Cricket Baseball Team
April 28, 2008 at 6:53 am | In Baseball, Cricket, sport | 5 CommentsThe basic criteria are power and fielding ability for position players and arm strength for the pitchers. I’ve probably picked more Australians than is justified but they just feel more like baseballers than Indians for example. I probably should have picked more South Africans but I don’t like them.
I’d like to see this. I feel that with a years training the batsman would be solid in the field and occasionally score some runs. The pitchers would be more hit and miss but if you can throw accurately at 95mph you really only need to develop one other pitch (changeup or splitter perhaps) to be effective.
Catcher: Adam Gilchrist
First Base: Kevin Pietersen
Second Base: Michael Clarke
Third Base: Herschelle Gibbs
Shortstop: Ricky Ponting
Left Field: Shahid Afridi
Center Field: Andrew Symonds
Right Field: Andrew Flintoff
Starting Rotation:
Shane Bond
Brett Lee
Shoaib Akhtar
Mitchell Johnson
Dale Steyn
Bench:
Brad Haddin
Brendan McCullum
Cameron White (Designated Hitter in AL games)
Dwayne Bravo
Shane Watson
Bullpen:
Nathan Bracken
Stuart Clark
Shaun Tait (Closer)
Makhaya Ntini
Mohammad Asif
Zaheer Khan
James Franklin
Manager: Shane Warne
Liveblogging the IPL
April 18, 2008 at 7:40 am | In Cricket | 6 CommentsI’m watching the feed from http://www.iplt20.com/ There is no commentary which is an interesting way to watch cricket.
My thoughts:
The Kolkata Knight Riders have ridiculous gold helmets (and name).
Cheerleaders are as crap as ever.
Asad Rauf looks pretty good in a cowboy hat. He’s got a bit of swagger in him.
McCullum starting to go nuts. Ponting and D Hussey to follow, Kolkata should be able to get a good score here.
On comes Noffke. 5 wides! I blame Boucher. Then another one down leg side that McCullum helps on its way for 6.
Ooh, commentary just came on. And I can also hear the guy in the truck saying what camera they should go to. This is fascinating.
They’ve sorted out the sound. McCullum has 35 off 16. Ganguly is slower paced.
Sweet Sweet Vandalism
April 18, 2008 at 12:42 am | In Life in America | 4 CommentsThere’s a church or something pretty close to where I live, just across from a bus stop, that displays the words “Happiness is submission to God”. It always kind of annoyed me. Thankfully someone took action.
Mystery Spinner!
April 11, 2008 at 6:00 pm | In Cricket | 4 CommentsAjantha Mendis. Have a look at the legspinner he bowls off the second finger at 4:20.
I’ve been waiting a while for this one
April 10, 2008 at 12:15 am | In Mathematics | 4 CommentsSetting: An algebra lecture.
Lecturer: So why is 
![\mathbb{F}_p(t)[x]](http://l.wordpress.com/latex.php?latex=%5Cmathbb%7BF%7D_p%28t%29%5Bx%5D&bg=ffffff&fg=333333&s=0 "\mathbb{F}_p(t)[x]")
Me: Eisenstein!
My softball career
April 7, 2008 at 3:47 am | In Life in America, sport | 3 CommentsSo I’m playing on the math department softball team “division by zero”. So far we’ve had one game in the mens league which we won by forfeit as well as a convincing victory in the muck around game and one game in the coed league which we lost by forfeit and tied the muck around game.
Picture: A picture I stole from stuffwhitepeoplelike’s description of coed sports. We don’t have a pitcher’s mound for example. But the fence and lights look kind of accurate.
The fact that both games were forfeits might suggest a lack of organisation but it is actually kind of the opposite. Both times there were essentially enough players but if you don’t have the team signed in 5 minutes after the game time you lose. And you have to be officially a part of the team and have your student id card to play. Tonight our mandatory third girl forgot her id card and had to go home to get it, only to return 1 minute after we signed the forfeit sheet…
But anyway, onto the game. I’ve been practicing for a few weeks so I’m not as terrible as I was but I’ve still got some learning to do in the field. Just wearing a glove and fielding balls on the right side of your body with your left hand is weird.
Hitting though isn’t really a problem. It’s softpitch softball so the pitcher just floats up 50km/h waist high full tosses and I pull them on the ground past third base for a single or double. I might think about expanding my repertoire a little but there’s no hurry. Tonight I had a single and a double and scored both times so I’m pretty happy with that.
I was fielding in center right (there are 4 outfielders in softball) and took two fly ball catches and had 2 reasonable plays on the ground as well as two errors. So not terrible but I’m certainly not good.
The game ended 12-all after 6 innings. Hopefully we’ll have a full team present at the right time next week and get the team off to a winning season.
Courses for next year
April 4, 2008 at 1:06 am | In Mathematics, Uni | 2 CommentsThere are some very interesting courses running next semester and I can only pick 2 of them (or maybe more, if I’m willing to do far too much work).
Algebraic Geometry. The word is that Doug Ulmer is teaching this course. His web page from last time he taught the course makes it sound interesting but pretty hard.
Complex Analysis. I don’t care so much about Complex Analysis but the second semester of this course is on Riemann Surfaces which is meant to make algebraic geometry make more sense. Edit: Alan Newell will be teaching this course. His RateMyProfessor profile makes him sound like a drunk Irishman so that’s a plus.
Topics in Number Theory: Tate’s Thesis. Hecke L-functions sound interesting.
Topics in Number Theory: Function Field Arithmetic. It’s like number theory but with fake numbers.
Other courses that could be good: Group Theory, Lie Groups and Algebras.
Two things I’ll have to do:
RTG: Research Tutorial Group. This is meant to be a research experience, possibly in a group. I’ll have to talk to some professors about something number theoretic.
Teaching: It looks like I’ll probably teach MATH120R, Precalculus. So slightly better prepared students but I have to teach them trigonometry as well as the stuff I’ve taught in college algebra in less time.
Doug Davis Update
April 4, 2008 at 1:03 am | In Baseball, sport | Leave a CommentMy favourite baseball player, who I profiled here, has recently been diagnosed with thyroid cancer. He’s still pitching his first few starts of the season but he’ll have a month or two off soon for treatment.
Since his diagnosis he hasn’t been pitching very well, but that’s not really a surprise: he’s not very good. The commentators find it difficult to talk about how poorly he’s pitching when he has cancer.
The Diamondbacks actually aren’t a very good team. Last season they managed to win the National League West even though they were outscored by 20 runs. They somehow managed to win games that they shouldn’t have, which suggests they were probably just lucky.
In today’s game Davis walked 6 in about three innings and gave up three runs. The D-backs lost 3-2. It might sound like I’m regretting my choice of team but they do have a lot going for them. They’re a young team, great fielders and base runners and have a very solid pitching staff. They’re just going to find it hard to score runs.
A caption competition?
April 3, 2008 at 7:16 am | In Cricket | 7 CommentsWhat is going on in this photo (found here)?
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