Wanting to shoot what I see has been something that I remember I wanted to do as long as I can remember. I remember going through my father’s photos of ‘flying monkeys’ in Bardiya – well they were actually jumping from the tree across the road to another but they looked like they were flying – and then thinking ‘One day. I will shoot those monkeys too,’ with a camera of course. I think I remember taking my first photo –a rather hazy memory of a blurry shot of my dad on a narrow dark yellow balcony in 1988 with quite a handy ‘automatic.’ With the same camera I got my first ‘official’ photo of a palace – an in focus shot with a slight yellow tone – which my father had laminated. I still have it. After that camera ‘died’ it was another 10-15 years before I got hold of my next serious equipment.

Fast forward to 2003/4. I was working as a sports journalist when my father brought back a 5 megapix Sony Cypershot point-and-shoot. My beat was school sports and basketball. I know the possibilities of a point-and-shooter in the fast paced sports is kind of limited but in time I managed to adjust to it and its shutter lag and too wide lens and started taking usable shots. In the meantime I did manage to get a couple of ‘feature’ and news shots and get them printed as well. Just when I was making progress I got too close looking for an extreme low angle shot of two players jumping at a basket and then it was all over once again. They landed right on my camera.

Ever since, I have been seeing shots in my head but with no camera in hand. At times my photojournalist friends lent me their cameras and that’s how I have been managing to keep my hopes of one day getting my hands on a ‘real’ camera and one day join the group of my photojournalist friends and stop being the spectator who suggests and start shooting myself. One day I would start giving the life I saw around me and give it a different kind of life in my photos.

Then I acquired my Nikon DSLR a couple of months ago. Finally I could start doing what I have been imagining as long as I can remember. Converting all that feeling in my gut that got every time I turned the pages of the NatGeos that my father got from a sale.

But here I have to disagree with my friend Shailendra. Passion and zeal is not all that is necessary. Here I would go to events and other places and see an image in my head, ‘read’ the meter and shoot. Everywhere you read, the photo is the result of exposure, the combination of shutter speed, aperture, ISO sensitivity and white balance. You change them to get different depths-of-fields.

Yes getting that image I saw on my head into the photo on computer is simply the combination I mentioned above. But it isn’t that simple. I got very usable photos. Perfect for news photos here but that still didn’t satisfy me. It just didn’t express what I felt when I saw the subject and its surrounding. Well I did get some that DID. And there were others that were a little different than the picture I saw but expressed what I felt much better than what I saw. But they were a few lucky shots. There were more of photos not coming out as I wanted them to be. Usable photos but not exactly what I wanted.

Yes. Learning from my mistakes and my few successes is how you learn. And yes, a great photo is also the combination of all technical and emotional aspects and luck. But I want to minimize the luck factor to being at the right place at the right time and not to how the photo comes out. I feel what I need to hone right now is the technical aspect. When I look through the view finder I want the technical combination to match with the image in my head sort of automatically so that it leaves my brain free to focus most of its concentration on the composition and get that image I see. I even switched from time consuming reporting to the less challenging copyediting and night desk job which also has very little prospect of growth so that it would give me all the time I needed to concentrate on growing as a photojournalist.

Now is the time. The time to transform that image I have had almost all my life into reality. This time I am putting an end to this start-again, stop-again pattern I have been following. I have got the equipment and I have made the choice and commitment, put my four and half years’ career (I started on Feb 13, 2003) on the line to fulfill this passion that has been haunting me. I feel that learning from this training is going to be what will help in the transition of from a guy with a camera who takes good shots sometimes to the prospective photojournalist that translates the emotions of subject to his photos. And that is why I am interested in this training.

Sept 20, 2007

I cried today. Well sort of. It was just a micromininano second of ‘crying’. There were tears in my eyes a little time before that because of this movie on HBO. It was just a very short thing….the ‘crying’. I don’t even remember if there was a sob. Just a micromininanopico second. I just ‘swelled up’. There was this incredible burst of emotions. The movie was over. The credits were over. I just sat there staring… at nothing. Then it happened. It just grabbed me. Like they say a big explosion lifts up a body into the air and throws it way high before ‘gravity takes over’, or rather the force loses its force.
This was like an implosion. My organs just felt like it was being squeezed form all around. The force was crushing me. Then it went to my head… the force. Blankness continued. Then suddenly I felt like I was actually gonna cry. My life zapped through. The recent past part of my life. Well parts of the recent past of my life. It was not actually anything. It was nothing. It wasn’t the events that zapped past. It was just like an accumulation of all the emotions of the events squeezed into one small particle. Zap. And I felt like I was gonna have that big breakdown that I’d been waiting for. I prepared for all the flow of tears and sobs and everything.

I was getting ready for it all. It looked like my whole life’s disappointments was about to be squeezed and juiced out from my eyes. They were like filled with tears. Then the big force hit. Bang. And it was gone. For a tiny winy period of time the whole weight of the world was upon me. And then it was gone. The force lost its force. But it had just been of such magnitude.

And suddenly I felt free. That’s what crying is supposed to do no? Wash out all the pain and the bad things and leave the good things. And man did it clean things up! I was totally free of all my life’s bad things for a moment after that. I felt empty. I mean good empty. Emptiness is something that usually haunts me. It’s like an aura kind of thingy. Emptiness is the force that surrounds me. But this was a different emptiness. Cuz it made me feel .. err… light.

Not that I don’t like the other emptiness. I feed on the emptiness.

It all started from this beautiful lil solo from a Keanu Reaves movie. It was so beautiful. “It moved me to tears.” I just checked wikipedia and it says the movie’s called Permanent Record. The thing was so beautiful. The solo peace I mean. Well the movie was great too. The parts that I got to see. The last quarter. And it chucked out the suicide story I had been writing in my head out the window. The bits of the story that I never wrote and never probably will. Woosssh.

But man it felt good. The bit of crying. I’m still suffering some of the after effects. The small bit of ‘euphoria’. Serotonins n other hormones going straight to my head and leaving behind bits of the radioactivity.

Amazing. All I could cry and it wasn’t much. It was really nothing really. But it was everything. Amazing how everything got squeezed into an iota and it was enough. Enough for me. For now. Phooo.

Now the song, the solo was great. In the movie Lauren (Jennifer Rubin) sings it. I forgot waht the credits said, so I checked imdb and it says it was song by Shea Adamson, so if any of you know where to find the solo, in youtube or places pleas do tell me. Like if anyone is reading this pathetic shyt.

Your friends may lie
The truth can come from strangers
If I knew why,
We wouldn’t be in this danger
Leaning out the window of my car
And wishing on another lucky star.
Life is long
It is not made to measure
You will go on
The same in pain and pleasure
Wondering how we ever got this far…
And wishing on another lucky star.

Life goes on
As sure as the sky
It’s come and gone
In the wink of an eye
You leave your home
In the wings of the night
You will never die.

The world is cold
The heart gets torn and tattered
The one you hold

It can be dropped and shattered
Leaning out the window of my car
And wishing on another lucky star.

-Wishing on another lucky star
Permanent Record, 1988

Saw it again and it still makes me wanna cry…

Anyway. There are moments when good things happen to me or I feel good. Much more than the number of good days that I have. But they are preceded or followed or both by not so good stuff. So a bad moments laced by a few good I count as a bad day. A spot makes a good cloth bad no?

So now that I have established that you really don’t want to ask me about my day as it probably won’t be good plus I will take about an hour or so of your oh so bloody valuable time explaining all that I have just said and more, let me get to the topic at hand as to why THIS one got typed. Not that the other days do not deserve a place in here. I HAVE composed some of them in my head. The big bad lazy ass that I am. I never actually got to starting them. And what makes today different is that I got some time and actually got started. And I am blabbering so much and getting bored and a lil tipsy wispy the likely that I will finish this seems not so good.

*for those not familiar with cricket, a chinaman is a ball bowled by a left-handed bowler to a right-handed batsman that spins from off to leg. Pretty confusing huh? First no tickets then no seats then a brief period of gentle breeze blew to give a false sense that the sailing was going be smooth now. And then it again began. Big giant waves hit. I lost my passport, then my good right ankle gives away, then misunderstanding drops me at the airport without an exit visa, a long walk. Then the visa guy says “Five days!” Next hotels won’t take me then the wheel of the suitcase goes out. And would you believe it? I get lonely and turn on the TV which has only Chinese for a sense of company.Then to top it all my backup hard drive crashes with 3.92 GBs of photo right after I format my camera card. Finally I get a computer and it’s all in Chinese.

Two guys from the shop try until near midnight but can’t and here I am eating Oriel cookies and water for breakfast, tapping away in the Chinese 60-day trial version of Microsoft Office Word 2007, changing the font to English every now and then from Chinese, on Sunday, November 11, 2007, and the final day of Tihar in Nepal (I think) at the room number 3 of the 13th floor of one of China Daily’s to 14-story ‘dormitories’ in what I hope will be the final leg of this chapter of my misadventures.Its 1130 hrs local time, 0930 hrs Nepal time. I just woke up. Ma Yi hasn’t called yet. So until now I know I am supposed to be leaving tomorrow. With nearly one whole day to go before that happens, a lot of twist and turns are still possible I believe, but hope against hope, won’t happen. I am sort of tired and lonely.I should have known. The going wasn’t turning out to be smooth right from the start. No no make that much before the start. In fact there never ever was any point this past week when things looked smooth, except that brief lull I was talking about before. So here¡¯s how it all began.

It actually began three or so months ago. DK (Mister Damakant Jaysi SIR, Newseditor of The Kathmandu Post) woke me up one early morning and said something about if I was free in November for a wasn¡¯t-sure-yet-trip to China. Just checking to make sure I was sure for something that wasn¡¯t so sure he said. I guess I said sure sure. As I said I was very very groggy. I wouldn¡¯t have woken up for a couple of more hours if it weren¡¯t for the phone. So don¡¯t recall much. In fact as I think of it now. It probably wasn¡¯t even early morning. Must have been near or past noon. But that¡¯s like the wee hours of morning to me. Dawn breaks some time after noon for me usually. For nearly three months I hear nothing. Then just before Dashain, that is two or three weeks ago, he says if I remember the call. Well it¡¯s a conference of some kind and a confirmation has come. It¡¯s very late so don¡¯t know if getting a visa and tickets is possible. Just check and oh yes, he is leaving for Syangja the next day. Through some contacts I find visa is possible but better to get it started in the next few days. I call Rubi to book the tickets. All rush rush rush. Oh I am quite used to final hour rush hour preparations and so is everyone who knows or is associated to me. So no problem.

So what am I doing up five hours before I am supposed be at the airport well past midnight ¨C wide awake – washing my clothes and bag and then writing out the description of Apache RTR 160.

No! Not no problem. Lots and lots of problems on the way and in between. Rewind to October 16 near noon. The guy at the Chinese embassy says to deposit passports ASAP. I remember mine had expired a month ago and the CDO office that makes it is going to be closed for Dashain the next day. Getting all the stuff ready and the CDO office closes for the day. Next day it will be made they say. Come before 1400 hrs. Some more papers to be made and I get there around 12:30. Passport guys says sorry they just ran out of passports, come after dashain. Well I don¡¯t think he actually said sorry. Sorry is just not something that we have in our Nepali vocabulary.

Well we do have Maph paun or maph garnu hola but it¡¯s limited, quite limited to grave wrongs only. Maybe judging by the frequency of its use in the English vocabulary it is good. Teachers I have had have always criticized the very existence of the word Sorry and how freely we all ¨C people of the whole word ¨C use the word for everything. In fact it is with some solid reason that we Nepalis have that saying ¡°Garne bela ma man pari ani tyaspachi SORRY?¡± Roughly translated meaning ¡°You wrong as you please first and then you say SORRY?¡± Use this with a bit of anger in your voice and you get the true meaning. Very true. So it is probably good that we don¡¯t use maph garnu hola that much unless we are in very deep shit and pleading for our lives and or truly mean it. Saying sorry in Nepali is like a slap on your self-respect. Well unless you are NTC¡¯s mobile service which says maph garnu hola even more than the English speakers do.

Now back to the story at hand. The guy then says I should have come an hour ago or so. I say a more senior guy told me the day before to come any time before two. It did not get done yesterday because I needed to bring a copy of my journalist identity card to complete the necessary papers. The mention of that got some of the screws moving. And it actually opens a lot of doors. Even here in China, as I will proceed to tell you later. A few thousand words later. So I make a call and meet a few people and dhantadah passport renewal process begins. He tells me to aramle sit in the senior guy¡¯s sofa in the other room and he will call me when it¡¯s done. I insisted on staying near but upon his insistence I go.

After some time he calls me to check my spelling and when I go to the passport room I see that there are in fact more than a few empty passports in the closet and more being made. I pretend not to see, sign my name and sit near the door just looking the other way. Maph garnu hola. No no. Sorry. When it¡¯s your work being done ethics and right and wrong go out of the window as they say. Just look the other way. Just enjoy the privilege you get as a journalist that the ¡®ordinary¡¯ don¡¯t get without some padarki (Russian for gift). Let¡¯s leave that debate for the office canteen and just limit it and guilt that burns inside you, to inside your own useless head. Well when and IF it does that is.

(end of part I of  Part one of this edition)

The Adakshhya doing a sit-in-up-on-top-of above-onto-death program to display the plight of the less-chair society. Boast Photo:Baburam Notbhattarai

Disclaimer: The following report will not be understood by people outside the tkp and also inside. But just read one and wahever… And btw if you find this kinda different in styal and others then please note that than then that in this repot I have tried to conform with the expereince that I have gained in TKP and conform with our great unique styal. thank you.

-hEadeater

GHOST REPORT
Somewhere, sometime

The Adakshhya OooibRaj Aaachar Ya organised a single person sit-in-up-on-top-of above-onto-death program to display the plight of the less-chair society. Mr Adaks AKA Mr Khottu AKA ……. also highlighted the need of chair and said he could not be chairman when there was so little chairs to go about and was sacrificing his chair to chair the highlevel committee of chairs.

Other topics were also brought to light by the chairless chairman who is believed to have brought to light again when there will me some light and more fans.

Meanwhile, Miss Sangeeta was also believed to have call for ban on chair because it demand for the use of the word chairMAN. It was believed that she would be believed to say that she believed that chairs were invented by the men to dominate all women off the world so that they could show off that they could be CHAIRMEN while the women could not. Sadly it has been brought into light that she was not present. But people made to attend the program because they could not go anywhere else said that this was most likely to have happened.

Similarly, a highlevel source who is the head of department of undisclosable things told the ghost under condition of anonymity that he believed this would have certainly surely have definitely happened for sure if she had been there. “This would have certainly surely have definitely happened for sure if she had been there. But do not quote me,” the anonymous source Mr Kankaraban said.

However incidentally, it has been reported that the iscribe, who cannot be named for reasons of secrecy and because he is now a ghost who is a ghost writer, was found run over by what was thought to be a two-wheeler with two wheels. “The front wheel of the vehicle with two wheel has a small radius and the rear wheel which is in the back of the two whaler has a small diameter. It looks like a scooter of gray colour ran over him. It also looks like he was held down by four people with four pairs of hands each,” said an unnamed source from the police.

The head of the Koteshwor Crime branch PIG Karki further added, “One is believed to be medium height and thin, the other wears specs while one of the accessories who assisted in accompliceing the assault was taller than the rest and the other was shorter. The incident happened in a deserted area. We have questioned all eyewitnesses. Sangeeta, Anjali, Maina Dhital, Pragati and Pratikchya were especially forthcoming saying they had passed the area just half an hour before the incident happened. They were all together 5 kilometers away when it happened they said,” he said.

Likewise, the YCL have issued a statement that they will investigate the case and arrest the criminals who had perverted the country and demanded that the culprits of the Jana Andolan be punished, the Maoists killed in the Pipal’s Whar be declared as National Martyrs and be given compensation and that Nepal be declared a republic immediately. It was expected that YCL would be accepting the compensation on behalf of the dead Maoists as the dead people were already dead. The YCL has also demanded that every civilian person who died during the ten years be declared a National Maoist Martyr.

Likewise, Mister Prem P Dhakal had claimed to be the culprit. He was proven not to be so because the ghost writer who is now a ghost was found to not have been sufficiently squashed for Mister Dhakal to have been responsible. Ironically Mister Dhakal’s ability to be on top a two-wheeler, or any other vehicle, animal or person, and drive straight was also questioned.

Likewise, Mister D later confessed that he had laid claim to be the culprit because he had heard YCL’s statement and had confessed so that the YCL would let make him do a lot of uthbass and other exercises.

Likewise, In an unrelated news, the Baburam, who took the above photo under condition of unanimity has also disappeared. He was last seen being pursued by a Nanga baba somewhere in someplace.

Hey. whatever happened to the chairs.

Everyone is always ganging up together around you, taunting you, criticizing the team for being great, just waiting for that one loss to gloat over and make you feel bad and trying to push you to lose your cool and go mad. But I’m cool with that. That’s what you get from watching and rooting for the Oz. really. And then there is that ‘not good for cricket’ crap they keep throwing at you all the time. Is it the Aussie’s fault that they are good and the rest of the world aren’t. Well what if they lose tonight? What’s gonna happen? Is that one loss gonna change the whole story? With that one loss are the Aussies not gonna be the whipperboys and balance is going to descend on the whole cricket world? Guess not. One loss is not going to change a lot. But the fact that it is a World Cup final is going to set back the rest of them.

Long ago around a year or so after England won the Ashes, the poms were not doing too well and someone said on BBC’s cricket blog: The Ashes win was the worst thing that could happen to English cricket. It made them think that everything was alright with them. While it won’t be exactly similar if Australia lose today, it could be something similar. Maybe I am just biased because I am an Oz Fan. But the good thing from that (the Oz lose) is that you learn to brace for these kinda things. Every loss has made them come out stronger in the next outing. And you know they’ll bounce back and thrash the offenders. So in the end one loss is just that – one small tiny winy loss. I say the Oz are good for the game. They provide you the benchmark to look up to and strive to become – or beat. Once that’s gone everything is just going to be mediocre. But who’s to understand that. But trust me. Life supporting the Oz is really not easy.

No one understands this (like most of the things I say) but it’s kind of hard being an Aussie fan. I bet you just went -“Huh? Ha!” Like the rest of the people I tell this. But really! It is!

I’ve felt this for a long long time now. But it has only been lately that I have actually realized this enough to put it into words. And it’s been lately that I have started being vocal about this. For one thing there’s the immense aggression I have to face from the rest of em. But first let me talk about how hard it is being an Oz fan taking into account the losses.

You’d probably go “Common myte (mate: with something close to the Aussie accent, I hope)! What the ef are you talking about? Australia hardly losses (25-30 losses in around a hundred or so matches I think). How can it be hard when your team’s mostly winning?”

But that’s it! With the Great Wizards of Oz’s losses coming few and far apart you hardly know how to react to it. You really don’t know how to handle it because you really don’t have to handle it most of the time. But they DO lose sometimes and when that happens, you really don’t know what to do. It’s kind of funny! Strange funny feeling that takes over you. It’s not exactly sadness, this feeling I go through when that inevitable bit of failure takes over my revered team of demigods. I have seen the ‘other fans’… I mean the rest of the world (ROW) ones, how overtly jubilant they with that one win and Oh how they crumble after a loss. Well that’s not me. Well I am very happy and sad. When I see Warne or McGrath or the other kids smash up a wicket I do jump up. But I don’t go around the office beaming from ear-to-ear with my feet on the clouds looking for the fan of the team that mine beat. And then the next day wooooossssshhhh….. the guy’s all <i>kharlyapkhurlup<i/> crushed and hiding from everyone. That’s not me.

The next hard thing to take, like I said above up there at the top, is the ganging up. The day that the Oz were to play the Southies (the South Africans – the protozoas – the Protea shrubs) a coupla guys got together around me and kept jibber jabbering about how the Oz would be out and what would I do – how the tropical African shrub of the genus Protea having alternate rigid leaves and dense colorful flower heads resembling cones would rise over the ghost of 99 and get their revenge – yada yada yada. Really hard to keep your head. Hey I could even sue them for harassment. Well I am a minority. Watching that semi and the great Ozes oozing through the Southy batsmen while trying to concentrate on that other blog and then a boring translation, I was all alone. Smith out – wooopppiie. No one to share a hi5 with. But that’s ok. The losers always hates a winner.

Which bring to my next point. Oh the curses and the prayers that go against the Oz. Someone, I forgot who, rightly said how amazing it was that the Oz were still doing great. What with so many people just praying for them to falter. Cursing them to fall down and be not good. All that, he said, should be enough to bring them down.

I think I’ll address the issue of ‘not-good-for-crickit’ in another piece. But first I ask you what is good for cricket. That a team is so strong and so hard working to hone their skills in every department and maintain their cool? Or mediocrity. If you say that being good like the Oz is bad then don’t you mean that the Oz like the rest of them should be a weak team. They should just try to carry on – with their big names and talent and not on knowing how to use that talent.

For now…. Oz break a leg today. I don’t know how long I will be able to take the sheer bombardment from the perpetual losers if you lose this one match. But like I say, No matter who wins this world cup it’ll be the Aussies who will be addressed as the World Campions while the other one will only be the World Cup Champion. For one thing the Oz crushed home on 10 out of 11. (if they lose today). Plus they will keep blasting the shyt of the rest of em again and again and again.

Cyaz mytes.

“1415 BST: Dressing-room doors firmly shut at the mo, and we can only imagine what’s going on in there – Jacques Kallis practising his forward defensive in the mirror while Andre Nel is being restrained with ropes, while in the Aussie locker-room Matthew Hayden gulps down his third protein shake of the day while bench-pressing a fridge with his spare hand.”

- Tom Fordyce, the live text commentator for BBC

“1400 BST: If you’re not looking forward to this one, you’re no fan of cricket – that’s how big it is. Graeme Smith’s won the toss and chosen to bat first, which probably works best from the neutral’s point of view.”

- Tom Fordyce, the live text commentator for BBC

1st over: SA 5-0: <br/> With tension crackling in the air, Bracks bounds in to Smith – and the skipper’s off the mark with a streaky edged single to third man. AB leaves two big swingers alone and then gets a controlled edge past first slip for four. Chat between the fielders and batsmen coming along nicely too – just caught a snatch of Ponts seeming to berate Smith for having two left feet, which seems a slightly football-specific sledge.

From Andy in Boston, TMS inbox: “I’ve had 3 hours sleep last night and am looking forward to some fireworks to get me going…”

3rd over: WICKET – Smith b Bracken 2, SA 7-1:
Bracken strikes – but what was Smith thinking? He came charging down the track, there was a touch of away-nibble and the off-stump was rocked back. Smith grimaces with anguish – the Aussies are cockahoop.

From Ross Thomas in Scotland, TMS inbox: “I used to try and hide the BBC webpage from my boss, but I’ve given up and am now sitting at my desk wearing out the F5 button while telling her how this is the greatest game for years. I’m hoping to be sacked early, so I can get to a telly soon.”

4th over: SA 7-1: From Simon in Essex on TMS blog (BBC): “Good luck to anyone expecting to get served quickly in a London pub today.”

10th over: WICKET – Boucher c Hayden b McGrath 0, SA 27-5: <br/> From Carin in Cape Town, TMS inbox: “Please tell me this is not for real! I’m too scared to switch on the TV. Have they gone bonkers? I think I should stay away from the F5 key.”

15th over: SA 55-5: <br/>From Gareth in Cape Town, TMS inbox: “I have all my Aussie mates bombarding me with emails and I just don’t have anything to say. Think I’m going to slit my wrists with the wheel of my mouse – goodbye, cruel world.”

19th over: SA 69-5: <br/>From George in Cape Town, TMS inbox: “Had my girlfriend cheat on me this past week, but this is way worse.”

23rd over: WICKET Gibbs c Gilchtist b Tait 39, SA 87-6: <br/>From Stuart in Nottingham, TMS inbox: “Is Gareth from Cape Town killing himself because of the cricket or because he has some Aussies as friends?”

9th over: WICKET – De Villiers c Gilchrist b Tait 15, SA 26-3 :<br> From Neil Rees, TMS inbox: “The Aussies and South Africans at my work are squaring up, sledging each other like pros. I myself lament the exit of England, but support any team against Australia.”

43rd over: SA 144-9: <br/>Charl drops Tait to leg and hares down the track for a relieved single. Kemp takes another straight away, much to Charl’s horror, and the round-faced paceman is forced to jab down on the rest of the over. <br>From Ben Alexander, TMS inbox: “Who’s got the scariest eyes in cricket – Angry Andre, ‘Gunslinger’ Steve Waugh or Murali whenever he bowls?”

3rd over: Aus 6-1: <br/> From Eugene in Toronto, TMS inbox: “Did you know Kallis does shampoo commercials in South Africa?”

4th over: Aus 19-1
Woosh – Langers drops short to Ponting, who pulls to Prince at midwicket – but the leftie spills a super-sharp one diving to his right. Ponto chomps chomps chomps on his gum and then leans back to pull another behind square for four, and then polishes off with a sumptuous straight drive for four more. Charl’s struggling, and Graeme Smith strokes his chin at mid-on. His own chin, not Charl’s.

From Steve in Cambridge, TMS inbox: “You guys always say, ‘have we got a game on here?’ when early wickets fall – then the losing side falls apart. Stop jinxing it! We’d like a game on here.”

6th over: Aus 27-1: <br/> From Steve Smith in Los Angeles, TMS inbox: “My Australian neighbour is currently in St Lucia watching the match. I have put our house up for sale this morning and hope to have moved out before he returns. I shall miss the BBQs and ice-cold Fosters at his place, but the humiliation is just not worth it.”

24th over: Aus 109-2: <br/> From Rory Goethel, TMS inbox: “An idea to make cricket more even: 50/20s. Opposition get 50 overs and Australia get 20 to chase them down.”