-taking a brief but necessary break from my running series (on abortion/euthanasia et al), in regards to a matter I concluded with the other day...which gives me a useful segway...
all hats off (whatever their colours, shades or hues) to New Zealand's Black Caps...for their superlative, inimitable graciousness in defeat...or should I say, snatched/thwarted victory.
No, I don't intend to relitigate whether they ultimately snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, or, moreover, had that brought/forced upon them even by an unfair umpire's decision or the like...
and personally, I believe they well understood all the fine-print(ed) 'terms and conditions' of such a global tournament long prior to entering (either this time or on numerous previous occasions), and anyhow, rewarding one team (in a tie-bind) for having scored more boundaries/sixes/grandstand hits than the other doesn't strike me as especially unfair...
...probably coz I'm somewhat biased in having my (memorable) introduction to cricket in those grand one day matches back in the early eighties when David Gower and Ian Botham were fronting for England upon a New Zealand tour, I believe, and facing off against the likes of NZ's Martin Crowe (and Martin Snedden?) who was/were regularly knocking balls into and beyond the grandstand in an extraordinary bout of sixes which made the matches something quite out of the ordinary for this then newbie cricket fan...
That having been put/placed upon the record, I can yet feel for their split-hair loss - after such a riveting and back and forth, up and down game that though I didn't stay up to watch, snatched surprisingly pivotal moments as I couldn't sleep and/or awoke regularly throughout the night...
...and moreover can still concur with the sentiments of long-time cricket devotee Basil Fawlty (I mean John Cleese), whose 'twitter' recently pretty well summed up the situation for many of us, whether in God's Own or in the U K itself, I can well imagine...
Yes, ideally the verdict would've been a tie and a shared victory and prize - and surely both sides equally deserved such, not only for the match's photo finish but for such equally admirable performances throughout -
but above and beyond such understandably patriotic sentiments vis-a-vis NZ Inc...hands and gloves off and dutifully hurled into the air over the Black Caps' willingness to take it on the chin, to speak out so graciously in the immediate aftermath of the upset, and *moreover for being unwilling to receive a victory lap, as it were, upon their (then) imminent return to New Zealand, feeling it wasn't really warranted as they hadn't actually won (i.e. according to the actual agreed rules of the game).
Were such utter, selfless grace to mark our various other competitions in the modern era - including political ones - we'd doubtless be in much better shape as a (Western) society, eh...
*For though it's quite an unusual thing to see in this era of shameless self-promoting one-upmanship, there's still a certain thing called the dignity of loss and not being made to feel special about something which in one's heart of hearts one feels, if not exactly ashamed about, deeply humiliated over...though if there were ever a case in which a 'losing team' needn't feel such, surely this was it.
all hats off (whatever their colours, shades or hues) to New Zealand's Black Caps...for their superlative, inimitable graciousness in defeat...or should I say, snatched/thwarted victory.
No, I don't intend to relitigate whether they ultimately snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, or, moreover, had that brought/forced upon them even by an unfair umpire's decision or the like...
and personally, I believe they well understood all the fine-print(ed) 'terms and conditions' of such a global tournament long prior to entering (either this time or on numerous previous occasions), and anyhow, rewarding one team (in a tie-bind) for having scored more boundaries/sixes/grandstand hits than the other doesn't strike me as especially unfair...
...probably coz I'm somewhat biased in having my (memorable) introduction to cricket in those grand one day matches back in the early eighties when David Gower and Ian Botham were fronting for England upon a New Zealand tour, I believe, and facing off against the likes of NZ's Martin Crowe (and Martin Snedden?) who was/were regularly knocking balls into and beyond the grandstand in an extraordinary bout of sixes which made the matches something quite out of the ordinary for this then newbie cricket fan...
That having been put/placed upon the record, I can yet feel for their split-hair loss - after such a riveting and back and forth, up and down game that though I didn't stay up to watch, snatched surprisingly pivotal moments as I couldn't sleep and/or awoke regularly throughout the night...
...and moreover can still concur with the sentiments of long-time cricket devotee Basil Fawlty (I mean John Cleese), whose 'twitter' recently pretty well summed up the situation for many of us, whether in God's Own or in the U K itself, I can well imagine...
Yes, ideally the verdict would've been a tie and a shared victory and prize - and surely both sides equally deserved such, not only for the match's photo finish but for such equally admirable performances throughout -
but above and beyond such understandably patriotic sentiments vis-a-vis NZ Inc...hands and gloves off and dutifully hurled into the air over the Black Caps' willingness to take it on the chin, to speak out so graciously in the immediate aftermath of the upset, and *moreover for being unwilling to receive a victory lap, as it were, upon their (then) imminent return to New Zealand, feeling it wasn't really warranted as they hadn't actually won (i.e. according to the actual agreed rules of the game).
Were such utter, selfless grace to mark our various other competitions in the modern era - including political ones - we'd doubtless be in much better shape as a (Western) society, eh...
*For though it's quite an unusual thing to see in this era of shameless self-promoting one-upmanship, there's still a certain thing called the dignity of loss and not being made to feel special about something which in one's heart of hearts one feels, if not exactly ashamed about, deeply humiliated over...though if there were ever a case in which a 'losing team' needn't feel such, surely this was it.
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