The first time I ever saw carroms was at the park near my grandma's house. I think. Anyway, it was the typical carrom board with white and red pieces, but the kids played with sticks like pool cues. I remember playing often and being quite good. I now know that I was playing American Carroms.
Fast forward to last year, when I spent some time in Hong Kong with my wife. There was an International Carrom Championship shown on TV. But this wasn't American Carroms. This was Indian Finger Billiards. They were shooting with their fingers, flicking the pieces and banking them into the pockets. I remember thinking it looked so simple.
Now I'm in India and what do I find in my company's cafeteria? Carrom boards. And not just carrom boards, but people playing carroms. And not just people playing carroms, but people who play well! So I sat down to play with them.
Continue reading "Indian finger billiards" »
When I got to India and reset the clock on my computer, my Yahoo Messenger Insider automatically switched to Indian news. At first I just thought it was a weird news day, but when I saw Bollywood stars staring at me from the ads and when all of the sports news had to do with Cricket, I started to get the hint.
The one news story that I can actually semi-follow has to do with a Pakistani cricketer named Mohammad Asif. Asif just failed a drug test. His "A" sample showed traces of nandrolone, which is one of the less subtle steroids out there on the market. I put on my investigative journalist cap (read: I did a blogsearch on Mohammad Asif) and picked up the scoop.
Continue reading "Performance-enhancing drugs: more evidence cricket is just like baseball" »
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