McKenzie’s back in fold
31 Dec 2007
Neil McKenzie has finally won selection in the Proteas test squad.
McKenzie’s belated call-up is a sure sign that Herschelle Gibbs will be spared more international embarrassment against the West Indies. The question is where McKenzie will be batted and logic would suggest it is AB de Villiers who moves up the order to replace Gibbs, while McKenzie slots in at five and Ashwell Prince moves down to six.
Shaun Pollock will also rejoin the squad, but the selectors have indicated they won’t pick him unless one of the four seam bowlers is injured. Mondi Zondeki has also failed to win squad inclusion, despite Makhya Ntini’s indifferent form.
The West Indies, one-nil up in the three-test series, believe they can wrap up the series at Newlands. The Proteas are currently ranked two in the test arena, while the West Indies occupy the eighth position. A series victory would rank as one of the big upsets in recent years, but the reality is that the Proteas are more mid table than top table.
The South African squad continue to be in denial about the defeat with Graeme Smith saying the rain (in the build-up to the test) derailed the Proteas preparations.
However, the biggest thing that derailed the top order was the decision to rest the likes of Gibbs and Smith from any domestic four-day competition, this at a time when Gibbs, in particular, needed time at the crease.
88 Comments
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31 Dec 2007, 15:42 pm
January 1 has no astronomical nor agricultural significance. It is purely arbitrary.
31 Dec 2007, 15:42 pm
The Romans continued to observe the new year in late March, but their calendar was continually tampered with by various emperors so that the calendar soon became out of synchronization with the sun.
In order to set the calendar right, the Roman senate, in 153 BC, declared January 1 to be the beginning of the new year. But tampering continued until Julius Caesar, in 46 BC, established what has come to be known as the Julian Calendar. It again established January 1 as the new year. But in order to synchronize the calendar with the sun, Caesar had to let the previous year drag on for 445 days.
31 Dec 2007, 15:43 pm
The early Babylonian’s most popular resolution was to return borrowed farm equipment.
31 Dec 2007, 15:44 pm
Bit early but here goes.
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and days of auld lang syne?
For auld lang syne, my dear,
for auld lang syne,
we’ll take a cup of kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and days of auld lang syne?
And here’s a hand, my trusty friend
And gie’s a hand o’ thine
We’ll tak’ a cup o’ kindness yet
For auld lang syne
31 Dec 2007, 16:17 pm
#45 and alot of excuses
31 Dec 2007, 16:18 pm
Please play Shaun Pollock….
31 Dec 2007, 17:32 pm
BAD MOVE,drop SMITH from the sqaud totally and leave gibbs in he always bounces back,how the hell is SMITH still in there?????????????????????? BORROWED TIME LONG OVERDUE
31 Dec 2007, 17:44 pm
Happy 2008 to my cousins and bru’s…and dudesses… Rugby Princess, Ruck and Dawn.
Rememeber, it’s going to be two thousand and GREAT!!!
May the MAYAN calendar be with you…as you ponder on the stars…the Pleiades, Lyra, Arcturus, Sirius and Orion all love you.
May you all have extraterrestial encounters this year and may you strive to being more yourselves and doing things that please YOU rather than the wasted energy of trying to please others in order to be liked.
Go well…I’m off to Andromeda gallaxy now for a little bit of this and that on New Years Eve.
Easy skanking…
31 Dec 2007, 18:11 pm
According the Mayans their calendar revolves around exactly 13 moons = 364 days and then they have 1 day without time, after the complete revolution of the 13th moon back to its beginning its the start of a new year with the day ‘without time (the 365th day)’ heralding the new year, after the spring equinox.
A much superior and more accurate system than the Roman one we use, each moon in a perfect 28 day cycle revolving around the Earth which in turn revolves around the Sun, one for the agnostics and atheists amongst us to ponder as to the perfect revolution of times natural progression.
31 Dec 2007, 18:12 pm
Blwyddyn Newydd Dda!!!
31 Dec 2007, 18:46 pm
I just read how Dickey Arthur proved what a flipping useless coach he is. Bloody hell! He locked the Proteas in their locker room to listen how the windies party. I understand that some of you may think it serves them right. But hell these are proffesional sportsman. He’s not their father and he doesn’t own them. This sounds like something a preschool teacher would do. You can disccipline them or give them a wake-up call but that is plainly unproffesional and a proper coach would find a proper way to deal with this. He’s doing a job way out of his depth.
31 Dec 2007, 18:56 pm
Those Mayns were a interesting bunch.
31 Dec 2007, 18:59 pm
They (the Mayans) reckon we’re all in for some seriously rude awakenings around 2012, read it up its all on the web, big cycle coming to a head around then (2012)
31 Dec 2007, 19:04 pm
* If Greek civilization explored the universe with geometry, the Maya did so with arithmetic and time. Their calculations gave them a conception of its temporal scale unmatched by any other premodern people. They didn’t contemplate eternity with mere metaphors (“a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday”), they actually ran the calendrical mechanism back and forth over immense spans of the post and future, apparently to stress symmetries between human and godly time. Stela 10 at Tikal records a date more than five million years in the post; two inscriptions at Quirigua refer to precisely pinpointed days – one ninety million, the other four hundred million years ago.
31 Dec 2007, 19:28 pm
The Four Yugas (not Mayan but Hindu)
Each yuga is an age with specific characteristics. The four yugas make up a cycle called divya-yuga, which lasts 4,320,000 years. One thousand of these yugas equal one day of Brahma, which is called a kalpa. Brahma’s lifespan is 100 years of his time.
SATYA YUGA – (sometimes also called krta-yuga): the golden age lasts 1,728,000 years. During this yuga the average life span at the beginning of the yuga is 100,000 years.
TRETA YUGA – also called the silver age, lasts 1,296,000. The average life span is 10,000 years and the higher qualities decrease one fourth compared to the Satya yuga.
DVAPARA YUGA – or the bronze age, lasts 864,000 years. Higher qualities are reduced to 50% by now and the average life expectancy is only 1000 years.
KALI YUGA – (which this universe is passing through now) the iron age lasts 432,000 years. Higher consciousness is reduced to 25% of the population and life expectancy is only 100 years.
By now already 5000 years of Kali yuga have passed.
31 Dec 2007, 19:36 pm
In modern astronomy it is believe that the universe started with a Big Bang. Out of this, an expanding universe is postulated. Is there really a beginning? Is there an end? Could the universe eventually collapse on itself and become an finite dot, again! Only to explode again? How many times has this happened?
Most religions believe life is eternal. It has no beginning and no end. What goes on in this eternity?
In Hindu cosmology the life span of a whole universe is thought to be about 314,159,000,000,000 solar years, or “One Age of Brahma”. A “Day of Creation” measures out as about 4,300,560,000 years. Though, modern astronomy hasn’t made a decision yet about whether the universe as we know it will collapse on itself or whether it will continue to expand until it evaporates, Hindu cosmology says that there are many universes and that they do collapse and explode again.
Hindu cosmology goes on to say that “One Age of Brahma” is one cycle. It begins immediately after a Destruction in a trough then describes a parabolic curve, ascending to a Super Golden Age and again descending to destruction. Where upon, the whole cycle begins again.
31 Dec 2007, 19:38 pm
All this to ponder while you sing Auld Lang Syne tonight, and wonder where you been and where you going to.
OK enough of the philosophies for now, I’ll lay off and let it and destiny rest.
Happy New Year (for what its worth).
31 Dec 2007, 19:39 pm
2012 – Hopefully we’re still world champs then.
Too bad the mayans couldn’t be more specific.
31 Dec 2007, 19:44 pm
Try Nostradamus, he may have a paragraph or tickie’s worth about 2012 RWC (though I somehow doubt it)
31 Dec 2007, 19:54 pm
2011 just in time to be crowned RWC champs – forever
31 Dec 2007, 19:59 pm
Authors disagree about what humankind should expect on Dec. 21, 2012, when the Maya’s “Long Count” calendar marks the end of a 5,126-year era.
31 Dec 2007, 20:00 pm
But scholars doubt the ancient Maya extrapolated great meaning from anticipating the alignment — if they were even aware of what the configuration would be.
Astronomers generally agree that “it would be impossible the Maya themselves would have known that,” says Susan Milbrath, a Maya archaeoastronomer and a curator at the Florida Museum of Natural History. What’s more, she says, “we have no record or knowledge that they would think the world would come to an end at that point.”
University of Florida anthropologist Susan Gillespie says the 2012 phenomenon comes “from media and from other people making use of the Maya past to fulfill agendas that are really their own.”
31 Dec 2007, 20:07 pm
Nostradamus said a comet would hit us in July 1999.
31 Dec 2007, 20:08 pm
So, below are prophecies (not necessarily Mayan) for 2012:
1. There have been three or four previous races and ages of humanity (depending upon the source you read). All of these have been destroyed in major cataclysms. December 21.2012 marks the end of this age and it will end in major catastrophes such as Earthquakes.
2. For half of the katun (20 year Mayan cycle) there will be food, for half some misfortunes. This katun brings the end of the “word of God.” It is a time of uniting for a cause.
3. As we pass through transition there is a colossal, global convergence of environmental destruction, social chaos, war and ongoing Earth changes.
4. The Earth will undergo a magnetic field shift, reversing the polarity of the planet.
5. An asteroid or comet will collide with the Earth.
31 Dec 2007, 20:11 pm
“Doomsday” in a new ‘New Age’ extrapolation.
Try the Plaeidian’s they have a really ‘astronomical’ way of looking at the whole ‘photon’ belt experience.
31 Dec 2007, 20:13 pm
Could all very well happen, seeing as it has in some time or other happened before now. (Ask the dinosaurs)
31 Dec 2007, 20:18 pm
The bible punchers might even have a fig leaf or two to crow about, maybe they (the Armageddon’s protagonists) may even concur with this cataclysmic showdown business.
31 Dec 2007, 20:36 pm
Wouldn’t surprise me of it all ends in a ball of fire or flood of water. Well, might just be surprised for a split second.
31 Dec 2007, 20:43 pm
I got to go check if I’m needed at the local sing along session racheltjie, will check if we’re both still here breathing again tomorrow.
Auld Lang Syne and all them merry tunes to you, we can pretend its all going to be a bright new hallowed dawn tomorrow, even though we know its just another perfect new dawn just like the rest.
So long.
31 Dec 2007, 20:50 pm
Thanks Skop. Same to you.
1 Jan 2008, 13:31 pm
Legend K.E.S boooi!
2 Jan 2008, 02:23 am
Interesting,the Sydney Morning Herald chose a world 11 cricket team in yesterdays paper and the only 2 S Africans to make the team were J Kallis and Dale Steyn…..Steyn being the surprise,and these Aussies know their cricket.
2 Jan 2008, 03:42 am
More Manly
I see you made bail
2 Jan 2008, 04:33 am
Hi Princess,happy new year….yes but under house arrest….should see how hot this policewoman looks in her uniform….I keep making like I’m trying to get away so she has to catch me and “wrestle” me back inside….been cuffed twice already today.
2 Jan 2008, 05:47 am
Manly
Happy NY to you too
Is that “cuffed as in whacked about the head or as in “tied up” (a well documented fantasy of yours) ?
2 Jan 2008, 10:00 am
Blaming the rain and the prevalent conditions. Pity!
What about the Windies? They were away from their families at Xmas time yet they were still able to knuckle down and perform.
I won a few bob on the result and the reason why? I betted against the Proteas because it is well known that there is a drinking culture in the side and any game starting the day after Xmas can only mean a hung over proteas team.
Well done Neil you deserve it. Do yourself a favour and tell Graeme how wonderful he is otherwise you won’t be there long!
2 Jan 2008, 12:09 pm
South African cricket doesn’t excite me anymore. We need to find a new captain – Smith is a fool. The problem is the team is full of arrogant fatheads and Mickey Arthur is not the right type of coach for this team. Bring on Steve Waugh as coach!
2 Jan 2008, 14:16 pm
Wishing all you merry bloggers out there a good and prosperous new year from SCOTLAND and as the scots say LANG MAY YOUR LUM REEK,AND UP YER KILT WAE A BLAW LAMP.I am sittiing watching the test match on tv here and cape town`s weather looks as bad as the weather is here and SA`S bowling looks just as dismal.To wooden spoon#87 i agree with you about steve waugh,if he was coach he would kick their lazy fat arses that is for sure.
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