Davis, CA, 7th grade – I was on the school basketball team, and usually played a two guard or small forward. In the 4th quarter of a game that wasn’t close, the coach told me to go in and run point. The other four players on the court, all white, weren’t having it. The coach didn’t intervene.
Enter Jeremy Lin.
Maybe that story doesn’t play out the same way now?
The NFL has its first minority owner and he happens to be a Pakistani-American. Shahid 
Khan, an Illinois businessman who owns the Flex-N-Gate Group, which makes automobile parts, is paying a reported $760 million to buy 100 percent of the Jacksonville Jaguars from Wayne Weaver. Yes, you’re going to see a brown man with a handlebar mustache giving high-fives in the owner’s box. How cool is that?
Khan, 61, came to America when he was 16, earned an engineering degree from the University of Illinois and fell in love with American football and a blonde named Ann Carlson. Over the years, Khan and his wife have given zillions to their alma mater.
Most recently, the couple made a $10 million donation for the Khan Annex to Huff Hall, home to the university’s college of Applied Health Sciences. “One of the great joys of my life is making money,” Khan said at the September dedication ceremony. “ … What makes it even better is to use it to make a difference.” [Florida Times-Union]
The big question hanging in the air in Jacksonville is whether Khan will keep the team in the city or try to move it to L.A. So far, Khan is saying all the right things, but will he be able to resist the hundreds of millions he could make by moving to a much larger market?
It will also be interesting to see whether Khan keeps a low profile or seeks the limelight. Will he be the type of owner who’s on the sidelines, chatting with players, and always ready to make comments to the media? Or will he stay in the background and let his coach and general manager run the show? If he enjoys being in the news, then you can bet that L.A. will be very tempting.
Are you ready for some football? I am. I’ve been an NFL fan for many years, recently got into the CFL and hope to soon be watching the EFLI: Elite Football League of India.
Yes, American football in India. No, this isn’t a story from The Onion.
According to Daniel Kaplan of Sports Business Journal, the eight-team league, which will begin play in Nov. 2012, is being backed by investors such as Mike Ditka, Ron Jaworski, Michael Irvin and Brandon Chillar (the Indian-American linebacker formerly of the Green Bay Packers).
The founding teams are the Hyderabad Skykings, Bhubaneswar Warhawks, Goa Swarm, Mumbai Gladiators, Dehi Royal Fleet, Punjab Warriors, Pune Blacktigers and Kolkata Vipers. Sorry, no Bengals or Browns.
“India has no history of american football, but backers sure cuz country is crazy about american entertainment, this will fly,” Kaplan tweeted, adding in another tweet: “They are training rugby players right now. Top rugby coaches involved. Seriously unlikely any US players would got there.”
Rugby players? Seriously? Rugby may be the closest sport to football, but that’s like preparing for the PGA tour by playing croquet.
If you’re not a hockey fan, you may not have heard of Manny Malhotra, the greatest desi ever
to hit the ice (Smirnoff included). After suffering a severe eye injury on March 16, he recovered just in time to give a boost to the Vancouver Canucks in Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Final (you may have caught parts of it during the Extreme Makeover commercial breaks).
The Canucks led in the circle in the regular season, at 54.9 per cent. They’re at 49.9 in the playoffs and a lot of the drop-off is because Malhotra and his 61.7 per cent win rate were on the sidelines until Game 2.
“Over the last couple of weeks as I’ve started to work toward this goal, being able to take draws against guys like Kes and Hank and Lappy really pushes you to get to that next level,” said Malhotra. “The competitive level we have at centre really gets your timing back.”
Malhotra did remarkably well overall in 7: 26 of ice time. He played 13 shifts, including killing penalties and taking a leftwing shift on the third line in relief of Raffi Torres.
He purposely kept his game simple and saw the 7: 26 as a good transition back into playing. In the regular season, as one of the best third line centres in the league and in the conversation for the Selke Trophy for top defensive forward, Malhotra averaged 16: 09. [Vancouver Province]
The Bruins walloped the Canucks 8-1 in Game 3, but Malhotra’s team still leads the series 2-1 and has home ice advantage.
Could betting desi at the Derby make you some money? A news post from Ram mentioned that the recent 137th Kentucky Derby, also known as “The Most Exciting Two Minutes in Sports with Big Hats Sideshow,” had two jockeys of Jamaican desi descent in the top ten finishers. Rajiv Maragh rode Mucho Macho Man (aka MMM) to a third place finish and a piece of the $2 million purse, and Shaun Bridgmohan rode Santiva to a sixth place finish. So I guess betting on the right brown can make you a little green, or a lot–first place went to another kind of brown more common in the jockey world, John Velazquez riding Animal Kingdom.
Maragh and Bridgmohan’s Derby bios both mention dads who made them complete high school before pursuing the thrilling but inherently risky field of horseracing, a fact probably notable because riders are eligible for a jockey license at age 16. Maragh’s father was a jockey. Bridgmohan, whose brother is also a jockey, is referenced in the lyrics for “Fake Patois” by Das Racist: What you know about Shaun Bridgmohan? First Jamaican in the Kentucky Derby. Continue reading
On Sunday night, my right knee gave out. Twice. This was only mildly surprising, since I was born with a bad right knee and I spent a year of college with it in a full leg immobilizer. The problem is, the Sunday before that, my left kneecap moved in a way that it shouldn’t, as I was ascending the stairs to my beloved cathedral while wearing the most glorious suede four-inch platforms.
That might be the single worst circumstance during which to injure your knee. Stairs? Heels? Hell. The pain was excruciating. I never made it past the narthex, which is where I collapsed on the first bench I could find. When the liturgy was over, I limped out of the handicapped exit and proceeded to drive a stick shift to the nearest CVS in Georgetown, where I procured a knee brace to hold my kneecap together.
Oh, the looks I got in that store, people scornfully glaring at me as if I were an idiot, stumbling around in heels when injured. Silly make-an-ass-out-of-you-and-me strangers. I am stubborn and unwise, but not THAT stubborn and unwise. Sheesh. So let’s recap: two Sundays ago, I hurt my left knee, and by the time I made it to urgent care, favoring my feeble right, it was too late– both were busted. And when they gave out this weekend, I knew that my Orthopedist might have underestimated how serious my injuries were. I swear, I have a point, and that point is, I am not very mobile right now.
Forget driving, I can’t walk without a cane. And that means that I am at home. All the time. Often with a boxing writer. And so I marinate in the sweet science, because, well, I have no choice.
I guess there are worse sports to be subjected to, visually. Golf. Bowling. Drawn out games which involve bats and balls– of course, I am talking about vampires and testicles there, I promise. But I’m not that into boxing, despite said boxing writer’s endearing attempts to draw me in. He started (somewhat logically, given my mutinous proclivities) with Amir Khan.
Amir Khan is a British pugilist of Pakistani descent who is referred to as “King Khan”, or the “Pride of Bolton”. Khan is an Olympic medalist, and he’s a big enough deal that he trains with Freddy Roach; in other words, when he runs around, toning that lovely body of his, he might be trotting next to Manny Pacquiao. Perhaps you have heard of him? Anyway, I’ve seen King Khan throw stiff jabs and it barely inspired me to look up from the interwebz. Yay team brown and all, but it’s hard to cheer for someone who is prettier than and weighs less than me. I keed, I keed. It’s hard to cheer because I don’t give a tatti. Continue reading
Who’s down for a little live-tweeting of the rest of the World Cup? If you’d like to participate, you can use ANY of the following hashtags: #cwc, #iccwc2011, #cricket, #worldcup, #cwc2011; AND the following: #sm
Your tweets will show up here:
PS: Let me know if you want additional hashtags.
I don’t have time for an extensive post just now, but I thought y’all might want to coordinate viewings around your various locations.
There have been 46 matches played so far in this year’s ICC Cricket World Cup, and only four teams remain:
Sri Lanka, who got to the semifinals by chasing England’s respectable total of 221 without losing a wicket;
New Zealand, who did less to the South African bats than the South African bats did to themselves;
Pakistan, who embarrassed the West Indies by first bowling them out for a paltry 112, then chasing the total in less than half the time it took for the West Indies to accumulate it;
India, who avenged their 2003 World Cup Final drubbing by Australia.
Sri Lanka and New Zealand play tomorrow in Colombo. India and Pakistan play on Wednesday in Mohali. The winners play on Saturday in Mumbai. All three matches start at 5 am Eastern, 2 am Pacific.
So the question is, where to watch?
This week we learned that the International Cricket Council (ICC) is nepotistic (GASP!)
The World Cup final is to be played on April 2 in Mumbai, whose Wankhede Stadium has a capacity of 33,000 seats. Of these, only 4,000 have been allocated for sale to the public. The remaining tickets, a whopping 27,000, are reserved for the ICC and the Mumbai Cricket Club’s associate members (ESPNCricInfo).
Not only that, but when fans tried to buy tickets online, the whole system crashed from the number of people trying to make purchases.
The most prominent errors took place on Monday afternoon when the servers of Kyazoonga.com, the ICC’s official ticketing partners, were overwhelmed with the load as the site went ‘live’ with sales for the final and semi-finals at 1pm India time. The website received close to ten million hits in a matter of minutes – half a million at any given moment – many of those people refreshing the site. It would have needed, a Kyazoonga staffer said, a server farm the “size of a football field” to keep up with that kind of demand. The site crashed by 1.05pm and the few people who had got into the system and begun purchasing their tickets found their plans hanging somewhere in cyberspace.
The website went online again around 9.30pm IST with a statement that no tickets for the finals & semi-finals had been sold on Monday due to the system issues and that updates about the ticket sales would follow. So, all the tickets allocated for online sales will still be available once the Kyazoonga network teams in India, Europe and the United States get their servers up and running again. Kyazoonga were not willing to reveal an approximate time when that was expected to happen.
Epic Fail. Oh well, it’s better on TV anyway, right? Even if you’ve traveled from South Africa to see it live? Um, yeah.
The only remotely exciting match of the tournament so far was the most recent one, between Bangladesh and Ireland. It shouldn’t have been close, but the side that scored 283 against India in Dhaka last week was nowhere to be found. Instead, Bangladesh were bowled out for a paltry 205, and just managed to make sure Ireland didn’t catch them. Scorecard
This weekend should be more promising: On Saturday, Pakistan and Sri Lanka play in Colombo, and England takes on India in Bangalore.
And in case you’re still not sure what this game is all about, have a whack here. Stick out the first half-minute. You’ll be glad you did.
Some of you might remember Sepia Mutiny’s coverage of the only Cricket World Cup to occur during this blog’s existence (2007 in the West Indies). Here we are four years later (can you believe it!?) and this time the World Cup is being played in Bangladesh, India, and Sri Lanka.
Before we go any further, let’s have a cool video explaining the rules of this exotic and fascinating game:
What? You don’t speak German? Oh. Well unfortunately, I can’t find a nice, concise video presentation in English of how cricket is played. Any suggestions?
If you’re the texty sort, here are the laws of cricket, with a few slightly helpful pictures. If you’d like to translate those to video, I actually suggest watching Lagaan. I know what you’re thinking, but don’t worry. You can skip all the parts about drought, taxes, Radha, Krishna, betrayal, rhyming “kiss” with “bliss,” and skip straight to the actual match. Why? Because if I’m not mistaken, the match in Lagaan has a demonstration of every single way you can get out or score a run in cricket.
If you’re in the US, your viewing options are fairly limited, not least because the matches start at either 11 pm or 4 am eastern time. If you’re a DirecTV subscriber, you can buy the World Cup bundle for $149. You can also pay for an online streaming subscription through willow.tv for $129. Willow offers replays and highlights of previously played matches. The tournament is also available through Dish network, though I’m not sure for how much. The World Cup final will be played in Mumbai on April 2.