Team with no selection issues but plenty of injury worries find themselves in a no-win situation with the World Cup loomingWarmup matches are a curious creation. With days until the Cricket World Cup, England played Australia on Saturday to lose by a dozen runs, then will suit up against Afghanistan on Monday. Both are unofficial matches that will never be reflected in international annals. These matches lack validity, but their existence implies they have value.That’s true for teams working out their best combinations or fine-tuning a style, but England’s one-day side are doing neither. They have been ready to play a World Cup since Pakistan’s fast bowlers used a tacky Cardiff pitch to knock them out of the Champions Trophy...
Twenty years after its extraordinary superslam the nation’s glory has faded and it is now time for recalibrationYou notice many curious things as you fly across Australia. It is not just the size of this barely inhabited continent that the mind struggles to compute. As you stare from a tiny plane window, on to a landscape that could easily double for Mars or Jupiter, it is always a surprise to see just how much is happening across this alien interior. Salt lakes the size of inland seas pockmark the landscape like lunar craters (or particularly hazardous golf bunkers). Giant rock ranges crinkle the brown earth for hundreds of miles at a stretch.There are other shapes you notice from the air...
If it comes down to a decision between religion or career he will surely go for the former, but it should not have to be that wayIt has been a week since Israel Folaus latest comments on social media saying hell awaits drunks, homosexuals, adulterers, liars, fornicators, thieves, atheists, idolators, and I havent been surprised at all by the reaction. Ive struggled really with it all because while Im definitely not going to defend what he said, my faith has also taken a bit of battering over the past seven days.Easter weekend is the most important in Christianity so it seems like a good time to try to provide a more level-headed view on this situation. On the one hand,...
Maverick Australian’s underarm serving has caused a stir in Miami but 100 years ago Suzanne Lenglen was attracting similar gasps for serving overarmWhen Nick Kyrgios crashed out of the Miami Open in the fourth round overnight, strapping holding his right knee together but his emotions less secure, he left his familiar impression, the magician/villain du jour of tennis. There surely will not be a better tweener this year than the one he put on Borna Coric before losing in three sets. But that is Kyrgios: unfathomable in every way.The mercurial Australian might not be aware of it, but Suzanne Lenglen, a rebel in silk skirts and garters (but no corset), shares a bond with him that stretches across a hundred...
Hans Pomeranz’s thinking helped bring Test highlights to Australia and ignited his distinguished film careerWhen Hans Pomeranz died in 2007, the Sydney Morning Herald’s obituary described “a force in Australia’s film industry”. Born into a Jewish family in Enschede, Netherlands, in 1938, he survived the second world war in an orphanage and, later, by masquerading as the son of a Protestant minister. At the end of the conflict he and what remained of his family – his sister is believed to have died at Auschwitz – were reunited and emigrated to Australia, where he went on to secure an apprenticeship at a film laboratory. He became, in time, an editor of considerable renown, the husband of the film critic and...