Posts by WH
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
By way of postscript, Australia has won the first test by 333 runs and ended India's 19-match unbeaten run.
India suffered a second consecutive seven wicket collapse to be all out for 107; man of the match Steve O'Keefe returned 6/35 in each innings to end with figures of 12/70.
-
The Indian cricket team suffered a dramatic seven wicket batting collapse on day two of the first test in Pune, the worst such slump in its history. From the relative safety of 3/94, India lost seven wickets for eleven runs to be all out for 105. Left arm off-spinner Steve O’Keefe took 6 wickets in 24 deliveries on the way to career best figures of 6/35.
The match has also attracted attention for a pair of unusual medical stoppages. Digestive discomfort forced Australian opener Matt Renshaw into a rare retirement before K.L. Rahul’s stomach problems caused a delay in the Indian innings, prompting commentators to inaugurate the "curse of the opening batsman".
-
This is Akhil Suhas’ short film of his trip around New Zealand.
-
This is Slate’s interesting take on ESPN’s in-game estimate that the Falcons were 99.8% likely to win Super Bowl LI. While the statistical gizmos tend to be a little over-confident, the end result was still very unusual:
Because these kinds of comebacks are so rare, Burke told me, it’s very difficult for him to benchmark his model with real NFL data. When sample sizes are smaller, we can be a lot less confident about the predictions we derive from those samples. Based on the evidence we do have and our knowledge of how many points a touchdown is worth, we know the Patriots’ victory in Super Bowl LI was extremely unlikely. It feels like faux precision, however, to say the Falcons were a 99.8 percent favorite with six minutes left to play in the third quarter.
As the author points out, a comeback from 25 points or more down has only happened on a handful of occasions in the history of the NFL. As far as I can tell, it’s happened five times in something like thirteen thousand regular season matches, or in about 0.05% of regular games.
All in all, an unlikely way to see off a season of unusual sporting results.
-
I understand your point of view.
-
I went looking for this (which is pretty good I reckon) and came across this.
-
F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote:
in a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.
South Korea. China. The Philippines. Cuba. Ghana. Germany.
Mary Lincoln, Nancy Reagan and a very odd phone call reportedly placed by Donald Trump.
Although this piece about John Key seems to be some kind of joke, the topic has come up more than you might think.
-
Hard News: Burning down the house to…, in reply to Katharine Moody,
I learned a lot from that Elizabeth Warren lecture after first seeing her in Maxed Out. Your comment made me think of this Ezra Klein interview with JD Vance that has a broadly similar focus.
David Leonhardt recently recommended this David Frum article which is also very interesting.
-
Hard News: The next four years, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
It’s been an interesting 12 months in sport actually.
The Cavs broke the 52-year Cleveland sports curse. The Cubs broke the 108-year Curse of the Billy Goat. Leicester City won the Premier League against bookmaker odds of 5000:1. The All Blacks lost to Ireland for the first time in 111 years. The Herald’s take on it all is here.
For those with a sceptical cast of mind, this video shows a Rayon Sports’ striker removing juju from the opposition goal shortly before equalising in the 52nd minute.
The use of juju in Rwandan football has now been outlawed.
-
Hard News: The next four years, in reply to mark taslov,
Did you watch the Super Bowl?