Posted on February 7th, 2010 by rivalblogger
Jacques Kallis must be going steadily mad… he just can’t get a double hundred despite being one of the worlds highest scoring batsmen of all time.
Today he got rolled for 173 against India depsite looking like he was well set. Against England a few months back he was on 120 and looking super comfortable only to give his wicket away.
In contrast Hashim Amla has no issues pushing on despite a slow start… He’s now on 211 and chugging along quite nicely. Must be driving Kallis absolutely dilly!
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Filed under: Uncategorized tagged Cricket, Hashim Amla, India, Jacques Kallis, South Africa
Posted on February 6th, 2010 by rivalblogger
Maybe Hashim Amla should try his luck in the $180m Euro lottery… At least if he wins something he will be able to bribe the Indians to give him a chance to get the ball off the square.
Ok maybe that’s a bit harsh but Jacques Kallis seems to be chugging along notching up another 100 while Amla is on 39 off 118 balls having nudged around 3 boundaries.
It’s always nice to have somebody there to anchor the innings but Amla can maybe kick on a bit now!
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Filed under: Uncategorized tagged Cricket, Hashim Amla, India, Jacques Kallis
Posted on January 31st, 2010 by rivalblogger
… I see that Togo have been banned from the next two AFCON cups in 2012 and 2014 because they elected to pull out of the 2010 event.
That’s a bit harsh considering they had just been mown down by AK47 wielding terrorists who happened to kill two of their delegations when their bus was ambushed in Angola.
If you get attacked away from home and you watch a couple of team-mates get carted off in either bodybags or evacuated in medical helicopters, you probably do want to head home. It’s not been a good day at the office.
And now CAF is banning them from participating in the next two tournaments because the decision was taken by their political masters?
Yes I get that the precedent was set by Nigeria in 1996 and there is an economic cost to lose a team, but it hardly sounds practical considering these circumstances. I also get that the reason for the ban is for the political ” interference” as opposed to the players wanting to leave because of emotional anguish, but the long term damage that is done to Togo’s football by excluding them from a national tournament will be far-reaching.
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Filed under: Uncategorized tagged AFCON, Angola, Football, Soccer, Togo
Posted on January 30th, 2010 by rivalblogger
I loved this headline from Keo.co.za this morning!
It absolutely made my Saturday – no more Shoddy Sharks! Turned into FISH PASTE
Yeah yeah not a lot can be taken out of these warm-up games but its damn satisfying to see The Stormers stomping all over the opposition teams
Rugby season is here! Bring it on!
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Filed under: Uncategorized tagged Rugby, Sharks, Stormers
Posted on January 27th, 2010 by rivalblogger
It doesn’t look like too many people are bemoaning the fact that Mickey Arthur has been told to walk the plank. In fact most people seem to be expressing “shock” in public while saying that it was time for a change.
Let’s be honest Arthur inherited a good team with top-class cricketers, I don’t think his record would have been particularly good if he had inherited average players where he would have been expected to improve players.
So who do we think should take on the mantle of South African coach? I like Gary Kirsten but I suspect he has a big money contract with India at the moment and otherwise its really just the usual suspects.
Will be interesting to see what Corrie Van Zyl (another stalwart of sorts who just quietly goes about his job) does with the side in India.
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Filed under: Uncategorized tagged Cricket, Gary Kirsten, Mickey Arthur
Posted on January 17th, 2010 by rivalblogger
Well at least we have a win at the Wanderers and a draw in the series preventing the English pigs from taking our pride and dignity by beating us on home turf.
A small observation is that JP Duminy has just picked up the last two wickets with his off-spinners and has actually been surprisingly good with the ball in this series. Maybe if the SA selectors are not keen to have Harris as part of the test setup then one idea might be for Duminy to come in at number 7 in place of Ryan Mclaren so we have some variety in the attack.
We could then find an opener and shift Prince back into the middle-order.
I wonder if the South Africans and English side are keen to paly a T20 game to decide the series?
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Filed under: Uncategorized tagged Cricke, Cricket, England, JP Duminy, South Africa
Posted on January 16th, 2010 by rivalblogger
I see the Graeme Smith “snick” incident has been dubbed (excuse the pun) by the cricketing press as “Volumegate”.
For those who missed the incident Smith appeared to nick the ball – I would have given him out just for such a kak shot – but he didn’t walk. The umpire gave him not out and the decision was referred to the third umpire Daryl Harper.
Rumours started to do the rounds yesterday that Harper had in fact not turned up the volume on his audio feed and missed the sound of the snick. Smith went on to score 105 runs putting South Africa in a very commanding position.
At the end of the day you can grumble as much as you like about the incident – its not going to change the result and it proves that technology is fallible.
C’mon the Proteas!
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Filed under: Uncategorized tagged Cricket, Graeme Smith, Volumegate
Posted on January 14th, 2010 by rivalblogger
I meant to post this earlier today but got a little caught up.
Last night after Liverpool went down to Reading I saw some pearlers on Facebook and Twitter.
However none of them beat this comment I saw on Twitter:
“I wouldn’t let Liverpool walk my dog. They can’t hold on to a lead.”
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Filed under: Uncategorized tagged Football, Humour, Liverpool, Soccer
Posted on January 13th, 2010 by rivalblogger
The Broke Black Golfer… I missed that one…
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Filed under: Uncategorized tagged Tiger Woods
Posted on January 9th, 2010 by rivalblogger
Last night reports came in that the Togo football team had been attacked on their team bus as they arrived in Angola. Apparently millitants sprayed their bus with machine gun fire killing the driver and injuring a couple of the players and their support staff.
In a year where Africa is finally going to host a World Cup, this is the last kind of media attention that the continent needs.
Yes, for those who have some education, there is a huge difference between South Africa and Angola, but for first time visitors to the continent, much of it is tarred with the same brush.
Not so long ago, a similar attack occured in Pakistan on the Sri Lankan cricket team. The impact on Pakistani cricket is still being felt today with many international teams refusing to tour the region because of security concerns.
It irritates the hell out of me when I read about attacks on sports teams. These are international ambassadors with NO POLITICAL intent beyond playing a game which ultimately unites a country (hopefully behind their home team). Yet to make a statement we then see if we can kill people who are doing your country a favour and hopefully giving a bit of economic impetus to already fragmented businsess.
Wake up Africa.
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Filed under: Uncategorized tagged Africa, Cricket, Football, Soccer
