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After Mahela Jayawardene recorded his sixth Test double hundred, it was tempting to wonder whether he ever gets bored.
We get bored very, very easily. We get bored midway through unlocking our front door and that takes less than five seconds. The only exception to this is rail travel, where we’ve perfected a certain frame of mind that’s not unlike a waking death.
That sounds horrific, but all we actually mean is that all brain activity effectively ceases. We once travelled from Istanbul to Venice via trains and boats without stopping for a night’s sleep. The alarming part is that we didn’t read or sleep or do anything. We basically just sat there, staring at the seat directly in front of us for hour after hour.
We reckon that Mahela Jayawardene can adopt this frame of mind while being staggeringly adept at batting at the same time.
jayawardene and his team mates must’ve been the only ones in the stadium not bored, then. just shitty, shitty cricket, on both sides. not shitty “cricket” per se, but shitty thinking, attitude, spirit, etc. neither team deserves to win. india’s approach was utterly rotten. sl obviously don’t care if they win or draw. people who play like this should be shot.
e normous: steady on. it might not be hit-and-giggle twenty20 and they might be playing on concrete, but it’s still a mightily impressive feat of endurance and it makes a change to see guys like dravid and jayawardena doing what they do best.
and KC, i know what you mean with the train thing. the most incredible thing is when you fall asleep at the start of your journey and wake up at your destination. it’s like you’re on some sort of crazy drugs.
Oh we never sleep.
We just stare…
sorry, but cricket in dead stare mode is not what anyone needs. they could have declared long before they did. and India were making pretty much no attempt to take the initiative. is this the kind of cricket you want to see?
E-normous, Mahela isn’t a pretty player to watch, but it isn’t his fault the bowling was pretty dire and he has some powers of concentration.
Dravid on the other hand was great to watch. You cant’ expect them to do the DLS sixes thing or whatever the fecking name is in a test match.
It’s called transit time – that staring into space occupied by other people, seats, signs in other languages, fast moving scenery – I find it immensely relaxing to find my brain turning into a set custard.
didn’t you develop a card game based loosely on both patience and cricket during that journey? oh… and er, wasn’t i sat opposite u? and by sat, i actually mean slumped… sleeping soundly….. mmmmmm 48 hours sleep 🙂
T, that’s partly true. Most of the work was done at Istanbul station though. Once we really got moving, we got stuck into the monged-out staring.
52hrs non-stop from Trivandrum to Agra – that’s effectively nearly two whole test matches of play. I found you can pass an hour quite easily just deciding whether to pop some immodium or venture into the Indian train loo in your flip flops. But I was relaxed and it was quite a pleasant journey. The 37hrs from Delhi to Mumbai a few eeks later seemed like a quick trp up to the shops in comparison. I save the brain-dead staring for my daily commute on the tube.
37 hours for Delhi to Bombay? Were you walking?