It’s Raining in Adelaide
C and I liked Adelaide, when we went there in the 1980s. But it didn’t rain. In fact in the whole three weeks we were in Australia we never saw any rain at all. This was unusual, as we usually had rain on holiday, just like Queen Liz does!
Adelaide is a unique Australian city in that it was planned by Colonel William Light to be a city with wide streets and lots of green spaces. It is also surrounded by a large area of parkland and has proved to be one of the best laid-out cities in the whole world. There is a statue to his memory called Light’s Vision overlooking the city with this inscription.
The reasons that led me to fix Adelaide where it is I do not expect to be generally understood or calmly judged of at present. My enemies however, by disputing their validity in every particular, have done me the good service of fixing the whole of the responsibility upon me. I am perfectly willing to bear it, and I leave it to posterity and not to them, to decide whether I am entitled to praise or to blame.
Light and his father, Francis, are two of those characters in history, to whom I am drawn. C and I came across the father first in Penang and realised that the founder of the settlement, had been born in Dallinghoo, which was the next village to Debach, where we lived at the time. So the father of the designer of Adelaide was a Suffolk man. In fact, he was the illegimate son of a woman in the village, who was taken under the wing of the local landowner. He certainly was a well-educated and successful man as this extract from Wikipedia shows.
From 1765, he worked as a private country trader. For about ten years he had his headquarters in Salang, Thailand, near Phuket, reviving a failed French trading post. While living there he learned to speak and write several languages, including Malay and Siamese. In 1785, he warned the Thais on Phuket Island of an imminent Burmese attack. Light’s warning enabled the islanders to prepare for Phuket’s defence and subsequently repel the Burmese invasion. For the British East India Company, he leased the island of Penang from the Sultan of Kedah, where many others had failed, and was supposedly given the Princess of Kedah as a reward (other sources state that the Princess was sent to covet Light’s aid on behalf of the Sultan). The multicultural colony of Penang became extraordinarily successful from its inception and Light served as the Superintendent of the colony until his death.
They were an amazing father and son, who from humble beginning made a real positive contribution to the world. We get massive tomes written about obscure and useless politicians, but where is the dual biography of Francis and William Light? A book was written in 1901 and it’s here in PDF.
Let’s hope the rain eases up enough for the Aussies to take their deserved beating!
The ECB is not Commenting
And quite rightly so, given the latest allegations from the head of the Pakistani Cricket Board; Ijaz Butt. This is what MIke Selvey says The Guardian.
Actually, what he is suggesting, in his hamfisted, truculent way, is that if Pakistan players can get accused of malpractice whenever they underperform, then how about a taste of your own medicine when it is England, not Pakistan, who lose five wickets for 17 runs and with it the game. It is a pathetic yah-boo response, of course, and childish when there have been serious issues raised these past few weeks, but that is all it is. However spiteful it might seem, we should really take no notice of Mr Butt.
Nor should we just accept the latest fixing story at face value, for there are chancers out there, and not just those who would try to bend matches and incidents. There might be a fast buck to be made by someone who could pass off a tale: it has been tried before. This particular story, one in which it is said the outcome, or rather elements of the Pakistan innings on Friday, were known in advance, ought to be treated with a little more suspicion than appears to have been the case with those who simply interpret what they read as gospel without thinking it through.
I hope that we don’t invite the Pakistani cricketers again for several years, as they and their officials are really devaluing this so-called series of matches.
I might watch some of the match today and I hope that England win by a country mile.
Don’t They Ever Learn!
It is now being reported that there are more betting allegations in the cricket.
I was going to watch the last two matches next week! Perhaps, I won’t as it would appear the bookmakers have already decided who will win!
The ICC Does the Right Thing
The ICC has done the right thing in suspending the three Pakistani cricketers accused of being involved in a betting scandal.
The cricketers may or may not be involved, but you can imagine the atmosphere in say Cardiff, if they had been allowed to play. Sports fans in that city are noted for their humour.
But for the Pakistani High Commisioner to claim that the important video was made later is a disgrace.
I have a feeling that this incident will run and run. Let’s hope that the ICC and England continue to act in the fair-minded way they have up to now.
Kevin Pietersen’s Forthright Tweets
Kevin Pietersen might be a good cricketer, but he’ll never make it as a diplomat after today.
Let’s face it, he’s not playing well and deserves to be dropped, as batsmen are supposed to score runs. He hasn’t for some time.
The Pakistani Betting Scandal
Now I’ve held a bookmaking licence in my time and I’ve also had some good successes making the odd ridiculous bet. I had £10 each-way on Terimon for the Derby many years ago at 500-1 and it came second, so I made a profit of over a £1,000 on the transaction.
Usually though I’ve had inside information, as the horse has either been one of mine or it has been trained in the same stable. There was also my last winner, Joy of Freedom, who won at Folkestone at long odds, because she was pregnant and that had improved her no end!
But in all these cases the bookies offered the odds and we took them.
The one case we didn’t take the odds, was when my horse, Debach Delight, won at Ayr. She started at odds of 22-1 on, which meant that to win a pound, you needed to stake tenty-two. Not good betting odds, but I had noticed that to generate business the bookies were offering 10-1, if she won the race by ten lengths. When she duly won by twelve, I told the jockey about the betting, who said that I should have had a bet and told him, as he would have made sure I won. He wasn’t suggesting anything dishonest, but he had eased the horse down in the last furlong and if it had mattered, he would have made sure, she had won by the requisite distance, as she in fact had.
This just shows that if bookmakers offer silly bets, like whether the next delivery will be a no-ball, it is very easy to take advantage.
In part this is what has happened with the scandal involving the Pakistani cricketers. The bookies offer a silly bet, so someone takes advantage and asks the bowler to bowl a no-ball.
The first thing that needs to be done is rid the sport of these illegal bookmakers or at least the bets that encourage cheating. Only then will we be able to clean up the game.
I have to say that the response of Pakistani supporters in the UK, seems to have been exemplary, with most appearing to be extremely disappointed about the actions of the Pakistani players.
Don’t They Ever Learn?
Pakistani cricketers are once again in the brown stuff. This time, it’s about spot betting on whether a delivery is a no-ball or not. But the Pakistani cricket team has been involved in all sorts of scandals over the past few years. So you’d think that with all the problems in the country, that the cricketers would be playing to try to give some sort of lift to their unfortunate compatriots.
If the allegations are proven to be true, then those involved should be banned for life from ever playing cricket again!
The real curse is this spot betting. Imagine yesterday at Portman Road and you could bet on Grant Leadbitter hitting the bar from a free kick. (Actually, what he did deserved a goal!) But bookmakers in some places will take such a bet. Certainly no reputable or licensed one would.
As an aside to this Oxfam have just said that billions of pounds will have to be spent to reconstruct Pakistan and it must start now! Can we trust the country to spend the money wisely and not let it end up in the hands of crooks?
Even if we can, these cricketers have sowed the seeds of doubt in many peoples’ minds.
The Paradox that is Pakistan
There is a long article in The Sunday Times today by Christina Lamb, that should be read by everyone who worries for the future of that part of Asia. I do,as I was born, when two nations; India and Pakistan, were created out of violence.
She details how the ISI, the Pakistan Security Service has pursued its own policies over the country, the Taliban and Afghanistan. She more or less accuses the ISI of being involved in the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and the attacks on Mumbai. One also wonders where the $18billion that the United States has given Pakistan in aid has gone?
After reading Lanb’s article, I feel very much that David Cameron got it about right, when he spoke in India last week!
We also today have the appalling performance of the Pakistan cricket team at Nottingham, where they collapsed badly and were beaten by 354 runs. They had the nucleus of a team, but it self-destructed in Australia and some players endeed up being banned for life. If you can’t organise your national sport, when you have so much history in the game, you are in a bad state.
Added to this is the fact, that I know from some of my friends, that it is still possible to do serious business with Pakistan. So it’s not all bad news!
But what worries me about Pakistan is that if they should support another terrorist attack on India. Would India show the same restraint she did after the Mumbai attacks? I think not this time, as those attacks weren’t the first and they must be losing patience!
Would the various communities from the sub-continent show restraint in the UK? Most probably would, but I doubt that we could keep out of it.
Pakistan must get its act together, reinforce democracy and curb the power of the ISI.
Technology for Umpires
I am watching the England Pakistan Test at Nottingham on Sky. I must say that I’m impressed by the new referral system, that allows technology to check an umpire’s decision. This piece in The Telegraph, seems to have found a lot of agreement amongst spectators, that the new system is fair and good.
What seems to work is the fact that each side can make two challenges in an innings, just like in tennis, where each player or team in doubles can make two challenges in a set.
Surely, football could come up with a similar system, which allowed two challenges per half of the referee’s decisions for important phases in the game, such as goals, penalties and red cards. Just as at Nottingham, the review footage could be shown on a big screen for everyone to see. The referee would take the decision, based on images from several cameras. Interestingly, I have a feeling that technology exists to continuously track the ball using a camera, so that its complete trajectory could be shown.
BUt that old full-of-wind fart, Bladder, wouldn’t like it.
Do We Somehow Absorb The Events Happening As We Are Born?
I don’t mean in an astrological way, as that is a load of old rubbish. But surely the state, feelings and emotions of the mother, must be passed to the child!
When our first son was born in 1969, everybody was on edge for the first moon landing. But it all turned out well! Gayle Hunnicutt whose own son was born at the same time, said her son was placid. Was ours? Perhaps as a young child, but not like how Gayle described her son.
I was born on the 16th August 1947, just a day after India gained independence. I am a few hours late to be one of Midnight’s Children. Has it affected me? I love India and most things Indian. I’ve been twice and hopefully I’ll go again. I’ve just watched John Sergeant’s excellent documentary on Indian railways, which talked eloquently about the tragedy and violence of partition, when around a 1,000,000 people died. It must have been in the papers and on the radio around the time I was born. I’ve also heard of this violence from a man, who at the time was a young officer in the British Army trying to move civilians to safety in soft-skinned vehicles. He wouldn’t talk about it.
In Sergeant’s documentary, we saw how the tragedy still continues, with India and Pakistan refusing to forget the violence and emnity and try to build a better future.
Today London showed how bad that relationship has become, with Pakistan playing Australia at the neutral venue of Lords. Judging by the fact that Pakistan are on top, they will claim victory, when in truth they have been defeated by the terrorists, who have forced them to play in England.
We must learn to renounce violence and surely the Indian sub-continent has seen enough in the last seventy years.
The Anonymous Widower 