Sports

A soap opera we enjoy

Two books on Test Match Special highlight the show's humour and charm as well as its tendency to celebrate itself more than the game by Michael Billington December 11, 2010

Sachin Tendulkar during the third day of the first India-New Zealand Test...

Most commentators and former players would rank Sachin Tendulkar as the greatest batsman after Don Bradman but former Pakistan captain Zaheer Abbas has rated the Indian icon as the best of all time, even above the legendary Australian. "People keep calling him (Bradman) the greatest. I never saw him bat but I know, somehow, that he couldn't have been better than Tendulkar," Abbas, considered one of the finest batsmen Pakistan has produced, said.

Pakistan's troubled captain Shahid Afridi, has now found himself dragged into another unnecessary controversy. 'The Express' news channel played up a report today that though he was struggling as captain and player, the flamboyant all-rounder had not missed the opportunity to make some money bysetting up a stall at the market for sacrificial animals in Karachi.

It's a perfect case of big getting even bigger, or maybe the biggest. If the participation of 1,000 teams and 15,000 players wasn't mind-boggling enough, the numbers in the T20 tournament conduced by the Himachal Pradesh Cricket Association have swollen further. "We are expecting around 1,300 teams and about 18,000 players in the second edition," said HPCA spokesman Sanjay Sharma. Along with the numbers, the aspirations of HPCA have soared too. Last time, the association had approached the Limca Book of Records, but this time nothing short of the Guinness Book of World Records will do.

India’s 28th gold medal in Delhi Commonwealth Games came in 66-kilogram freestyle wrestling event with Sushil Kumar’s win over his South African counterpart. Rahul Banerjee won the 27th gold medal in the men’s individual recurve event in archery.