Hair-raising episode

HISTORY was created, albeit of a dubious type, when Pakistan forfeited the final cricket test match thus conceding victory to England. This is the first occasion in the 129 year history of the game when a match was won by default.

It was the first time also that the shape and physical dimension of a cricket ball decided the fate of a game. High drama was enacted at the Surrey Oval when Pakistani players refused to take the field after the tea interval during the fourth days' play.

The Pakistani Captain was piqued by charges made by umpire Darryl Hair that the ball had been tampered by the fielding side during the course of the England innings.

There was frenetic activity after the umpires called off play- and as it later turned out the match itself - to get the game under way. But Hair stood his ground and the match ended in bizarre fashion.

It is not so much the outcome but the circumstances that led to its truncated end that places this match out of the ordinary. It is also pertinent that the episode took place in the Home of Cricket.

The English may have suspected a grand design by the occident to undermine the game they invented. This feeling was reinforced by the eagerness of Englishmen to get on with the game even though they were staring defeat in the face and would have welcomed the eventual outcome the way it occurred.

Yet the English players wanted the game to commence. This may have been an expression of determination on the part of the British to hold aloft the game invented by their forefathers to be nurtured and fostered down the line.

The spirit of the British Bulldog one might say.

It was doubly important not to permit a precedent that would bring their game to ridicule. The practice might catch on. Similar walkovers would be enacted to undermine the game.

True, Pakistan invented the 'reverse swing' But England will continue to play a straight bat. This was not just another ball game but the pride of the British Empire. 'Ball tampering' is certainly not in its cricketing lexicon.

Whatever the condition of the ball England are equal to the task. So why make a big hue and cry. Hair should have allowed the game to continue even if there were chips off the ball.

Now he has reduced their precious game to a laughing stock before all other ball games.

This scenario would have hardly been envisaged by the Gentleman and the Players in those halcyon days when the shape of the ball mattered the least. The ball was meant to be hit and that was all about it.

To hell with its shape and physical appearance. What's a few scruff marks on a cricket ball the likes of W.G. Grace would have ventured. The episode would also now open interesting avenues.

The Match Fixing art would take on a new dimension. One has only to leave a few scruff marks on a cricket ball for an outcome to be decided. Of course it takes two to tango but for big bucks anything is possible.

A particular team will only have to leave a few scratch marks on a cricket ball, incur the wrath of the umpire make a big song and dance and refuse to take the field after a break and award the match to the other side. Pity guys like Hanzie Cronje did not think of this angle.

The episode is bound to change the face of the game of cricket. "Playing a straight bat' would certainly lose its currency.

Popular cliques associated with the game are bound to lose their gloss which would have been similar to a brand new red cherry in the hands of a Denis Liliee.

Bowling sides taking a heavy pummelling could now rest their corns in the shade of the pavilion and hand over the game on a platter to their opponents for a mess of pottage.

The episode could also put a spanner in the plans of batsmen pursuing world records. It is just as well that Brian Lara attained his highest test score before this.

Had he not the opposing team would certainly have acted on the new brainwave provided by Pakistan. What is more, there is now guaranteed that Lara's record will stand the test of time. Certainly if the West Indies were the fielding side.

It's not easy to die

Sharm de ALWIS

DEATH: The 'prophet' with his abode in the Kandyan Kingdom has quoted that "it is not easy to die."

Whilst there is the kernel of truth in 'the word', paradoxically, it is not easy to live, either. In support of the decree of the 'prophet' are several of my personal experiences.

As a teenager, over a huff with my mother suicide was attempted when I stealthily hid the clothes I was wearing under a rock on the Kollupitiya beach and waded into the Indian Ocean to meet my Maker.

Some strokes in free-style found me on the coral reef with every lota of temper cooled by the placid waters.

Then there were the dare-devil riding on my one-eyed Mac - Volocette, custom built to take on any bike lesser than a Tiger100.

Some years ago I was striken by a heart problem and viewed through a glass pane the other side to which I had to cross over and, believe me, it was a bonsai garden with multi-hued butterflies fluttering hither and thither but the good doctors at Durdans ensured I didn't go for ever.

My better-half has had grand designs to execute 'the perfect murder' like stacking my capsule container with incorrect pills but these plans have been scuttled by my companion of the weekend or else he would have been the prime suspect for the autopsy to be performed.

I have always opted for cremation but I now have reverse thoughts because it would not allow for an autopsy. Now in the evening of my years I am resigned to tarry a while with reflections also my daily companion like when I ponder "If youth knew, if age could."

All in all, it has not been a bad knock and if I am to bat in the second innings, I'll play the same strokes but with more care.

With the cost of living in the higher register and my medicines costing a pretty packet, I will now contest the 'prophet' that it is also not easy to live.

But mine is a credo wrought in the anvil of experience and I have agreed with Goethe that "a useless life is an early death."

All in all, it has not been a bad knock and if I am to bat in the second innings, I'll play the same strokes but with a little more care.

Your double plays cricket in another universe

COSMOLOGY: Suppose, even as you read this, your doppelganger in another universe - an exact replica of this world - is playing cricket? Recent advances in cosmology have renewed interest in the existence of parallel universes.

An idea proposed by quantum theorists, this has fascinated generations of physicists and philosophers, permeating not only science but also popular culture and literature - from Plato's suggestion that we see "mere shadows of reality" to Lewis Carroll's concept of a rabbit hole for Alice to slip out of the real world.

Like the universe we inhabit, parallel universes are regions of space and time containing matter, galaxies, stars, planets and living beings.

Our `doubles' there are supposedly connected to us through mechanisms that only quantum physics can explain.

Some scientists believe that wormholes - "tunnels" in space-time connecting blackholes - make it possible for these universes to exist mere millimeters away.

They suggest that neuroscience, through the study of altered states of awareness, indicates the proximity of parallel worlds to this universe, and that gravity is just a weak signal leaking out of them into ours.

Most of us are comfortable with the familiar three-dimensional universe, with its up-down, front-back, and left-right options.

A sound wave, for instance, "exists" in these three dimensions and propagates in all directions simultaneously like an expanding balloon.

In two dimensions, the wave would look like ripples in a pond, spreading only along the surface - not perpendicular to it, which is the third dimension.

In the early Nineties, physicists Theodor Kaluza and Oskar Klein published theories linking electromagnetism with gravity via extra dimensions.

This led to the "multiverse" theory in the Fifties. The idea was to explain the bizarre findings of quantum physics and general relativity and find the holy grail of physics: a "theory of everything" that would unite all the forces of nature - electromagnetism, gravity, and the strong and weak nuclear forces - into a single cohesive expression.

The superstring theory is the most promising roadmap for this. In it, vibrating strings - not point-like particles - make up the universe's fundamental constituents, with different resonances of the strings creating the different particles that we see.

Each string is unimaginably small, about 100 billion billion times smaller than a proton, and vibrates only in a space-time consisting of ten dimensions.

This made physicists realise that the three spatial dimensions once thought to describe the universe weren't enough.

There could be actually 11 dimensions, with our universe just one among an infinite number of membranous "bubbles" that ripple as they wobble through the 11th dimension.

This new physics is taking scientists closer than ever to understanding nature's unity and higher dimensions.

Hindustan Times