Self Defenestration

With no end in sight to the NBA [No Basketball Ahead] lockout, and a fast approaching "nuclear winter of the NBA", the search for a replacement source of income is becoming a little more intense. Cricket is one sport that has a few advantages, it's a year round sport with few possible outcomes for a start, but it's not a sport I enjoy watching too much, and there are too many people with more knowledge of it than me. I have tended to just have the occasional dabble when the mood takes me, which isn't often, but my mood might be changing. I found a very interesting thread on the Betfair Forum created by a 'crunchyfrog' which has been running for more than two years. The creator has kept a running total over 141 test matches of the outcomes of blindly following a betting strategy, e.g Back the Favourite or Lay the 'Dog. 

The categories should be self-explanatory, and the current standings are:

Match 142 is yet to be updated, but id South Africa's win over Australia in the First Test in Cape Town [SPs South Africa (2.86) v Australia (3.25) Draw (2.88)] and Match 143 is the in-progress India (1.57) v West Indies (13.5) Draw (3.4) Second Test in Kolkata.

Following on, while it might be considered bad form to find humour in the sorry tale of Peter Roebuck, these lines from South African cricket writer Neil Manthorp did make me laugh.

A radio station in New Zealand asked me for an interview about the man I had known for so long.

The presenter told me beforehand that NZ law precluded him from using the word ‘suicide’ in his interview. I assumed that meant it was my job to say it. “No, no – you can’t say it either,” he replied. “It’s against our law.”

It was the most ridiculous thing I’d ever heard. It would have made Roebuck laugh out loud: “Australia and New Zealand are nanny states, I love them, but Africa is so much wilder and more free,” he told me more than once.

“After questioning by the police,” I heard myself saying, “he left his hotel room via the window, apparently without the assistance or intervention of anybody else.”