A couple of posts on this blog suggest the National Football League will not exist as we know it — if it exists at all — 20-30 years from now. By then, all the horrors of football-related brain trauma will have been clearly laid out and, barring some unexpected breakthrough in protective equipment, the lawsuits […]

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After six years and two months in Abu Dhabi, we leave the UAE for the final time today, headed for Los Angeles on flight EY171, Etihad’s 16-hour-plus nonstop to LAX. It was a fast six years, filled with challenges unimagined during previous incarnations as California journalists. Each of us added a significant stretch to our […]

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Summer is grim, in the soccer-loving precincts of the world. Most countries have soccer leagues that play from August and into May. And in June and July? A whole lot of nothing, aside from some tennis, some golf and … (ack!) cricket. For what seems like a month, the sports department TV, which sits poised […]

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It comes as a surprise every time I see it. The big cricket stadium in Lahore, Pakistan? Gaddafi Stadium. Yes, that Gaddafi. Muammar Gaddafi. Or Qaddafi or Kadafi, or other spellings by which he was known. By any name, he was the bloody despot who ruled Libya with an iron fist for 42 years — […]

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Most. Tedious. Global. Event. Ever. The Cricket World Cup. The thing ended Sunday, the 44th day of the competition. Yes, 44 days. Or longer than many Hollywood marriages. Twelve days longer than William Henry Harrison‘s presidency. Forty-four days is one-and-a-half soccer World Cups. And not only was it long, it was often crushingly dull in […]

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Running the sports section of The National is a bit of an out-of-body experience for an American. The Big Three of American sports are baseball, basketball and football. The Big Three of sports in this part of the world are cricket, rugby and football — football, as in soccer. We run cricket off-day stories here. […]

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A Taliban attack in Pakistan yesterday left 132 schoolchildren dead. It was the worst terror attack in Pakistan’s history. Today, Pakistan’s national cricket team played New Zealand in a one-day international in Abu Dhabi. Some wondered at the propriety of it. Among them was The National’s correspondent Osman Samiuddin, probably the planet’s leading authority on […]

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This has to be one of the most difficult rules in sports to enforce. Cricket’s 15-degree rule. The world’s top-ranked one-day international (ODI) bowler (pitcher) was suspended indefinitely today because studies of his bowling “action” find him breaking the 15-degree rule. Which is … ?

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  The Indian Premier League, the most successful cricket competition in the world, was shifted to the UAE for 15 days involving 20 matches, and I cut it a little close, before going to see a game. Tonight, one day before the last match in the UAE. Kolkata Knight Riders versus Rajasthan Royals, the eventual […]

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Another strange story. The world’s most popular and financially successful cricket competition, the Indian Premier League, will play the first two weeks of its season in the UAE. (A story The National’s Osman Samiuddin was all over today.) How weird is that? Imagine the NFL playings its first month of games in Canada. That’s how […]

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