BobHarris.com - Helping Asian refugees by kicking their heroes' butts: sportsmanship down under

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-- Joss Whedon, creator, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

"I haven't seen Jeopardy! since I was a kid, and yet I was charmed and amused by Bob Harris's fascinating and surprisingly suspenseful book. Through sheer force of personality, he takes this brainy TV show and makes it funny and easy to relate to."

-- Ira Glass, creator and host, This American Life

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Who Hates Whom:
Well-Armed Fanatics, Intractable Conflicts,
and Various Things Blowing Up —
A Woefully Incomplete Guide™

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— Ken Jennings, author of Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs

“Fascinating, enlightening, and surprisingly: NOT TOTALLY DEPRESSING. A gimlet-eyed look at the world we endure that’s also suitable for enjoying with a gimlet.”

— John Hodgman, author of The Areas of My Expertise
and correspondent for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

"All three [presidential] candidates should read all three of these [recommended] books, but McCain gets first crack at Bob Harris's "Who Hates Whom“... a lighthearted overview of the insurrections and civil wars in the world today."

— Steven Pinker, author of The Stuff of Thought, in the New York Times Book Review

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Helping Asian refugees by kicking their heroes' butts: sportsmanship down under

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Monday, 10 January 2005

Almost the minute the tsunami hit, cricketers (like anybody else with a shred of decency, which leaves out our president) were itching to find ways to help the victims across Asia.

That very day, the Aussies were playing Pakistan at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (a match I'd been looking forward to attending for months, incidentally). Almost immediately, the entire Oz side donated their fees for the entire five-day test to the relief effort. And that was only a fraction of the contributions which poured in from cricketers from all over the globe.

The latest effort: yesterday's one-day benefit match between two all-star sides: Asia vs. the Rest Of The World, whose best players had all gathered together to help.

And what happens next?

Why, the Rest Of The World unhesitatingly kicks Asia's ass.

In a friendly, afterwards-we'll-buy-dinner-and-oh-here's-a-few-million-bucks kind of way, of course.

God, that's just delightful.

PS -- this is from my day at the MCG: pace bowler (think: fastball pitcher with a headlong running start) Jason Gillespie flings one toward a promising young Pakistani opener (leadoff hitter) named Salman Butt, who batted well until being run out (a bit like caught stealing) on a dumbass rookie mistake. Oh well. The most intriguing story of the day, though, was the acting Pakistani captain, Yousouf Youhana, the only Christian on a team from a country where cricket and religion compete to see who has the most unnerving lunatics. After the team's dismal showing in Perth about ten days earlier -- Pakistan lost by almost 500 runs -- the fans back home were burning Youhana in effigy. Not figuratively -- literally. Burning. Him. In effigy. And you thought New York fans were rough. So how did the kid respond under genuinely insane pressure, against some of the best bowlers in the history of the game? By batting all afternoon, scoring over 100 runs all by himself. When he was done, 60,000 Australians gave him a standing ovation. And I'm sure more than a few fires back in Pakistan were happily snuffed out.