Once upon a game in Mumbai

What do they know of India who only cricket know. 

 

Beyond a Boundary

Joseph O’Neil has written a beautiful review of Beyond a Boundary (considered by many as the finest book on cricket ever written)

Two poems of Ryokan

You do not need many things

My house is buried in the deepest recess of the forest
Every year, ivy vines grow longer than the year before.
Undisturbed by the affairs of the world I live at ease,
Woodmen’s singing rarely reaching me through the trees.
While the sun stays in the sky, I mend my torn clothes
And facing the moon, I read holy texts aloud to myself.
Let me drop a word of advice for believers of my faith.
To enjoy life’s immensity, you do not need many things.

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Too Lazy to be ambitious

Too lazy to be ambitious,
I let the world take care of itself.
Ten days’ worth of rice in my bag;
a bundle of twigs by the fireplace.
Why chatter about delusion and enlightenment?
Listening to the night rain on my roof,
I sit comfortably, with both legs stretched out.

Yousuf and Jayawardene

I really admire Mohammad Yousuf’s batsmanship. Composed, graceful and strong lofted shots. And what wonderful hands Prasanna Jayawardene has, his keeping reminding everyone of old school wicket keepers with soft hands and elegant movement behind the stumps. Oh and Simon Jones was a great (reverse) swing bowler at one point of time.

Ryokan

I have admired the poetry of the Zen poet Ryokan . Somebody put this more succinctly that I could ever hope to write about here

Excerpt below:

The hermit-monk Ryokan, long beloved in Japan both for his poetry and for his character, belongs in the tradition of the great Zen eccentrics of China and Japan. His reclusive life and celebration of nature and the natural life also bring to mind his younger American contemporary, Thoreau. Ryokan’s poetry is that of the mature Zen master, its deceptive simplicity revealing an art that surpasses artifice. Although Ryokan was born in eighteenth-century Japan, his extraordinary poems, capturing in a few luminous phrases both the beauty and the pathos of human life, reach far beyond time and place to touch the springs of humanity.

Cricket

A great quote:

“Cricket is like love; If you do not take it seriously, it is not fun; If you take it seriously, it will break your heart”

Got it from the weblog of Sucharit Sarkar

Calculus made easy

Via, God Play’s Dice is a link to Silvanus Thompson’s Calculus Made Easy . I love the subtitle:

“Being a very-simplest introduction to those beautiful methods of reckoning which are generally called by the terrifying names of DIFFERENTIAL CALCULUS and the INTEGRAL CALCULUS”