Cricket: A one act play

Dramatis personae

Graeme Smith (South Africa, Captain, World XI)

Jacques Kallis (South Africa)

Inzamam-ul-Haq (Pakistan)

Shoaib Akhtar (Pakistan)

Virender Sehwag (India)

Rahul Dravid (India)

Brian Lara (West Indies)

Andrew Flintoff (England)

Daniel Vettori (New Zealand)

Muttiah Muralitharan (Sri Lanka)



(Time: A day before the Super Series Test match between the World XI and Australia. Venue: Sydney Cricket Ground. Some of the World XI players are getting ready for a practice session.)



Smith: (runs fast) I’ll stand at first slip.



Inzamam: (who couldn’t run fast) No, that’s my position. I’m the CAPTAIN (he stresses) of Pakistan cricket team. I usually field in that position.



Smith: But, I’m known as the best fielder in first slip.



Inzamam: Who told you? You just started out. I’m much more experienced than you.



Flintoff: But, Smith is the captain of the World XI. He decides who should field at what position.



Inzamam: (bellows) You mind your business. (After a pause) Actually, I was not at all interested in coming over here. You guys did not include me in the original squad. Now, you are insulting me by asking me to field at third slip.



Smith: (angrily) Hello! I didn’t select the squad.



Dravid: (in a pleading voice) Enough, guys. Stay cool. Let’s start the practice.



Smith: OK. Come on, boys.



(Sehwag chuckles and exchanges glances with Inzamam.)



Smith: (Turning to Sehwag) Virender, why did you chuckle?



Muralitharan: (in an offended voice) Who is chucking?



(Nobody answers him.)



Sehwag: (with a look of mock surprise) Why? Should I take permission from you even to chuckle?



(Inzamam walks to first slip position and tries to elbow Smith out from there.)



Smith (in a hurt voice): OK, I give up. Anyway, I know that you are an aal… (stops midway on seeing Inzy’s expression.)



Inzamam: (furiously) What! How dare you?



Smith: (in a frightened voice) No…no, I….I….I just said that I wanted to go to the loo.



(Inzamam is not convinced, and glares at Smith.)



Smith: (ignoring him) OK, boys… (Sehwag chuckles once again). OK, let Brian bat first. (Lara moves to the batting crease totally oblivious of the happenings around.) Shoaib, you can bowl the first over.



Shoaib Akhtar: (who was staring all along at Inzamam) No, I’m not in a mood.



Smith: What! Not in a mood!



Akhtar: Well, I have got an injury. Pulled my hamstring.



Smith: (angrily) Then, why did you come here? Why didn’t you tell me earlier?



Akhtar: (hoarsely) I don’t have to tell you. I will tell the Pakistan Cricket Board after I reach home.



Sehwag: (intervening) Graeme, you can’t talk to him like that. He is somebody. He is even getting offers to act in Bollywood movies, you know.



(Akhtar smiles at Sehwag appreciatively. Then, he turns his back on Smith and starts his long stride towards the pavilion.



Sehwag bursts out laughing. Smith ignores him this time, and turns to Flintoff and Kallis.)



Smith: Come on, boys.



(Flintoff and Kallis pretend not hear his voice and continue their conversation about the ICC Player of the Year Award which they won.)



Kallis: I knew that you too would get the award.



Flintoff: Really?



Kallis: Your performance against the Australians was outstanding. By the way, what are you chewing?



Flintoff: Oh, that’s a breath-freshening mint. Simon Jones too likes it.



(Suddenly they hear a noise. Nathan Bracken, the Australian quickie, who was hiding behind the nets overhearing what they were talking, runs excitedly towards his Aussie dressing-room.



Lara, in the meanwhile, gives his bat to Vettori, takes the ball from him and goes to the bowling crease. Muralitharan takes one of the bails in his hand and bowls a wrong ‘un at Smith.)



Smith: (despairingly) Will somebody tell me what is going on here?



Curtains.

Astronomers may have detected first starlight

Twinkle Twinkle little star.....

Researchers from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland believe they have captured traces of radiation from long-extinguished stars that were "born" during the universe's infancy.

The research represents the first tangible -- but not conclusive evidence of these earliest stars, which are thought to have produced the raw materials from which future stars, including our sun, were created.

The Big Bang, the explosion believed to have created the universe, is thought to have occurred 13.7 billion years ago. About 100 million years later, hydrogen atoms began to merge and ignite, creating brightly burning stars. Just what these stars were like wasn't clear.

"Where they lived, how big they were, how much light they emitted, whether they even existed, we weren't sure," said astrophysicist Alexander Kashlinsky, the lead author of the article appearing in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. "What we've done, we think, is obtain the first information about these stars."

Kashlinsky's team used NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to measure the cosmic radiation, which is infrared light invisible to the human eye, in a small sliver of the sky. The team then subtracted the radiation levels of all known galaxies and suggested that the leftover measurements include radiation given off by those earliest stars.

The exercise was like taking a recording of a stadium full of loud people and subtracting the noise of every person except one to hear the voice of that single individual.

If the team's conclusions are correct, the study will advance understanding of how the universe originally lit up.

Avi Loeb, a Harvard astronomy professor who was not involved in the research, said the early universe was probably dark for half a million years. Later, hydrogen coalesced into brightly burning stars that were hundreds to a million times more massive than the sun, and these are the stars whose fingerprints Kashlinsky's team hopes it has found.

"That's why this (study) was so exciting -- for the first time, we're looking at potential evidence of how the first starlight was produced and when it was formed," Loeb said.

An astronomy professor at the California Institute of Technology who was not involved in the study cautiously agreed with Kashlinsky's conclusion. In a commentary published by Nature, Richard Ellis wrote, "Even a minor blunder in removing these foreground signals might lead to a spurious result," but he said in an interview that Kashlinsky's team did the best job it could given the constraints of the technology used.

"I can't find anything wrong with the analysis. Of course, the next step is for other astronomers to try to prove it right," Ellis said.

Ned Wright, an astronomy professor at UCLA, was more doubtful. He argued that the process of removing the radiation contribution of other stars is too imprecise to make the team's conclusions valid, and that the measurement it saw is not the signal of ancient stars.

"I'm very skeptical of this result. I think it's wrong," he said. "I think what they're seeing is incompletely subtracted residuals from nearby sources."

Loeb agreed that Kashlinsky's results were not irrefutable, but he said the team's conclusion is a plausible first step that represents an important milestone toward understanding how stars first formed.

In the same issue of Nature, a team of Chinese researchers reported on a separate astronomical issue.

They said they had found that the super-massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way is small enough that it would fit between the Earth and the sun. That puts it at half the size of previous estimates.