ar Gul ran through a fine Indian batting side in 200 from corse178's blog
Cast your minds all the way back to 1999. Cheap Rangers Jerseys . Poker was not mainstream then, online Poker had barely been invented, and live Poker was a low profile humdrum affair, with something of a seedy image. Then something changed, and was the kindling that smouldered and eventually started the Poker fires burning here in the UK - a TV programme called Late Night Poker.It was all new to most of us, but so captivating was this show that soon we could not wait for Friday nights, and wed record it on our VHS recorders. VHS recorders, good grief, what happened to them? The players we watched every week were all new to us, we had never heard of them, but there was something magnetic about their personalities, and we all had our favourites, those we cheered for, those we wanted to win.The extraordinary thing was how many of the featured players went on to fame and fortune one way or another. Im not sure any TV Poker show, ever, was the catalyst for such a diverse array of talent to come together. I could write a book about the contestants if time and space permitted, and I might just do that one day, but for now, heres a taster of some of those who took part.Victoria CorenWe did not know of Vicky then, such that she was introduced as the daughter of the literary genius Alan Coren. Soon, however, she was a star in her own right, not just in Poker, but in other spheres, too. She was the first female to win an EPT (European Poker Tour) event, and the first player to win two EPTs. Her book For Richer, For Poorer, A Love Affair With Poker became a best seller. As a TV presenter, she fronts Only Connect, and she appeared both as a guest and presenter on Have I Got News for You. In 2012, she married comedian David Mitchell, and in 2015 they had a daughter.Sir Clive SinclairAn eccentric genius, if ever there was one. Pioneered pocket calculators in 1972, then home computers with the Spectrum ZX80, which were both roaring successes. He followed that with that funny little electric car, the Sinclair C5, which proved to be a complete dud. Not the greatest Poker player ever, but quite the character. Dave Ulliott, aka DevilfishArguably, Great Britains finest ever tournament player, and unarguably, its most lively personality. He had already won a WSOP (World Series of Poker) bracelet, later took a World Poker Tour title, and, unusually at the highest levels of poker, was equally at home both in Tournament Poker and cash games. Dave was at the Sky Poker United Kingdom Poker Championships in February 2015, and looked a right as rain. A few weeks later he was diagnosed with cancer, and died in April. A terrible loss to Poker.Pascal PerraultThis rotund and jovial Parisian was at the top of his game at the time. He was a pharmacist by profession, hence his somewhat chilling nickname Poison. He was later to marry a Poker player by the name of Lise Vigezzi, who became known on Late Night Poker as Pink Lady after her fetching pink hats and outfits. They now live in Brazil and have a daughter with the quite splendid name of Vegas.Peter The Bandit EvansPeter was scary. Described as a scrap metal dealer, usually a euphemism for dodgy dealings, in reality he was exactly that - a scrap metal dealer, but there was certainly something sinister and dark about his persona. In fact, in real life, hes a big cuddly teddy bear. He eventually settled down and married Lisa, a professional sports bettor, and they now have the most beautiful 5 year old twin girls you ever saw. Whod have thought? Dave El Blondie ColcloughDave was an IT Consultant by trade, ruled the roost in UK Tournament Poker around 2005, and was a particularly skilled exponent of Omaha cash games, especially the 6-card version. At the time he lived in a swanky apartment in Birmingham, above a Gentlemans Club of all things. He moved to the Philippines in around 2008, where he continues to play Poker, and with some success.Pete CostaPete was, without a doubt, the best Tournament player in the world, bar none, in the period 2001 - 2003. Formerly a resident of Leicester, UK, he moved to Vegas a while back, married a Poker dealer, and still plays the Vegas Poker circuit. His brother, Kim, was, if not the best cash game player I ever played against, was certainly the nicest man I ever shared a Poker table with. Tragically, Kim died suddenly a few years ago. Pete and Kims niece, Maria Demetriou, carried on the family tradition, and made the final table of a later reincarnation of Late Night Poker.Hemish ShahHemish had already appeared on Late Night Poker when he won a WSOP bracelet in 2001. During that event, he became unwell with stomach cramps. After securing victory, the bracelet, and $300,000, he flew home to England for treatment, only to die within days from a cardiac arrest. He was just 33, and had never smoked or drank alcohol in his life. His funeral coincided with the final of Late Night Poker series 5, and the players all decided to attend his funeral rather than play.Howard Plant Howard is the most gregarious and loudly dressed Poker player ever. Based in Blackpool, he is a millionaire, and owns a dozen or more car parks in Blackpool. He can often be seen pushing a wheelbarrow round the car parks, full of pound coins from his Pay and Display machines. His trademark saying is My name is Howard Plant and I dont lend people money. He does though, underneath that gruff exterior lies a heart of gold.Crikey, Ive barely started, and Im up to my Editors 1,000 word limit, so I guess Id better leave it at that for now. Maybe I ought to write that book, after all. Wholesale Rangers Jerseys . The team also announced Tuesday that the Braves will wear a commemorative patch on the right sleeve during the season. The patch, shaped like home plate, carries the number 715, Aarons autograph and a "40th Anniversary" banner. Cheap Adidas NHL Jerseys . -- Vincent Lecavalier got everything but the desired result in his return to Tampa Bay. http://www.cheapnewyorkrangersjerseys.com/ . Emery skated the length of the ice and fought an unwilling Holtby during the third period of the Flyers 7-0 loss Friday night in Philadelphia. He was given 29 penalty minutes, including a game misconduct. But Emery did not face even a disciplinary hearing with NHL senior vice president of player safety Brendan Shanahan because rules 46. Dear Cricket Monthly,I went to class the morning after the match and my professor, of Irish descent, jokingly announced that everyone should share in a moments silence to mourn the demise of Pakistan cricket. The year was 2007, and a vaunted Pakistan side led by Inzamam-ul-Haq had squandered a straightforward (on paper, at least) World Cup match to Ireland. I was studying in Toronto at the time and working as a freelance cricket writer. The morning after the match, Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer was found dead in his hotel room. Since that World Cup, until this summers tour of England, I did not write on cricket. In the nine years in between, I actively watched only a handful of matches. On that day in 2007 I found myself falling out of love with cricket. In the years since, I tried to rekindle that love but never quite succeeded, until this summer. It took leaving Canada and moving back to Pakistan to make it happen.When you pack your bags and move from the place you were born to another country, it raises certain existential questions about belonging and what constitutes this idea of home. You try to recreate it in the new place, sometimes on a large scale and at other times in smaller ways. Food is probably the most common association with home, as it touches all the senses. For me, as surely is the case for many other migrants from former British colonies, cricket is another. It binds us to our place of origin, conjuring forgotten memories: skipping school to watch the 1992 World Cup final, shedding tears when Darren Lehmann hit the winning runs to thwart Pakistani hopes in 1999, arguing about who the better bowler is between Wasim and Waqar, playing in the streets till the sun rises the next morning. In all these moments there was hope, despair, jubilation, or conviction in ones argument. One cricketing event or another marked every year of my life up to the point I moved to Canada.The academic part of me has wondered for many years about how to understand home outside a framework of nationalism. How can we think about where we come from and the emotion attached to it without saying I love my country or evoking symbols of national culture? I have a similar question about cricket: can our love for the game, and the national team, exist outside a nationalist affiliation?I ask this because nationalism is a blind love for ones country that often excludes space for dissent and critique. And it is also a somewhat monolithic identity, where who you are is determined by belonging to a group based on ethnicity, religion or citizenship, or sometimes all three - as if this defines who we are in a natural manner. It is important to rescue the idea of home from this framework. I like to think that underneath it is a more personal cultivation of identity and belonging based on relationships, experiences, smells, tastes and sights. One of these, I am certain, is a red leather ball missing the edge of a piece of willow by no more than a fraction of a millimetre, caught by a player wearing funny-looking gloves, followed by ten other players in all white placing their hands on their heads and exclaiming, Oooooohhh!After what happened at the 2007 World Cup, everything else I knew about Pakistan cricket, the players, the administrators, the match-fixing, became too much to handle emotionally. The damniing knowledge I had accumulated, and the disconnect created by moving to a place where cricket was peripheral, made it all the more difficult to follow the game. Cheap Rangers Jerseys Authentic. Cricket kept tugging at me and I tuned in for a few series here and there. I got excited about watching a young Mohammad Amir bowl in England. We all know how that ended. I followed Misbah-ul-Haqs Test wins against England and Australia, and while I appreciated the grit this unheralded bunch displayed, I monitored the game from a distance.All this happened while I lived in Toronto. So distancing myself from cricket also became a metaphor for leaving behind my home in Karachi. With every passing year it seemed that Toronto was going to be a permanent residence, making cricket outwardly less a part of who I was. But like Sunday biryani lunches, the smell of sand and saltwater, midnight card games with friends, and arguments about democracy versus dictatorship, cricket remained a powerful memory and an everlasting part of my story and identity. There is something intangible connected to the game that I still cannot identify. I used to think it was related to the team as a symbol of hope and achievement for a nation, but I no longer subscribe to that idea. There is certainly a nationalistic element, but the individuated experience of being a cricket lover, of playing, watching, and having the game form a backdrop to so much of our lives is much bigger. So many Sunday lunches were around a Test match, countless card games played alongside the roar of a lively ODI, so much time spent with friends and family was punctuated and propelled by cricket.This June I returned to Pakistan after 12 years, barring short, perfunctory visits every few years. I was surprised to find myself excited to watch the Test series in England and the long-awaited return of Amir. Could he restore my love for the game? I am here as a political journalist, but within weeks of coming back I was handed two cricket assignments by former colleagues. I found myself at the Gaddafi Stadium, speaking to officials at the PCB, walking through the room where I once attended press conferences, running into people who still remembered my name, looking at the ground where Umar Gul ran through a fine Indian batting side in 2004, where Shoaib Akhtar knocked out Gary Kirsten six months earlier, where Mohammad Yousuf scored a lovely double-hundred against England in 2005. I had seen all these matches at the ground, as a reporter. But I had not been back since. The frenzy that accompanies the sport once again seeped into my veins.After 2007 I felt like cricket was nothing. That it was a sport I could discard and forget about. Every now and then I kept coming back to it, just to see if there was anything in it for me. Being back in Pakistan, watching the Test series against England, talking to friends about the game, getting phone calls from my dad every time something dramatic took place, experiencing the emotions and feelings once again, being in the middle of it all, I realise that everything - memories, relationships, hope, despair and happiness - is cricket. I realise that in cricket I can find the meaning of home.Thoughtfully, Saad Cheap NFL Jerseys Cheap NFL Jerseys China Cheap Jerseys From China Cheap NFL Jerseys Authentic Wholesale Jerseys China Cheap NFL Jerseys China NFL Cheap Jerseys ' ' '
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