2003 - Warne banned for 1 year
2018 - Warner banned for 1 year
Grammatically & Statistically speaking, in 2033, an Australian cricketer named Warnest should get a 1 year ban. And yes, that last name does exist.
#BallTamperingScandal
An incredible bit of sports journalism by The Guardian here. A short summary of the playing style of all 48 World Cup nations and a short profile of all 1248 World Cup players. Bookmark and refer to the resources when watching the obscure matches: https://t.co/tdLGq8en0o
Hello, hello! 👋🏻
I am starting off something new (hopefully daily, but let's see) on Substack.
What we Watched Today – with the first piece on PV Sindhu vs An Seyoung. (Of course it had to be badminton 🏸😃)
A quick note on what the idea behind it is👇🏽
I thought it would be tricky to pick my team of the tournament. It turned out to be easier than I thought once I had laid down my criteria. Have you done the exercise yourself? Tell me what you think of this
https://t.co/tyNGBCPCNz
In 1541, John Calvin, a Swiss Protestant Reformer banned all jewelry as frivolous & sinful displays of vanity. This left Swiss jewelers, goldsmith’s & craftsmen jobless, so they all shifted their skills to making watches, which were exempted from the ban because they were considered time-keeping devices , & not jewelry. And that is how the Swiss became the best watchmakers in the world
An all-time tennis great, winner of 39 major titles, who changed the women's game with her crusade for equal pay, has gone back to college in her eighties and earned a degree in history from Cal State at LA.
Salute, @BillieJeanKing, you are such an inspiration!
Oh, and also inspiring the creators at Marvel to give birth to one of the pivotal characters - Dr. Reed Richards, of the Fantastic Four. Hats off to the fantastic Richard Feynman. Everyone should watch his YouTube video archives.
Why having fun is so so important.
It was in a Cornell university cafeteria in the late 1940s that a high spirited student threw a plate in the air. As it went up, a young physics professor was watching, and was suddenly fascinated by the way it wobbled.
At that point, Richard Feynman just finished a gruelling time at Los Alamos working on the American nuclear bomb, had just lost his wife to tuberculosis and felt totally burnt out as a theoretical physicist. He had lost all interest in research, felt a bit repelled by physics and decided that he would just enjoy teaching and play with the subject for his own entertainment.
As the plate went up, he saw it wobble, and noticed the red medallion of Cornell in the centre went around faster than the outside. Intrigued, he started researching, and soon worked out the equations determining the plate's motion.
He went to renowned physicist Hans Bethe and showed him the results. And Hans asked him why he was spending valuable time working on the motion of a dinner plate. And Feynman told him that he was working just for the fun of it, and just kept digging deeper into the mystery of wobbles.
From there, his thoughts moved to electron orbits and then quantum electrodynamics and the research that he did over the next few years in that direction finally won him a Nobel Prize in 1965.
Richard Feynman was finally unlocked when he decided to go back to why he loved physics in the first place and started having fun again with his research.
His 108th birth anniversary today.
Everyone has an opinion about the toss in IPL.
Captains obsess over it. Fans debate it. Ravi Shastri makes a huge deal out of it.
So I wanted to see what the fuss is all about —
I analysed every single IPL match.
18 years. 1146 matches. Here's what the data actually says.🧵(1/10)
Excited about the many potential firsts, or at least the one first, tomorrow at the #ICCMensT20WorldCup finals. That, it’s being played at Ahmedabad adds drama to the anticipation. Any other team-first that I am missing?
Most of what you see online as “cricket analysis”
…isn’t analysis.
It’s averages, strike rates, and wagon wheels with zero context.
So I built something different .
This #icct20worldcup2026, I'm very happy to present before you ''DeepCrease''.
🧵👇
@NepalCricket - well played so far against England at the #T20WorldCup2026
But, why do you have ‘CAN’ printed on the team caps and helmets?
I know the Cricket Association of Nepal reference, but when you have Canada playing in the same tournament does it even make sense? 🤦♂️
@rawatrahul9 Looking at the way the PAK U-19 chased the total against IND, doesn’t seem like qualifying for the playoffs is part of their 2026 plan, at least.
There’s a particular cruelty in cricket’s numbers when you’re a pace bowler. The sport will worship a quick who can touch 150kph even if his average hovers around 30, but a bowler who runs in with the intensity of a man trying to push a broken-down car uphill? He needs to prove himself in triplicate just to get his kit bag in the dressing room...
Michael Neser has 423 first class wickets at 23 odd average. He also has 4000+ runs at average around 30. Those are allrounder numbers. Yet until last month, Neser’s entire Test career could be summarized in a coffee break: 2 matches, in last 4 years, each appearance feeling like Australia had remembered they had a spare key hidden under the doormat...
Stat sheet doesn’t tell you about the 2010 Shield debut, when a 20 year old Neser dismissed Adam Voges and Shaun Marsh; two batters who’d go on to play Test cricket, whose Test careers would begin after that game & end before Neser got his baggy green. It doesn’t tell you about the countless times he’d be the best bowler in Shield, only to watch the selectors fax in another squad with his name in the “emergency only” column...
“I feared my Test career was over,” Neser admitted last summer, and you could hear the exhaustion in that sentence. Not the dramatic exhaustion of a torn ACL or a stress fracture, but the quiet, grinding fatigue of a man who’d torn his hamstring playing Australia A against India A at the MCG; 12 months on the shelf for a glorified practice match. The kind of injury that happens to players who are always available, always dependable, always one phone call away from being told “we need you to carry drinks and maybe bowl 12 overs in nets if it rains.”
Neser, at 35, became the human equivalent of that reliable sedan in your garage; works perfectly, gets you everywhere, but everyone’s dreaming about the sports car they can’t afford.
And then, the twist. Gabba 2025.
Last minute selection over Nathan Lyon, a decision that had Shane Warne’s ghost reaching for the whiskey. A 35 year old on his home ground, picked ahead of the greatest off-spinner of the modern era. The controversy was delicious. The vindication? Even better.
Neser’s Test progression reads like a man who’s tired of being the backup plan.
1st Test: 2 wickets. 2nd Test: 5. 3rd Test: 6. 4th Test: 4 in the first innings at MCG, each wicket a middle finger to the idea that you need 90mph to succeed in Australia. He has never gone wicketless in an innings. Not once!
In this series where England built their entire philosophy around speed; Wood, Archer, Carse, Atkinson. Neser & Scott Boland have tilted this Ashes by proving that 5 good balls an over beats one thunderbolt followed by four half-volleys...
Depth of Australian fast bowling didn’t just keep Neser out of the side; it forged him into something harder, sharper, more complete. While others were being rested & rotated, he was bowling in Cardiff, batting in Glamorgan, learning to be the player you’d build a team around even if nobody ever did...
You won’t find many pace bowlers with those numbers, in any country, in any era, still waiting for their moment. But then, you won’t find many cricketers like Michael Neser...
He doesn’t need speed. He has got something better: perseverance. And finally, the opportunity.
This interview with Nathan Lyon on @7Cricket has understandably gone viral. Rarely do you get such raw emotion & feeling from a current cricketer & all credit to @Mel_Mclaughlin & her incredible interviewing skills
Honestly, it's a pleasure to listen to @RaviShastriOfc on the mic with Virat in full-flow. It's possibly the closest to listening to Kohli commentate on Kohli. The passion in his voice goes a notch higher when it's Virat smashing the bowlers.