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Friday, May 21, 2004

A sporting chance 

Well, good to wake up to see the NZ Cricket team hasn't completely surrendered any chance of winning the test match on the first day, and in fact is making a decent showing in the first innings, currently 237/4. That score sure looks different from such historical favourites as 44/4. Mark Richardson has a stoic 77 off 231 deliveries, and that includes two boundaries in the last over. Craig McMillan contributed his usual score of "something between 0 and 10".

Now I don't know anything about this Mark Gasnier, but isn't this another case of a professional sports person being disciplined for something that has basically nothing to do with their job or ability to play the game? e.g., if an accountant makes an obscene phone call, or goes out and gets drunk and then passes out by the gas station pumps, no one suggests that he should be fired or even disciplined by his employer (assuming the phone call wasn't work-related, and the drunkeness wasn't during working hours).

Why do we expect sports people to be so different from the rest of us when it comes to acting stupid from time to time? I for one want to protect the right to get pissed on the weekend without my employer poking his snout into it ... otherwise we're back to the days of company towns, with employers regulating all aspects of personal life, including when we go to bed, whether we go to church, and whether women are out unaccompanied by a male chaperone, etc.


Update: Darn, Richardson dismissed just before his century. As for my $416, I'm not sure if such a category exists, but I'd like to bet on Vettori taking a maximum of 2 wickets in this test. If not, put me down for Tuffey to take a 5-wicket bag in the first innings.

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