Fun fact: Spanner is a peeping Tom in German
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Are they places to keep your stash?
I have recently learned, in the most roundabout way possible (through a song), that @Iftikhar shares the name with a pakistani who bats a ball (and is apparantly famous, but as a Norwegian I am totally resistant to information about both Cricket and American Football). Thankfully, this is not his most famous name-brother (who wants the name of someone who is only famous for cricket, come on). Extremely strangely, it appears to be a surname (yeah, yeah, I am reading etymology, because of course I would do that when I first post such a nonsensical post as this one, as I would at least need to know the nonsense I am pushing to you all).
Anyway, google gives me lots of horrendous examples of semi-contemporaries (who are all irrelevant, for any name that has it’s most famous people in the last 200 years, isn’t a very venerable name, i am sure you can agree) like Indian movie stars and cricket players (again, who cares, they have to be dead for at least 5 centuries and STILL be famous to matter).
Anyway, as I was saying (somewhere above in this rant, that is not at all a very serious one), the Governor-General of the Fatimid Caliphate of Jerusalem, Iftikhar al-Dawla, held that city for 6 weeks under siege against the forces of the First Crusade. He is suitably famous and venerable, but most important of all, he did not demean himself to play cricket.
Now you may wonder what on earth made me post this nonsense? Well, it all started with me randomly reading about Sigurd the Crusader, which led me to read a bit more about the First Crusade too to refresh, and then even more randomly I put on a song on Youtube, and there was Ifthikar
Side note to my already extremely side-note is that I did very much like this guy’s pronounciation of Old Norse. It was very, very good.
Appendix to my important addendum, is that I really wish I could speak Old Norse and read it fluently instead of just mostly understanding it.
All of this, just because I made the mistake of rewatching this particular video:
And then the domino pieces fell until I ended up reading about the name Ifhtikar and where it is from.
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I stopped reading when he said he doesn’t like cricket.
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This one
My love for Cricket is waning due to the demise of my childhood love (West Indies) and exacerbated by the shameful decline of our national side. So I had to Google to find my namesake.
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My love for cricket was never kindled, since the British Empire never invaded us and so brought that form of particular culture to Norway.
I googled now, and seemingly there exists a couple of cricket teams in the Oslofjord basin area (a league was founded in 2000, I read). But I have literally never heard of anyone in Norway that actually plays it.
The only time I have ever watched a cricket game was when I lived in Brisbane. There it was on TV and locals seemed to adore the sport. Here in Norway it has been regarded pretty much like Polo. A sport for Englishmen and their colonies only. But that seems to be changing a bit.
I suppose if I grew up somewhere else, like in a place where cricket was culturally important, I would like it too.
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OK…how would i sell test cricket to Magnus?
right…
it is impossible to understand the attraction of test cricket if all you know are the rules, its a sport that takes application to watch…you need to watch test after test, on pitch after pitch, to begin to understand how intricate a game is…how you can play for five days, but it only takes a session to win a test match, its a team sport based on the ability of individuals performing thier best…
to really sell it to @Magnus id say once you KNOW the game, its more like a medievil tournament, or a battle, than any sport on the planet.
you are watching a game of chess where the peices are able to show individual moments of brilliance
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That was a pretty good sell and I am weak enough so that this angle works on me too.
I would probably enjoy to learn it and watch it properly, but maybe it’s too late in life and I have no emotional attachment. But maybe not.
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Everything that Redbj said, plus the Aussies are always the baddies.
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“What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?”
- CLR James, Beyond A Boundary
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Should also mention that if rain is much needed in an area, just schedule a cricket match to alleviate the problem.
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unless you have to survive the last session… then expect a drought…
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To love Test Cricket you just need to watch a session of
#1 Ambrose bowling Steve Waugh
#2 Glenn McGrath bowling Lara
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#3 Alan Donald bowling to Mike Atherton
#4 Flintoff to Ricky Ponting
#5 Michael Holding to Peter Willey
#6 Shane Warne to Mike Gatting
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The bowler’s Holding the batsman’s Willey
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Easy. It is 5 days of drinking beer. Do this 5 times between December and January and you have a test series!
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Tell him its all out WAR!
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