good time, flirting on-air with the London-based singer. She also earned brownie points for turning down an ECB-inspired Twenty20 initiative to exploit her celebrity value because it wasn't Test cricket! [SCORECARD]

As the first test between England and India at Lord's gets underway tomorrow morning, here are four photostitches taken at the home of cricket on 15 April 2008 during my first-ever visit there, along with pappubahry.


Click image to enlarge. This is my favourite of the four panoramas. It's taken from the Compton Stand, where incidentally I sat during my first-ever Lord's cricket match in June 2009.


Click image to enlarge. This was taken in front of the award-winning media centre which you can see in the first panorama.


Click image to enlarge. This was taken from the Grand Stand and it hasn't turned out as well as I would've hoped. But I did manage to cram in pappubahry on the far right!


Click image to enlarge. Similar to the third panorama but not as wide. You can get a good view of the (Old) Pavilion on the right built in 1890 and the Media Centre on the left built in 1999.