Fallen Heroes and the American Cricket Fan

It did not even take a week before the South African cricket team came back to earth with a bang - loosing the first test match within 3 days. In my opinion, it all started with fear and wrong decisions -- after all, after a good night's rain (in fact it even rained early in the morning), heavy cloud cover -- all indications of a good bowlers wicket, why on earth would any one choose to bat? Understandably, Graeme Smith was wary of Shane Warne bowling on the last day -- but still -- if you are not going to take him on, why bother to play in the first place?



But to be fair, batting was slow going for both sides, and for once the bowlers had a good match. But regardless, it was pretty bad viewing for Saturday when Tim, Justin (Aaron's brother and a UCT Radio DJ) and I went in for the third day - hoping (actually more like praying) for a South African fightback. Alas, it was not to be - although bad umpiring decisions did not help the South African cause.



Justin's valiant effort in the rousing the crowd (with the help of an inflatable sheep and my big SA flag), was well, valiant. It did not help that the security guys seemed to be on a power trip - constantly taking down posters (ok they were a tad offensive including ... but the players laughed) and generally pissing everyone else off. As for the pictures, we started off sitting in the Oaks embankment (pic 1), but moved to railway embankment (on the opposite side) during the lunch interval (to get more shade). There was a large contingent of people wearing SAB gear ... presumably got a company day outing or something, and were one of the more vocal supporters.

We also met the unknown - American cricket fans (well the guy loved cricket, the two girls thought it was better than baseball but not as great as basketball or American football). Not the migratory Indians and Pakistanis who have made America their home - but born and bred American who also tend to like American Football and Basketball. One of the girls works for the US embassy in Turkmenistan and had quite a few interesting stories to tell about the country and its madcap dictator. I think Tim put her into a tight corner asking her about her opinions on US foreign policy, which she declined to answer.

[I had more pics, but uploading pics has been a nightmare ... so none of the "action" shots ;)]