Wait until next year

August 23, 2009

Sunday in the garden, listening to the Ashes

It’s a beautiful day today. It could get a whole lot better as the Ashes edges towards its conclusion. It could also get pretty tense. Today I’ll be sat in my garden, enjoying the sun and trying to enjoy the cricket, listening to Test Match Special. For such an important day’s play you need the BBC to guide you, reassure you. Maybe if the game swings England’s way I’ll feel safe enough to indulge Sky’s images and flashy gadgets, but not just yet.

Australia have been set a world-record chase – they would essentially have to put in the best fourth innings batting performance ever to win. This should be a cause for optimism, but makes the inner English pessimist in me even more worried. It’s one thing to lose the Ashes, it’s quite another to lose to a record-breaking (read: heart-breaking) effort. And one of the first things any England supporter learns is to never count out the Aussies. Two days to win the Ashes. Two days to see them agonisingly slip away. This is what sport is all about. I can’t wait.

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August 21, 2009

Betting Hell continued

Being something of a glutton for punishment, I continue to plough on in search of a winner.

Goldolphin and Frankie Dettori are in a rich vein of form at the moment, so I’m concentrating on their runners today:

York:

Spring of Fame

Huntdown

Dandy Man

Salisbury:

Black Snowflake

All in the mug punter’s favourite bet, an each-way lucky 15. We’ll see how lucky I am, eh?

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August 20, 2009

Test Match Special

I’m off work, but can’t really justify, from a waistline and financial point-of-view, five whole days in a pub watching the Ashes. However, my trusty freeview box does offer the ‘red button’ option to listen to the BBC Test Match Special commentary, with an accompanying scorecard.

There’s part of me that thinks this is how cricket should be followed anyway. For such a lenghty and thoughtful game, radio seems the perfect medium, allowing the commentators time to ruminate not just about the action at hand, but paint pictures of the whole scene and articulate the ebb and flow of a five-day event. It also allows the listener to dip in and out of the game, and to carry on with ‘real life’ while the game progresses in the background.

I’ll no doubt dip into pubs now and again over the next five days and catch the odd session, but I’ll be relying on the radio, the internet, my phone and overheard conversations in order to keep up-to-date. A strange variety of media to keep up on a sporting event, but over five days anyone following the Ashes needs to be pretty inventive, resourceful and adaptable to keep up. And that is half the fun.

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August 18, 2009

Today’s tips – or The Return Of Betting Hell

When I restarted this blog I eased myself in with a series of tips – or at least a daily record of what I was betting on each day. To begin with there was some profit, and I was sad that I was only betting to incredibly small stakes. Then I lost and lost and lost, and was extremely happy to be only betting to incredibly small stakes. However, I figured that such a remarkable knack for picking the wrong horse/football team/baseball team/cricket team etc wasn’t really worth noting in blog form.

Until today that is, when my betting escapades make a (welcome? unwelcome? unnoticed?) return. With some time off work I’ve had the opportunity to study the form, decide on a plan of action and go to war with the bookie. However, I’ve ended up just following other tipsters and going along with what seems like reasonably sensible bets. I’d say Poets Voice is the only conclusion I’ve come to on my own – so perhaps you’re best avoiding that one like the plague!

Today’s selections:

York Racing:

2.15 Poets Voice

2.50 Jukebox Jury

Football

Sunderland to draw or win

Celtic/Arsenal to draw

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August 16, 2009

Giants beat the Mets in 10 and the downside of watching condensed games

mlb.com has done a grand job when it comes to its online baseball coverage and I’m a great advocate of signing up for it’s audio and video service. Access to each and every game for a reasonable price is good enough as it is, but for those of us who let real life get in the way of watching sport, they kindly offer the condensed game option. In fifteen-odd minutes you get the feel of how a game panned out, with each ‘out’ edited into one package.

However, just watching the highlights of yesterday’s Giants/Mets game, I have become more aware than ever of its limitations. If only there were more hours in the day, and I’d had the time to watch the whole game, either as it happened or ‘as live’. As baseball is all about the ebb and flow, the pauses as well as the bursts of action, highlights will always be second-best. But this particular game, even from just a fifteen minute summary, seems to have been something pretty special.

The first few innings seemed like a bit of a pitchers duel, with Santana and Cain going at it. Then Wright gets a nasty concussion, the pitch actually knocking his helmet off. Santana then pitches wildly in return. The Mets fight back from 4-1 down to level the game. The Giants win in extra innings, a dramatic home run from Molina.

While the condensed game got some of this drama across, it would have undoubtedly been much more satisfying (bar the result) to watch events unfold in real time.

However, until we get a 27 hour day, with three hours for watching baseball, I guess the condensed games are a good compromise between keeping up with baseball, and actually keeping up with the real world. And enjoying the real world is no bad thing.

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