Comments to : England, England, England...

The BBC web site had a posting welcoming comments regards the 2nd days play of this Boxing Day test match that you can check out here.

I got a bit sick of reading whining Poms comments about umpires, etc., so I left the following comment there:

The problems that England have are pretty serious and it doesn't stop with cricket. One of them is correctable and that is sporting infrastructure; another is uncorrectable without a geographical re-assignment to change the weather.

Here are some population facts
Britain 60 million
Australia 20 million

Now here are some Olympic facts from Athens:
1. USA 36 39 27
2. China 32 17 14
3. Russia 27 27 38
4. Australia 17 16 16
5. Japan 16 9 12
6. Germany 13 16 20
7. France 11 9 13
8. Italy 10 11 11
9. Korea 9 12 9
10.Britain 9 9 12

See the difference?

The Ashes

And today was the end of day 2 of the Boxing Day test.


And it is not going to well for England.


The series is already gone with a 3-0 result over the first 3 tests.


How England won the Ashes last year, or more correctly how Australia lost, is beyond me.

In this series England have shown how they lose the un-losable test and Australia have shown how they can win the un-winnable test.

It is shaping like a 5-0 drubbing for the first time in 85 years by Dad's Army.

Let's wait and see!!

Digital Media On Your TV

The previous post about the iPod got me wondering about the thousands of digital photos on my notebook hard disk and how I can display them onto my TV at a higher resolution than is possible with the iPod. So, on closer investigation of notebook I discovered that what I thought was a PS2 mouse port is actually and S-Video out port.


Wow, now that has possibilities.

As long as your TV has an S-Video In port then all you need is an S-Video cable to connect to your PC. If you have a cam-corder then you probably already have on.

The other thing you should do is connect your earphones port on your PC to the Audio In ports of the complimenting S-Video In port and pass the sound through to the TV system rather than in my case 2 pathetic little speakers on my notebook.

Firstly turn on your TV, select the input port that has the S-Video input, connect it to your PC's S-Video port and then turn on your PC.

Once booted up then right click on your desktop and select "Properties", then "Setting", then "Advanced" and you should have access to your Video Driver software. My Toshiba Tecra is an nVidia GeForce 6600. I have the option to select "Dual Screen" with the second screen being the TV. You need to select the video format the the TV accepts, which in my case is NTSC, PAL-N or PAL-M. You may have to play with settings to get it right for your particular TV-PC configuration.


So now to get some content. I have found the best and cheapest option is Google's Picasa, no.1 becasue it's free and no.2 because it does a really nice slide show but there is one trick. Go to Picasa's "Options", then "Slideshow" and un-check the "Do full-resolution slideshow" checkbox. TV's have a surprisingly low resolution of generally only 720 x 480 pixels. Therefore if your image is lets say 1600 x 1200 then it will not display on the TV.

I don't have a DVD player in the house apart from my notebook so we watch DVD's on the TV through the notebook.

I recently bought a subscription to Cricket Australia's Cricket Australia TV which gives me access to all games live for the Australian summer. Now I watch it on the TV laid up on the sofa with a beer in the hand rather than sitting at my desk watch my computer screen. Cricket is just not the same without beer!!

Basically whatever you can display on your computer you can display on your TV and it's impressive, especially digital photos on your TV in the comfort of your lounge room.

Bangladesh - Cricket

Who is the fool now? ( Remeber your words Aussies).

Okay, it's day 1 but the Aussies are not so shiny at the moment.

Tall popies have a long way to fall.

I'm sure that they will end up kicking ass but today, 9 April 2006, they did not.

Here's a local hero

Cricinfo - The Ashes in numbers

Here are some interesting historic batting and bowling stats.

Cricinfo - The Ashes in numbers

Goes to show how "great" Bradman was.

But look at the bowling. Lillee is still my bowling "great" but have a go at McGraths average; impressive!!!

It also shows how "not great" Warne really is. He bowls a lot of balls for his wickets.

Sport

I've been neglecting sport and have started to get more "Political".

Let's look at what is going on in sport:

1. Cricket: The MCC want to ban Australian captain Ricky Ponting's revolutionary cricket bat ahead of this year's Ashes series in England.


My comment: If England don't take the first test in the upcoming "Ashes" series they will not win one.

2. Tennis: A stab in the dark is that the up coming French Open "Roland Garros" will go to a woman from Begium (2 possibilities) and a man from Switzerland (only one).


3. Rugby "Super 12" Style: The Crusaders are continuing to post points (they should considering the amount of ex-internationals they have). I'm a Brumbies supporter but my money is with the Waratahs.


4. Golf. A big congrats to Vijay for his recognition into the "Hall of Fame". Small countries like Fiji don't have an opportunity to have their very own sporting hero too often.


5. Looks like Chelsea have it wrapped up.


6. Looks like Barca have it wrapped up also.

Well, I'd put an image in here but Barca don't need help. They are the best and they will win!!!!! Ronaldinho didn't win the FIFA footballer of the year by accident.

7. I don't have a 7. Let's see what happens from here.

Twenty/20 Cricket Success!!

You can get a match report here from www.baggygreen.com.au

Or

from here at www.stuff.co.nz

I didn't see the match but from what I read it seems that the inaugural Twenty/20 international "raged". It went down between the Kiwi's and Aussie's in NZ. I guess there IS a Twenty/20 international future.

There was lots of action, drama and comedy with the game being played a litle less seriously than we have seen of late of the Test and One Day versions of the game.




The music was retro (1980's), both teams in retro gear, McGrath was is in retro Chappell bowling, Billy Bowden, well, he was just Billy Bowden and the crowd rocked.



Ponting? He was nothing short of brilliant taking Mills for 4x6's, 1x4 and 1x2 for a total of 30 in 1 over!!!!



It is hard to argue with the match being a success, with 31 fours and 17 sixes hit in three hours and one of the biggest crowds seen at a New Zealand cricket match in recent memory with over 29,000 at Eden Park, Auckland.

The problem now is how to include this new format of the game into an already overflowing schedule within a tour. Also there is the fear that the game will loose respectability in the other 2 codes with batsmen "slogging" rather than "batting".

Let's wait and see from the powers that be!!

The Allan Border Medal

Clarke is Australia's Player of the Year



The Allan Border medal has gone to one of the bright new stars of world cricket, Michael Clarke.

Let's just hope he can keep it going and continue to thrill spectators around the globe. (I think he will)

Aussie Cricketers Down

Well this wasn't very good but at the same time it won't hurt them. (I'm a bit late with this news)

Australia suffers first loss as Pakistan triumph in Perth

Lara's cracking 156 seals emphatic win

One of the modern day greats in cricket has done it again. This time against Pakistan in the triangular one day series in Australia with, obviously, Australia as the 3rd team.
156 runs off 138 balls with 12 x 4's and 5 x 6's.
1st 50 off 81 balls (S/R 61.7)
2nd 50 off 36 balls (S/R 138.8)
AND
3rd 50 off just 19 balls in 17 minutes; a strike rate of 263 runs per 100 balls; incredible!!!
He already holds the world record for runs in one innings in test matches at 400 runs not out and also holds 3rd place at 375.

You can get a match report at the link below from www.baggygreen.com.au

Lara's cracking 156 seals emphatic win

Who will (or can) be the first batsman to get 200 runs in a one dayer?
Brian Lara?
Adam Guilchrist?
Virender Sehwag?
Maybe even Michael Clarke who has been earmarked as a future great and Australian captain!!