Day 15 - Boult - The Starc Contrast!

RIP, Mr Spock.

I had three titles for this post before settling on the above.

Boult Screws Ozzies (a Cricinfo writer went to twitter with that; so gave that up)
Fat Lady sings Advance Australia Fair (then KaneW nailed that beaut of a six)
Fat Lady loves Boult & not Starc (no, too fat)

Such was the intensity of the game; so many mini-battles inside the 56-over-game; it was so emotionally draining that one slept through the Indian victory - well, the first half of it that is. At the end of it all, the thriller felt contrived. Uncharitable, ain't I? Something tells me that these two will be at the G in about a month's time :-}

After the dinner break at Auckland, I was rooting for Australia and wifey not-so-politely opined that my mental make-up should be checked.  For a change, I was able to make a cogent reply to the better-half: I support the under-dogs! (and India are underdogs irrespective of whoever they play!)

So, there it goes. I have called Oz as the under-dogs; but to have reduced them to that, albeit temporarily, hats off to NZ - The bravado team of CWC15.

India mauled UAE. Karate and Swapnil did not have their Andy Warhol moments. I suppose the collective IPL-induced Indian might was more than sufficient to overcome the prayers of Kollangode and Vasai residents from where these two gentlemen originate from.

And the green-award goes to NZ (2nd time) and Ind (1st time) for saving electricity.

G-Section:

A healthy turnout. Good harvest for ManiacG in the first game while India proved to be unlucky to all the punters!

Here are the results:

You have time till Monday 2nd March 1800 SGT to send the quarter-final lineups.

Tomorrow's games are slurp slurp... mouth-watering:

England vs Sri Lanka @ Wellington by 0530 SGT

Pakistan vs Zimbabwe @ Brisbane by 1100 SGT

Q-Section:

Somebody commented: "aah, is this the way that you get back at us for doing picture-based google search?"

That 'equation' seems to have stumped every one.

So keeping it open for one more day. It is not mathematical and think countries.

Answers and guesses to the usual place.

(The usual place is my email address/FB PM/Whatsapp; details of rules/ranges etc., are at http://sribees.blogspot.sg/2015/02/gq-15-here-we-come.html)

Day 14 - Devil Service Restored!

You grow that awful beard.You get overwhelmed by a noisy Indian crowd at the G.You are that close to a suspension.You have kids telling your star bowler on how to bowl.You have Crow(e)s writing unsolicited letters to you.

What do you do, ABdV, what do you do?

Score the fastest ODI 150.Treat the opposite captain like a kid.Cramp or no cramp, take sharp catches.Make people wonder, what would have happened if he had come in three overs earlier :-)? 

Well, he has scored 311 runs in the last 110 balls against WI!!!!!! 

That is a triple in T20 ^*&#@^$*

At the 30-over mark (first innings that is!), I was thinking that this is indeed going to be a game of attrition. Nossir! Said SA and gave such a drubbing to Windies that they are jumping up and down in Lahore!

Q-Section:

That was reasonably an easy one - AngelAsh, Raghav, ManiacG & Guru get the right answer which is...

The first picture is from Second Boer War - the battle of Spion Kop (which is a hill in South Africa). Some of the stands in the football stadia around the UK looked like Spion Kop and people started calling them as Kop. The second picture shows one such Kop in Hillsborough (of course the most famous one is at Anfield). The third picture is that of Koppers Towers in Pittsburgh and is the headquarters of Koppers Holdings Inc (NYSE trading symbol: KOP)

So, the three letter word is KOP and you can direct your four letter and five letter words towards all and sundry!

For today's question: 

Under what circumstance does the following equation hold true? [4 points]

6≍7≍7≍7.5

G-Section:

ManiacG and Vishal guessed the correct nature of the West Indian capitulation.

And our Saturday is going to be regaled by: 

New Zealand vs Australia @ Auckland by 0830 SGT

India vs UAE @ Perth by 1400 SGT

Answers and guesses to the usual place.

(The usual place is my email address/FB PM/Whatsapp; details of rules/ranges etc., are at http://sribees.blogspot.sg/2015/02/gq-15-here-we-come.html)

Day 13 - Afghan Dastarkhan!

Two matches. Two victories. One will remain in your mind for ever. And you will be pardoned if you feign ignorance about the other result!

The Afghans gave us a spread of veritable feast - great bowling, spirited fielding, shambolic batting, gutsy batting, jangled nerves and finally the just desserts of a sweet victory!

An Afghan win - and by corollary the top performances by the Associates this World Cup has proved one thing. When your backs are to the wall, you throw caution to the wind and perform. The Irish, Scots, Emiratis, Afghans and even the Zimbabweans - all of them knew of one thing: this is probably the last time that they might play in a Cricket World Cup. They must have thought: while we are at it, let us throw some eggs on the faces of the powers-that-be!

What was missing so far from the so-called Elites (or super-8s, for the pedantic ones!) is the visible passion, discernible romanticism and above all their indomitable spirit. One may say that their tanks will run dry sooner than later; that their initial enthusiasm will wear off next week. However likely that may be - I doubt that though, it is only right that we give due respect and more opportunities to the teams that have managed to produce the only two close games of this cup!

As somebody tweeted, "the big 3 should allow these guys to tour them!"

In the meantime, MCG saw the third one-sided game this tournament...tsk tsk...

G-Section:

A couple of brave souls put their money on AFG and one bravado-soul thought that SL will thulp BAN.

So, Guru, Yadavalli and Siva* reap the harvest.

Tomorrow's game might see another testimony of Newton's law of Universal Gayle force. No Philander. No Bravo. No boredom.

South Africa vs West Indies @ Sydney by 1100 SGT

Your guesses are as usual, always welcome!

Q-Section:

When I think that a question is tough, the answers pour in. And if I expect a down-pour it scorches. So this easy question seems to have stumped more. Only Raghav, AngelAsh, Bhuvana  (these three are quite busy with work, I suppose :-)) got the answer after substantial struggle.

So, get ready with your missiles to throw at me after you read the answer :-)

Now, the clue had a book's name written by Fukuyama which also happens to be the name of a city in Japan and that city's flag has a...you got it right! - a bat.

I initially thought that I will leave the question open for one more day. But two of the three above, came with the right answer as I was writing this. So here goes the next question:

An easy one. [3 points]

What is the three letter word that you would associate with these three? Need the explanations too.

Answers and guesses to the usual place.

(The usual place is my email address/FB PM/Whatsapp; details of rules/ranges etc., are at http://sribees.blogspot.sg/2015/02/gq-15-here-we-come.html)

Day 12 - Finally an Irish Thriller!

UAE might be 'feeling sad' a-la-ABdeV and might be asking the following questions over the shawarma tonight:

- What if their top-order batsmen showed a bit more urgency?

- What if Guruge did not get that hamstring problem making him not complete his overs?

- What if that bail had fallen off for Joyce?

- What if that catch of KO'B was taken before he went berserk?

- What if one of those zillion run-out chances were taken?

Of course, what if life has a rewind button?

Pool B table looks un-recognizable... India, WI, Ireland, South Africa. Early days.

And in line with today's theme, what if UAE had won today? It would have been : India, WI, Ireland, UAE. Sacrilegious!

G-Section:

ManiacG and Vishal hit pay-dirt. I had a small correction to be made from yesterday's results. Corrected in y'day's blog as well as following table.

Tomorrow's games include another Associate clash.

Afghanistan vs Scotland @ Dunedin by 0530 SGT

Bangladesh vs Sri Lanka @ Melbourne by 1100 SGT

Q-Section:

Six people got the places right.

AngelAsh, Raghav, Rambo, Guru, Siva* & Yuva

But is that the question? The last three tried their best (all except Canberra have dedicated cricket ground OR all except Canberra are forts...) but could not get the link. For trying they get 3 points each.

However the first three got the correct link that all the places except Chennai have had a ODI double-century scored in them.

And the places are:

1. Fort St George, Chennai

2. Gwalior Fort, Gwalior

3. Dhar Fort, Indore

4. Bangalore palace, Bangalore

5. Fort William, Kolkata

6. Parliament House, Canberra

8 points to the first three. Good show folks! Impressive.

Here is the current state of the quiz board. AngelAsh and Raghav are up there. One slip the lead goes off!

Now for today's question:

Was this the last man to flag the end of history? Of course there is a connection. What is it? [4 points]

 Answers and guesses to the usual place.

(The usual place is my email address/FB PM/Whatsapp; details of rules/ranges etc., are at http://sribees.blogspot.sg/2015/02/gq-15-here-we-come.html)

Day 11 - CeeGee tees off!

(c) Santabanta

Meanwhile, somewhere in the IPL-land, SRK laments!

West Indies' innings was book-ended by two wickets in the first and last over the afternoon. Only problem for the ZIM was a small matter of 372 runs in between.

Chris Gayle (called CeeGee by his colleagues) decided to erupt today. A typical innings. Was biding his time until around the power-play (had his 100 by then) and then mayhem. Very interesting innings by Samuels too - it was almost as if WI have decided to copy India's blueprint to have their #3 stay there and clobber later.

Zim have conceded 300+ in two games and almost 300 in the other game. But their batting is quite capable of working on anything that you throw at them.

And those DRS reviews...aaarghh!! As Gayle said in his mid-innings - "You can't be serious?"

Q-Section:

That was the real free-hit that people wanted. 8 people answered it right! AngelAsh, Bhuvana, Guru, Muthiah, Raghav, Rambo, Siva* and Yuva got the full four points.

The youngster was Aaron Swartz invented RSS (Rich Site Summary) and Keshav Baliram Hedgewar founded RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh). Of course, both could be called an activist in their own right.

Now for today's question. 8 points.

http://youtu.be/JVCZlC8a_II

G-Section:

Vishal and Yuva cleaned up. Almost a full house today.

Tomorrow's game:

Ireland vs UAE @ Brisbane by 1100 SGT

Answers and guesses to the usual place.

(The usual place is my email address/FB PM/Whatsapp; details of rules/ranges etc., are at http://sribees.blogspot.sg/2015/02/gq-15-here-we-come.html)

Day 10 - Eng...Stutter...Land!

Drawing (c) RachelGold

For about 25 overs the English thought that they had turned the tide and a 350 beckoned. Then the familiar English malaise set in and the innings progressed akin to 410G bus driven by an apprentice driver from Bishan to Marymount. 

For those of you who are unaware of bus mechanics in Singapore:
They are very cold. Very. They stink of diesel and engine oil. The average distance between bus-stops is about 73.2 metres (I made that up!). And the buses are driven by bus-captains who think that they should hit a speed of 60 kmph within that long distance of 73.2 metres. Result? Your knuckles turn white holding those rails tight to avoid those start-speed-stop-speed-stop jerks!

No, don't want to talk about Moeen or any other English players yet. Coetzer was good. Oh, the Scot uniform is beautiful. Wouldn't mind acquiring one :-)

And by the way, this is the first match of this WC where the minnows were thoroughly beaten. AFG v BAN doesn't count ;-)

G-Section:

Shanky cleaned up the pool today and jumps to third place after languishing in the red till yesterday.

Tomorrow's game is going to be a cracker:

West Indies vs Zimbabwe @ Canberra by 1100 SGT

Q-Section:

The un-thinkables happen. AngelAsh (2 points) did NOT give the full answer. Bhuvana (5 points) did give the full answer. Tonight's dinner is turning out to be delicious!

The five pictures are:

Chandu (as in Bukit Chandu)
M - from James Bond
Ice-cream
Kit Kat
Snow White

I am sure you will check SANA's website to find out that these are the street names of five 'deadly' drugs.

And today's question is:

State the link between the youngster and the old man - may their souls rest in peace. [4 points]

Answers and guesses to the usual place.

(The usual place is my email address/FB PM/Whatsapp; details of rules/ranges etc., are at http://sribees.blogspot.sg/2015/02/gq-15-here-we-come.html)

Day 9 - Lanka Blushes and Peacock Crushes!

MSD likes Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde I think. And he also likes to script it differently I think. So he decided to unleash Mr Hyde during the tri-series and firstly lull England into false sense of achievement and all others (except Australia of course!) to feel that India is a spent-force. And now the doctor is out - surgically cutting two key opponents to pieces!

Pop-gun attack, tooth-less attack, prodigal bowlers, spinners-can't-spin, pacers-can't-bowl-fast - those were some of the civilized criticisms on the Indian attack. Guess what? For the second time in a row, the Indian attack has scored remarkably well - at times more than the famed batting line-up.

No, SA did not choke. They just showed that they are over-reliant on ABdV and Faf. India matched SA dive-for-dive, save-for-save, run-out-for-run-out. And did not match them on the drops and the mis-fields. Guys, one simple request. Don't peak too fast and too early pliss!

Dhawan said that he cleaned his swimming pool during the tri-series break. It seems all teams are sending their out-of-formers to clean swimming pools in the various ANZ cities now!

Meanwhile at Dunedin, Mahela managed that elusive century to shut Afghan leopards out. Not before the Lankans were shown the devil's face more than once during the second half of the game. 

And I am counting... for the third day in a row, a game between the super-8s ended in an one-sided manner and guess what? a game involving an associate went almost full distance. Haiyo ICC!

G-Section:

Welcome to Cacofonix and ManiacG for the G-Section. Five people in the black. Nice.

Tomorrow's game:

Yet another test for England after that shellacking by the Kiwis. This time  Scottish Bravehearts are out to pull a fast one. Good luck folks.

England vs Scotland @ Christchurch by 0530 SGT

Q-Section:

As usual, AngelAsh, Raghav & Guru got the right answer. Then Peruri came in with the right answer too. There were some interesting responses too. Bob's took the cake. (Poor him, blame it on Russell Peters!)

Looked hard at it. I thought it could mean that this is the spot where bags are loaded, or the spot where the ladies coach stops. It also looks like a hand with a cuff touching something...
My final answer: Committing suicide on the tracks is prohibited.

Then he asked for changing his 'final' answer. On my consent he came up with the following: Genius!

Ok that's the spot where lanterns are hung at night - to let the train know  that it's the end of the line!

But the real answer is:

The sign-board indicates the token exchange at railway tracks - A sign signalling the exchange of token required to pass a particular section of the track - typically single section track. The most common one is called Neale's Ball Token exchange. Those railway engineers 150 years ago were really ingenious, weren't they?

Now for today's question:

Sana told me, "These five can kill you!" How so? [5 points]

Answers and guesses to the usual place.

(The usual place is my email address/FB PM/Whatsapp; details of rules/ranges etc., are at http://sribees.blogspot.sg/2015/02/gq-15-here-we-come.html)

Day 8 - PAcKed with WInd!

For the second day running, a match between the so-called 'top-8s' failed to reach the full quota. Pakistan never recovered from those lolly-drops, Russell's typhoon and of course the Taylor-triple at the top of their innings!

I am sure, someone somewhere is keeping a tab of these 'one-sided' games and will come with an analysis to give us a % of 'meaningless' games that involved the full member teams.

Windies showed much more intent today. One telling stat was that their score today is the highest ODI score with the lowest 'highest individual' score. If that did not confuse you first time around, then my writing is good ;-)

As the cliche goes, Pakistan has to do a lot of soul-searching. Forget SA. Must win against UAE, Ireland and Zimbabwe. Two potential banana-peels there anyway! Currently they are like a potato-chips packet. Lot of wind and very less stuff...

At the Gabba, Bangladesh escapes with a lucky point. Makes their game against Eng as a virtual round-of-16. Provided Scotland and Afghanistan don't play to their potential :D

G-Section:

Nobody gets penalized for the AUS vs BAN game abandonment.

For the PAK vs WI, the bravehearts don't reap that much because of their bowling choices. You think that PAK will get more wickets but WI will win the game. A bit of a low  % choice, me thinks.

A few of you are very close to going black. Keep at it. You will reach it soon!

Tomorrow's games:

South Africa vs India @ MCG by 11:00 SGT

Sri Lanka vs Afghanistan @ Dunedin by 05:30 SGT

Which blood is going to flow at MCG - blue or green? 
I guess India will be happy to lose narrowly :Q

Q-Section:

Sorry for the red-herring of a half-volley.

Any self-respecting googler would have found that the demo happened at Poznan, Poland. But our Q-section is nothing if not for the establishment of links. So here it goes.

Asteroid 2889 was discovered in 1981 (908 years earlier) and was named as Brno Asteroid 2889. Now Brno is a nice, old city in Czech Republic but is a twin city (Gemini?!) of Poznan. So...

Raghav, AngelAsh get the full link while Guru, Shanky and Bhuvana get a point for getting Poznan right.

If you are going to send any mail-weapons based on the above...

Now for today's question:

No links. No associations. No nothing.

Just explain what the blue sign-board indicates in the photo below. [4 points]
Thanks to the lovely lady for the question!

Answers and guesses to the usual place.

(The usual place is my email address/FB PM/Whatsapp; details of rules/ranges etc., are at http://sribees.blogspot.sg/2015/02/gq-15-here-we-come.html)

Day 7 - England goes Southeeee!

England, siiiigh!

They said that England is ready for the Kiwi challenge. Eoin Morgan even got his name changed cunningly to hit some form. Scotland helped by showing the underbelly of Kiwi batting. Then Southee happened... again!

If someone gets his pitch map, it will be crowded near that small area around full length on or just 3 inches outside the off stump. England were sleepwalking with their pads - both on and off! Then Brendon McC smashed all the sixes in the game to celebrate the ESPNCricinfo test innings award!

At the innings break, there were no sixes in the game. And in seven overs, he had sent the ball seven times over the boundary including 'that' dent on the Man-of-the-Match car that went to Southee. Our G-section friends have so much to thank him. Oh, the small matter of saving electricity as the game got finished well before the Wellington dusk :-)

Thorough annihilation. Ignominy. Psychological destruction. Yeah, bring on all the sobriquets and adjectives. But the truth is England will be in the quarters in spite of this most-one-sided-game-of-the-world-cup! More questions for ICC to handle!

G-Section:

Pity that people expected a 50-50 chance for the game today. But only one side turned up.

For a change Bob could not clean up the kitty today ;-)

Welcome to Vishal to the G-section.

Thanks to Raghav and Shanky to have pointed out a small error in yesterday's details. Corrected. Did not change the winner though - just made Bob to get all his guesses right y'day. First for this world-cup!

Guesses for tomorrow's games are welcome!

Pakistan vs West Indies @ Christchurch by 0530 SGT

Australia vs Bangladesh @ Brisbane by 1100 SGT

Q-Section:

I have to share this explanation from AngelAsh before giving the correct answer...

The goat in the picture has a beard.. So, it's a billy goat. The pictures inside his stomach.. well, at first I tried to spell out the word, goat. Didn't work. This might be the connection -
Asparagus - the "Royal vegetable"
pug - a royal dog, Queen Victoria owned one. She was also gifted a royal goat.
Town crier - makes proclamations of important events in the royal family.
A was way too confusing.. then I realised that it was written in "red". So, it probably stood for "red-letter" day, which again put the town crier 's proclamations into picture.
There was a billy goat that misbehaved at the Queen's birthday (which is considered a red-letter day), and that was William Windsor or Billy the billy goat.
The pictures in his stomach point to (a) Billy goat, ergo , he could say that he ate himself.
Now, it took a lot more than five minutes and an insanely long coffee-break to come up with this. If the answer is right, don't disqualify me :) 

And when I told her that this was not the answer, she came back with the right one but with the following caveat...

Hell, I'm ROFLing at that absurdity myself. True testament to the fact that most of what researchers say is pure poppycock. :P 

After all, life is all about such interesting discoveries, ain't it??

Any way, the goat ate: A, ASPARAGUS, CRIER, CHUG. Anagraming those four words, you get the zoological name of goat which is CAPRA AEGAGRUS HIRCUS

AngelAsh, Raghav got it right. Bhuvana got half of them right...

Now for today's half-volley:

As the asteroid tore the skies 908 years earlier, in which Gemini city did the demonstrations happen?(3 points)

Answers and guesses to the usual place.

(The usual place is my email address/FB PM/Whatsapp; details of rules/ranges etc., are at http://sribees.blogspot.sg/2015/02/gq-15-here-we-come.html)

Day 6 - ZimbabUAEd!

UAE consists of seven Emirates or kingdoms if you want to call them so. Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah - we know them well and the not so famous, Ajman, Fujairah, Ras-al-Khaimah and Umm-al-Quwain. When one checks the current UAE playing-11 in Cricinfo, you have two people who are marked as born in Dubai (?) and one of them not listed as born anywhere (!). Rest are from such exotic places as India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. In reality, many of the associates have a similar problem. The lack of indigenous talent is glaring and sooner than later, the cupboard becomes bare and that is that. Bermuda is a classic example; after having played WC in 2007, they played such a (poor) brand of cricket last October in World Cricket League Division 3 in Malaysia, that people were left to shake their heads in despair. Living on borrowed talent is dangerous to say the least. How can we make it a bigger game and a better game?

Ok, that is the gloomy message for the day.

UAE were in it for 75% of the game. Thereafter, Zim's experience took over. As a grey-haired gentleman (me, me, me!) , if I don't support experience who would ;-) ? Actually, Zim are turning out well. West Indies are waiting to be picked - again! Pakistan is busy fighting with fielding coaches. Ireland is saying that they are not here to create upsets but to win matches. Why is it that the Indian Pool is always more hypertensive?

Q-Section:

I am thinking of disqualifying AngelAsh. She has this bad habit of giving answers - that too correct ones, in less than five minutes from the time of posting! Raghav, MurthyLN, Bhuvana & Guru score full 4 points. Yuva got Campbell Scott but forgot the link and tiger's name (sacrilege!) - 2 points.

And the answer is:

Campbell Scott (The Amazing Spider-man) and the tiger (Life of Pi)  have acted in movies with the same character name: Richard Parker. By the way, Pete Parker (Spider-Man) is Richard Parker's son ;-)


Current quiz position below. Neck to neck at the top.

Now for today's toughie:

When I asked the goat what it has eaten, it said, "I have eaten myself!" How so? (6 points)

G-Section:

Bob is on a hot streak. He got the margin down to the T and is leading the pack.

Tomorrow is a very good game! Wear your guessing dress on!

England vs New Zealand @ Wellington by 0930 SGT

Answers and guesses to the usual place.

(The usual place is my email address/FB PM/Whatsapp; details of rules/ranges etc., are at http://sribees.blogspot.sg/2015/02/gq-15-here-we-come.html)