Pappus' plane

The Ashes are a double-edged sword. On one sharp side of the blade there is the lazy falling asleep while listening to Aggers, Blowers, and CMJ. On the other sharp side of the blade, I will be doing this on Saturday night. This will be OK if I happen to wake up around stumps, as I did this morning. Then I can turn the radio off once the cricket is over. But if I sleep through stumps, then I am likely to wake up on Sunday morning listening to Macca.

It's a terrifying thought.

I had heard of these parts of Brisbane that got either horrible SBS reception or no SBS reception. This weekend I learned that I was now in one of these parts, both with digital and with analogue^*.

^*The ABC's bad on analogue but excellent on digital; SBS is horrible on analogue and usually non-existent on digital.

Some of you will know that there are really only two sporting events of any importance in the next couple of months. They are

a) the Tour de France, shown on SBS2, and
b) the Ashes, shown on SBS1.

So this is not an ideal time to lose SBS reception. But help is at hand! I have sent off the online form to Foxtel, and so hopefully within a week I'll get all the free-to-air channels coming through cable, as well as a bunch of extra sport channels (and even more channels that I will probably never watch).

Football: It's zip-zip at the half between Australia and Uzbekistan. I've got the radio on with rugby league caller David Morrow being the main caller. He does OK, though he did just say that I was listening to Grandstand rugby league.

Update 1: Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut! 1-0 Australia.

Update 2: Penalty to Australia!

Update 3: Kewell to take it. Drumroll........................................ Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut! Two-nil!

Update 4: Uzbek goal disallowed for off-side. Can't be much left in the game now.

Update 5: Full time! It is still possible that Australia won't qualify, but it would require a string of losses, and a string of victories by either Bahrain or Qatar.

European matches should start once they catch up with us eastern longitude folk. France is at home to Lithuania. After their loss in Austria (!!), France needs a win to move up to second place in the group.

Cricket: Canada are 5/147 after 34 overs in their game against Oman. Bermuda is 6/112 against the UAE. Denmark 4/140 after 35 against the sentimental favourites Afghanistan. Uganda 6/170 after 41 against Namibia. Those games are all List A. In the two full ODI's, Kenya is 6/159 in the 41st against Holland and the Scots are 5/131 in the 37th against Ireland.

Ireland have been struggling pretty badly in the warmups, losing to Zimbabwe A.

Update 6: The first innings are over. Scotland 7/232 made a good recovery. Kenya 8/247 did likewise, and I think that will be too much for Holland. Denmark 9/204, go Afghanistan! Bermuda 187, if that's all they can put up against the UAE then they won't be in the top six anymore, let alone the top four. Uganda, a rare team full of home-grown players, 7/234 against Namibia. We are of course fully behind the Ugandans.

And in the big one, Dhaniram went berserk towards the end and the Omani bowlers apart from Awal Khan and Tariq Hussain struggled. Canada all out 247. Oman have some aggressive batsmen (they chased down almost 350 against the USA in the 2005 ICC Trophy), but I don't know if they have the talent to score 250 against a side as good as Canada.

Next morning update: Zuiderent and ten Doeschate chased down the target for the Dutchies. Oman lost by 103 runs. Afghanistan and Uganda won! Ireland beat Scotland, and the UAE beat Bermuda.

This post at King Cricket is a good and concise expression of what I think about "momentum" in cricket (I haven't actually tested it statistically, mind). One of the comments is gold:

I look forward to the day when cricketers use other aspects of engineering and physics in their statements:

“Well David, yes, very much so. Test cricket is all about entropy. They have the entropy at the moment, and we’ll be looking to use that entropy against them tomorrow. We know we’ve had a bit of an adiabatic performance in the field today, and that they’ll be looking to maintain isentropy, but we feel that we have the hysteresis to stop that.

We’ll be putting in 100%, David, because any more than that is strictly impossible.”

Cricket Australia knows that until now, it hasn't really tried very hard to make the game interesting for you. The other day they embarked on a project to rectify this situation. This is their first offering:

Hello kiddies! Our names are Kiki and Sassy. We are best friends/hetero life mates from Sydney. That's Kiki with the pigtails, and Sassy is the one rocking the fro. No, it's not a wig. She is a genetic mystery, don't question it.

...

We heart cricket. Big time.

Do you like cricket now?