Tra la! The wilderness years are over! Well, not quite, but I do have a new gig up at Examiner.com writing for their travel section. Could be worse!
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Monday, June 29, 2009
Monday, June 15, 2009
Oh, The Places You'll Go
While in New York City this past weekend for the Blogs With Balls conference, I had one of the best conversations about cricket I've ever had in my life.
Granted, the discussions about cricket that I've had in my life are limited, but I think that's because I usually am trying to get someone to explain the game to me. After a few attempts, I've had to throw up my hands and admit that cricket will never be something that I actually understand. Chock it up to cricket being like baseball played on a 360 degree field and leave it at that.
Oh, and it's also the only sport that has meal and sleeping breaks woven into the fabric of the game. Baseball has the seventh inning stretch. Cricket has lunch and tea breaks and a single game can last for days.
The discussion in question specifically referred to the attacks on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Pakistan on March 3 of this year. Sri Lanka agreed to fill in for the match after India refused to go in the wake of the attacks in Mumbai in November 2008. I always thought this was particularly interesting since Pakistan is fighting a group of Taleban fighters who keep growing in strength and courage, taking over territory closer and closer to Islamabad and carrying out blitz attacks in the capital city. No professional cricket team had traveled to Pakistan to play in 14 months. Nobody wanted a piece of it; not the Australians, the New Zealanders, the Brits, or any of the pro cricketers. Sri Lanka was fighting their own internal "terrorist" group,six at least according to them, the Tamil Tigers. That 30-month civil war ended in May 2009. A country with a rather extensive history of colonization (as in, being colonized by external forces) that gained its official independence around the same time as India (a nation which, in 1949, included modern-day Pakistan), I always wondered whether this was something more than just a bail-out for the Pakistanis to the Sri Lankans. A part of me wonders whether the Sri Lankans understand their Pakistani neighbors in a more sympathetic way than most would guess, and that their move was an unofficial endorsement of Pakistan's government.
At the time it was called a peace-keeping mission. In the end it was closer to a suicide mission. Twelve gunmen used guns and grenade launchers to attack the bus carrying the team as it traveled through Liberty Square traffic circle in Lahore. Seven players were injured, and six policemen and the bus driver were killed.
I'm not sure that most Americans can understand the significance of this event, so I'm going to come up with a plausible scenario. Imagine Mexico City had a professional baseball team that was as well-loved as the Red Sox. Imagine that, with the current drug violence escalating, a gang of soldiers from Mexico conducted a terrorist attack in downtown Boston, and as a result the Sox refused to travel for their away games in Mexico. Imagine that the Toronto Blue Jays offered to go in their place. And while the Canadians were down there, someone launched grenades at them.
Not exactly the sort of thing you forget or get over quickly. It takes over three months for the Pakistani army chief to publicly state that the head of the Taleban "must be eliminated."
Sometimes justice moves slowly. Though perhaps if the sport in question was baseball and not cricket, maybe Americans would have cared just a little bit more.
Granted, the discussions about cricket that I've had in my life are limited, but I think that's because I usually am trying to get someone to explain the game to me. After a few attempts, I've had to throw up my hands and admit that cricket will never be something that I actually understand. Chock it up to cricket being like baseball played on a 360 degree field and leave it at that.
Oh, and it's also the only sport that has meal and sleeping breaks woven into the fabric of the game. Baseball has the seventh inning stretch. Cricket has lunch and tea breaks and a single game can last for days.
The discussion in question specifically referred to the attacks on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Pakistan on March 3 of this year. Sri Lanka agreed to fill in for the match after India refused to go in the wake of the attacks in Mumbai in November 2008. I always thought this was particularly interesting since Pakistan is fighting a group of Taleban fighters who keep growing in strength and courage, taking over territory closer and closer to Islamabad and carrying out blitz attacks in the capital city. No professional cricket team had traveled to Pakistan to play in 14 months. Nobody wanted a piece of it; not the Australians, the New Zealanders, the Brits, or any of the pro cricketers. Sri Lanka was fighting their own internal "terrorist" group,six at least according to them, the Tamil Tigers. That 30-month civil war ended in May 2009. A country with a rather extensive history of colonization (as in, being colonized by external forces) that gained its official independence around the same time as India (a nation which, in 1949, included modern-day Pakistan), I always wondered whether this was something more than just a bail-out for the Pakistanis to the Sri Lankans. A part of me wonders whether the Sri Lankans understand their Pakistani neighbors in a more sympathetic way than most would guess, and that their move was an unofficial endorsement of Pakistan's government.
At the time it was called a peace-keeping mission. In the end it was closer to a suicide mission. Twelve gunmen used guns and grenade launchers to attack the bus carrying the team as it traveled through Liberty Square traffic circle in Lahore. Seven players were injured, and six policemen and the bus driver were killed.
I'm not sure that most Americans can understand the significance of this event, so I'm going to come up with a plausible scenario. Imagine Mexico City had a professional baseball team that was as well-loved as the Red Sox. Imagine that, with the current drug violence escalating, a gang of soldiers from Mexico conducted a terrorist attack in downtown Boston, and as a result the Sox refused to travel for their away games in Mexico. Imagine that the Toronto Blue Jays offered to go in their place. And while the Canadians were down there, someone launched grenades at them.
Not exactly the sort of thing you forget or get over quickly. It takes over three months for the Pakistani army chief to publicly state that the head of the Taleban "must be eliminated."
Sometimes justice moves slowly. Though perhaps if the sport in question was baseball and not cricket, maybe Americans would have cared just a little bit more.
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