Up for air

Apologies for the delay in posting. As the summer ended, and the university session drew near, a sense of panic about all the things left undone kicked in, and I found it too difficult to get back online. But here we are. A quick couple of thoughts on events of recent days:

1. I observed the Don Bradman centenary draw near, thought about writing something but then realized that just about everything that could be written on the Don has been been put down on paper. Perhaps the most interesting things about the Don are to speculate on what it would take for someone in the modern cricketing era to be seriously compared to him - and by that I mean someone that would seriously throw any ranking vis-a-vis his contemporaries out of whack. Its hard to imagine what someone would have to do (and how) to pull off such a feat. And of course, whether this cricketer's performances would stand out sufficiently against the backdrop of a much more hectic media scene than there was in the Don's time.

2. The Champion's Trophy cancellation was inevitable, and one can only hope that some sanity is restored to the scheduling of tournaments worldwide. One 50-over World Cup, one T20 World Cup; both held every four years but at two years separation from each other; bilateral one-day or T20 series between countries; an IPL season every year to clean up big bucks; bilateral test series. Shouldn't all this be enough international cricket? As for Pakistan's place in international cricket, this latest development is yet another blow in a catalog of disasters, many of them self-inflicted. It isn't entirely clear to me how they are going to salvage other international tours. And neither is it clear how the very clear bloc-divide in the ICC is to be bridged. We do live in interesting times.