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Category Archives: Cricket
All Hail Jacques Kallis
For years, the South African all-rounder Jacques Kallis has been compiling stats that would be the envy of some of the greatest batsmen who ever strode to the crease. As of today, he has scored nearly 12,000 runs in 145 … Continue reading
Posted in Cricket, South Africa
Tagged Gary Sobers, Jacques Kallis, Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag
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In Praise of South Africa
I fear that I give short shrift to South Africa in Right Off the Bat. Partly this is because during the 1970s and 1980s, when I was growing to love the game of cricket, the South Africans were excluded from … Continue reading
Posted in South Africa
Tagged A. B. de Villiers, Dale Steyn, Jacques Kallis, World Cup
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A Draw Versus a Tie
Some of my baseball-loving friends are still confused over the difference in cricket between a draw and a tie. So, this post is my way to try to resolve that confusion. There are three main forms of the game of … Continue reading
The World Cup So Far
So, we’re just over half way through the global one-day cricket shindig known as the World Cup, and there have been few surprises. The Associate Member nations—the second-tier cricketing teams that once every four years get to play with the … Continue reading
What Could Be Less Complex than Baseball?
Baseball complex? Some endeavors among the sporting world are easier to comprehend than others. Kick the Can, a great New York street game, may be the ultimate easy-to-follow, easy-to-play sport. I may have invented an even easier one in 1962. … Continue reading
The Hat Trick
It’s no big deal for a pitcher to strike out three batters in succession in baseball. However, to get three batsmen out in three successive deliveries in cricket is, and it’s called a hat trick. It occurs about as often … Continue reading
The Color of Cricket and Baseball
As we argue in Right Off the Bat, the image of cricket as an English game or of baseball as an American pastime is deeply inaccurate. Both are global sports, attracting people from all corners of the world, whether to … Continue reading
Posted in Baseball, Cricket
Tagged Devon Malcolm, Gladstone Small, Mark Butcher, Michael Carberry, Phil DeFreitas
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What Have I Learned….
OK, so working on Right Off the Bat (It ought to have an exclamation mark there; we’ll talk to our publisher about it.) was not exactly a return to U of T (University of Toronto, during my year of apostasy … Continue reading
Why Irish Eyes Are Smiling
The Irish cricket team have just pulled off the unthinkable. Not only have they beaten England—generally fancied as the much better team—but they’ve done so in style, and staging the largest ever run chase in World Cup history: 328. They … Continue reading
Malinga the Marauder: The Bringer of Yorkers
What can one say about the Sri Lankan fast bowler Lasith Malinga, deliverer of torment to batsmen everywhere through his mastery of one of most deadly weapons in a bowler’s arsenal: the yorker? This is a ball that is speared right at … Continue reading
Right Off the Bat 