We expected a certain amount of excitement on the sub-continent when Sachin Tendulkar, India’s modern deity, broke Brian Lara’s Test run-scoring record on Saturday. I mean we know how the Indians love their cricket, we know how little Sachin is revered the length and breadth of that crazy, complex country and we know how their players’ successes can provoke [...]
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A Warne comeback? Maybe it’s not just spin
Hidden away in Shane Warne’s News Ltd newspaper column today is a paragraph which may reveal a clue to one of the most compelling sports stories this year: his return to Test cricket. When the notion of a Warne comeback was first raised in May, and then again reared its head last week, most thought [...]
READ MOREZingy Zaheer comes out swinging (but perhaps he’s got a point)
So, who are the lippy ones now? No sooner had the hubbub died down after Indian opener Virender Sehwag last week accused the Australians of cheating in January’s Sydney Test, then up pops left-armer Zaheer Khan to claim the Australians have got a pop-gun attack. And that Ponto’s boys played too defensively in the opening Test in [...]
READ MOREA man under pressure: Joe Kinnear delivers sport’s greatest rant
Well, it’s been an interesting couple of weeks for rugby league coaches and soccer managers, and their prickly relationships with the powers-that-be. First, Melbourne Storm’s Craig Bellamy went ballistic at the suspension of his captain Cameron Smith, spraying all and sundry at the NRL and its judiciary with a poorly aimed blunderbuss. And then incurring [...]
READ MOREIndia favourite but beware the bite on this Aussie underdog
In many ways, Australia’s tour of India – which starts tomorrow in Bangalore with the First Test – represents a watershed for the boys wearing the Baggy Green. Because, for the first time since the tour to India in February 1998 – yes, more than a decade ago – the Australians will go into a [...]
READ MOREManly by 40 – who’d have thought? (Not many as it happens)
It was a pretty thin field admittedly – not many more than a dozen entries in the Crikey NRL GF tipping comp – but no-one came close to predicting the extraordinary result at ANZ Stadium last night. Mike Cowley tipped Manly by eight and that, amazingly, was as close as anyone got to the Sea Eagles’ 40-point [...]
READ MOREGrapple with this: Crikey’s NRL Grand Final tipping comp
Because this is an Equal Opportunity blog, we’re giving our legion of rugby league supporters the chance to win one of four Crikey 12-month subscriptions by tipping on Sunday’s NRL Grand Final – just as we did with the AFL Grand Final last week. After weeks of grapple tackle talk, chicken wing waffle, suspensions, [...]
READ MORERuthless Storm fans flames of Melbourne-Sydney rivalry
Now that it has become a leviathan, an irresistible force which has pushed aside every immoveable object in the NRL for most of the past three years, Melbourne Storm has officially lost its ranking as everyone’s second-favourite team. It has become too good for that, too brutally successful. The romance of the outsider underdog has [...]
READ MORECrikey’s bumper GF tipping comp: and the winners are …..
Well, who’d have guessed, eh? The Hawks by 26 points? Well, no-one from the Crikey bumper Grand Final tipping comp, as it happens, but Anthony Barrell proved the closest (and cleverest) of the lot, guessing the Hawks would prevail by 27 points. That excellent effort at punditry earns him a 12-month Crikey subscription. Forty-five Crikey readers [...]
READ MORECrikey’s big bumper Grand Final tipping comp – win free subscriptions
OK, with the Grand Final spirit hanging thick in the air, the smell of freshly-mown grass wafting down from the MCG and the cavalcade of open-topped cars warming up for tomorrow’s lunchtime GF parade down Swanston St, Crikey is offering its legion of devoted readers the chance at winning four free 12-month subscriptions. All you’ve got [...]
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