My Team of the 2023 ODI World Cup

My world cup team of the tournament in more detail than the BBC website allows, plus a large collection of recent photographs, including a new bird sighting.

The BBC have an exercise running inviting visitors to their cricket section to pick a team of the tournament which I have just done. I am going into a bit more detail here than the website allows and will list an official 12th man, something again prohibited.

THE XI IN BATTING ORDER

+Quinton de Kock (South Africa, left handed opening batter, wicket keeper). A last hurrah in this format for one his country’s greatest ever limited overs players, and it has been one to remember, with a number of fantastic knocks.
*Rohit Sharma (India, right handed opening batter, occasional off spinner, captain). He has led his side superbly and is very likely to be holding the trophy aloft in about 50 hours from now. His batting contributions even when not massive scores have made big impacts, getting India away to fast starts and taking pressure off those coming in later.
Rachin Ravindra (New Zealand, left handed batter, part time left arm orthodox spinner). This has been a break out tournament for the Indian born New Zealand left hander, and he has had moments with the ball as well as with the bat.
Virat Kohli (India, right handed batter, occasional right arm medium pacer). Has had a great tournament, in the course of which he has become the first to reach the career landmark of 50 ODI centuries.
Azmatullah Omarzai (Afghanistan, right handed batter, right arm medium fast bowler). The young all rounder has been consistently impressive for a side who punched way above their weight at this tournament, making a very serious run at qualifying for the semi-final (at the opposite end of the punching vs weight scale would be England who failed to land a blow on anyone of any significance until it was far too late to be of any use to them).
KL Rahul (India, right handed batter, occasional wicket keeper). Has been a steady hand when India have needed one – in their very first match of the tournament he came in at 2-3, when it seemed like all the good work of the bowlers could be going to waste and saw his side to victory, and there have been many other notable performances from him since then.
Ravindra Jadeja (India, left handed batter, left arm orthodox spinner). Has made some useful contributions as India’s last recognized batter and has always been tidy with the ball. He is also probably the finest fielder of his generation, and has had a major impact in that department as well.
Mohammad Shami (India, right arm fast bowler, right handed batter). The 8-11 in this team may need some rejigging in terms of where they actually bat – I was concerned to get the right bowlers, and not overly worried about their actual positions. He was not initially in the Indian starting line up, but has been superb since getting the chance. In the semi-final against New Zealand he became the first Indian ever to take a seven-for in an ODI, and he is for me a shoo-in for Player of the Tournament even if he doesn’t have a great day on Sunday.
Gerald Coetzee (South Africa, right arm fast bowler, right handed batter). Has bowled with fire and enthusiasm – he has the best wicket celebration of any bowler at this tournament, a celebration he has been able to demonstrate quite frequently.
Jasprit Bumrah (India, right arm fast bowler, right handed batter). One of the best bowlers of the current generation, and though his figures are not on a par with Shami’s, he has looked every inch the great bowler he is at this tournament.
Adam Zampa (Australia, leg spinner, right handed batter). Has had an excellent tournament and is no small part of why his side have made the final. I have no witnessed enough of Zampa the white ball bowler to make a massive call and say that he is the best white ball leg spinner his country has ever had (yes in limited overs cricket he rates ahead of SKW for me).
Glenn Maxwell (Australia, right handed batter, off spinner). He played on of the greatest ODI innings ever seen to win his side the match against Afghanistan, but unlike Omarzai who I selected he has not been consistently impressive. I have thus named him as 12th man.

This side his great batting power, a quality keeper, a reserve keeper available in the form of Rahul if needed and a stellar bowling unit. Omarzai as sixth bowler gives genuine flexibility in the unlikely event of one of the front five having a poor day.

ALTERNATIVES

Obviously, even with the tournament limited to ten teams, there has been an absolute galaxy of talent on display, and sensible cases could made for lots of the players concerned. Please feel free either to use the BBC cricket site’s tool to select your XI or use the comments section here to explain your thinking. This is my team of the tournament and I will stick to it. It is no coincidence that three of the the five front line bowlers have come from the team who I fully expect to see lift the trophy – it is the teams with the best bowling units who usually win out in the long term.

PHOTOGRAPHS

Time for my usual sign off…

This unusual sighting is if my bird book is to be trusted a goldeneye duck – it is smaller than a mallard, and much more of a diver.

Homeward Bound

My account of the homeward journey from Fort Picklecombe.

INTRODUCTION

We have reached the penultimate post about my Cornish holiday – the last day. This post details the long journey home.

STARTING OFF

The length of time it took to get from Plymouth to Fort Picklecombe on the Thursday was playing on my mind, and I wanted to be sure that we were away before 9AM, since my train was due to depart Plymouth at 10:44, and I reckoned that a single ticket from Plymouth to London bought on the day (London-Lynn would still have been valid on the original ticket) woulkd probably cost more than my original ticket (in this assessment, to borrow from history, there was the proverbial “cubit of error my way that does not obscure the 99 cubits of error the other way” – actually said ticket would have been fractionally less. Nevertheless, I did get a few lasy pictures before leaving the fort:

Heron — A first for me – the first time I have captured a heron on camera.

On the journey into Plymouth I managed to snap two pictures from the back of the camper van:

I had some time to kill at Plymouth station and did so by taking photographs…

Gull waiting for train — An avian passenger?

PLYMOUTH – LONDON

This train was a service called “The Cornish Riviera”, which starts in Penzance and snails up through Cornwall stopping pretty much everywhere and then makes up time by calling only at Exeter St Davids and Reading between Plymouth and London. Although I had an aisle seat on this journey, and no opportunity to move to the window seat I was not going to be denied at least some photos. I got a good few between Plymouth and Exeter and a handful thereafter…

Chalk Horse — This chalk horse, carved directly out of the hillside, is visible at distance at a time when the train is at full speed.

Royal Oak – the Hammersmith & City line’s last station west of Paddington. The next station towards Hammersmith, Westbourne Park, used to offer an interchange with mainline railways but nowadays Ealing Braodway is the last mainline station before Paddington. Back in the old days there was a connection – the first locomotives to run over what was then The Metropolitan Railway were supplied by the Great Western, while this extension to Hammersmtih opened in 1864, only one year after the original.

LONDON TO KING’S LYNN

I crossed to the Hammersmith and City line platforms, nos 15 and 16 of the main station, and waited a long time for an eastbound train, then discovering that it was terminating at Edgware Road (very odd indeed for a train from Hammersmith), so I had to change again. I arrived at King’s Cross and was just in time to catch the 14:44 to King’s Lynn, which was not overfull (as the 15:44, the next service, certainly would have been). This means that I was at home and unpacking by 5PM.

Hammersmith & City line — This picture was the cause of minor quarrel – I was challenged by another passenger as to why I was taking pictures of his friend, and it took my a while to get the point across that I was not, and that it was this map which was my target. His friend’s hat did appear in the uncropped version, but no face was visible, and my only interest was the map. I was perhaps a little harsh as I was fully expecting to miss my intended connection at Kings Cross due to the delays on this leg of the journey.

Kings Cross clock — The platform from which the train to King’s Lynn was l.eaving was revealed with a mere eight minutes to spare, and if you going to Lynn you have to go to the front of the train (or else get out and dash along the platform at Cambridge).

Study Title: Attention and Perception in Autism Spectrum Conditions

A personal account of taking part in a study at the Autism Research Centre in Cambridge,, accompanied by photographs, with some interesting and important links and some more photographs.

INTRODUCTION

The main body of this post is a personal account of my involvement in the study whose title I have used for the whole post, run as so often at the Autism Research Centre in Cambridge. I also have a variety of links and a few photos that are not directly connected with the title piece but which I wish to share. I hope you will all enjoy this post and that you will take the opportunity of sharing it.

ATTENTION AND PERCEPTION IN AUTISM SPECTRUM CONDITIONS

THE PRELIMINARIES

i found out about this study just five days ago, and made contact with the person conducting it. A brief exchange of emails concluded with an arrangement for me to attend at 11AM today. As part of the preparation I had to answer various questions and solve various puzzles online.

GETTING THERE

An scheduled start of 11AM meant getting the 8:57 from King’s Lynn, and to make sure that I got my travel expenses reimbursed I carefully got a receipt. It was shortly after getting on to the platform that I brought the camera into action for the first time of the day…

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Pictures taken through the windows of moving trains are tough to get right, but these two worked out okay…

"A goods train: the shame of it" Gordon the Big Engine in the Rev W Awdry series — “A goods train: the shame of it” Gordon the Big Engine in the Rev W Awdry series

I could get a clear shot of the whole of Ely Cathedral, but this shows the main tower and the octagonal construction designed by a 14th century Prior known only and uninformatively as Alan of Norwich. — I could not get a clear shot of the whole of Ely Cathedral, but this shows the main tower and the octagonal construction designed by a 14th century Prior known only and uninformatively as Alan of Norwich.

Arriving in Cambridge I decided to take a longer route than usual to the Autism Research Centre, heading towards town as far as this church…

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Turning on to the link road that connects to the town end of Trumpington Road I passed the Scott Polar Research Institute, named in honour of Robert Falcon Scott, one of the most famous runners up in history. Scott also gave his name to an itinerant cricket team some of whose deeds are chronicled in Penguins Stopped Play by Harry Thompson and Rain Men by Marcus Berkmann. Although I could not get a shot of the whole building without crossing to the wrong side of a busy road I did get these shots…

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Next up was the Cambridge University Chemical Laboratory…

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At the very point of turning onto Trumpington Road I passed Hobson’s Conduit…

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This is the first major building on Trumpington Road itself, on the opposite side of ti to me…

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A shot of the water alongside Trumpington Road…

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I next passed the public entrance to Cambridge Botanic Gardens (the admission price convinced me to go no further than the gates)…

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A little bit further along I passed a locked gate into the same establishment, with some red flowers growing next to it…

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The last shot I got before arriving at the Autism Research Centre was of this dragon fly (or similar), which although quite large was moving exceedingly fast, hence why I got only the one usable shot…

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AT THE AUTISM RESEARCH CENTRE

I arrived at the centre at about 10:40, and did not have to wait too long for Owen Parsons, who was conducting the study, to put in an appearance. After the usual preliminaries of form signing and checking the experiment itself ran in three parts…

MIND YOUR TS AND LS

For this test one had eight seconds in total to view an intermittent display of red and blue letters, most of which were Ls but one of which was a T. The task was to identify which colour the T was and click the appropriate button to record that identification. A wrong identification, or wrong button pressed, or being timed out generated a horrible beep.

IDENTIFYING DUPLICATION

For this part of the process one was required to press the space bar each time the same image was shown twice consecutvely. The images were all of full scenes, but shown at thumbnail size. Again, a misidentification or a failure to identify within the time limit generated a beep. There was then a second part to this section, involving familiarity. One was shown sequences of three images and asked to identify the set that looked more familiar. The pictures were similar in nature and size to those previously shown, but some were definitely new.

WHICH BOX WAS THAT X IN?

For this third and final part of the experiment, there were four boxes in which an X could appear. When it appeared one had to identify the box as follows: X for leftmost, Z for left-centre, N for right-centre, M for rightmost. Thus, the duration of this section of the experiment was spent with the index and middle fingers of each hand poised over the keys in question. There was then a second subsection, involving pattern identification and made more complicated by two factors:

1)Obviously enough, not knowing about this in advance I was not especially looking for a pattern in the first stage of the process.

2)The pattern was not adhered to at all times (about 15% of the time, the X appeared in a box it was not ‘supposed’ to).

All in all, I quite enjoyed performing these tests, and would say that it is a worthwhile study. If you are aged 18-45, have been diagnosed with an Autistic Spectrum Condition and can get to Cambridge, contact Owen Parsons: oep20@cam.ac.uk about taking part in the study.

GETTING BACK

There was a small delay getting back to the main building from the place where the study had been set up as Owen initially came out without his swipe card, during which I snared this shot…

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On my way back to the street I took a shot of the front of the main building…

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I opted for the short route back to the station,along Brooklands Avenue and past the new bus interchange to approach the train station from that angle. I got these shots in the course of that walk…

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I got a couple of shots en route to the platform as well…

A worthy effort to represent all of Britain's railways on one map. — A worthy effort to represent all of Britain’s railways on one map.

A somewhat loose definition of London & the Southeast!

On my way off the train at King’s Lynn I took the opportunity to capture this plaque on camera…

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LINKS

As regular readers of this blog or those who follow me on twitter will be well aware I regularly sign and share petitions, and my first link is to a piece from Huffington Post detailing the success of one such, concerning the Henry family.

My next link is to Mike Sivier of Vox Political on the subject of a possible Greek default.

Next up is this about the effect of London on social housing.

Then we have this on the origins of turtles.

WELCOME TO A NEW FOLLOWER

The next two links both relate to autism, and indeed to the website of a recent follower of mine:

1)The main website, ambitiousautismambassador

2)A particular impressive post taking on stereotyping.

AN IMPORTANT PETITION

My final link is to a petition on change.org protesting against a planned European law that will mean the end of photography as we know it – PLEASE SIGN AND SHARE!!

A FEW FINAL PICTURES

While my right to do so remains I am sharing these photos…

Stand E, on the occasion I first used it, Tuesday AM

The new electronic displays now at every stand.

I realised before using it as part of my bus fare that this 50p was of a style I had not previously seen.

A close up of the detailed board at Stand E

Autism Research

Having signed up to participate in another research project relating to Autism I had to visit Cambridge today to perform some tasks at the Autism Research Centre on Trumptington Road…

This particular study was devoted to assessing how people with Autistic Spectrum Conditions respond to visual stimuli. Apart from the final exercise, which was identifying the odd one out from sets of four pictures, some of which were very tough, it was not too difficult. If you are interested in Autism, are able to travel to Cambridge and would like to take part in this study you can contact Rose Cooper by emailing rahc2@cam.ac.uk.

Both on the way there and on the way back I got some good pictures…

Metal plaques like this adorn the ground around the bus stops outside Cambridge station.

Sculpture at one corner of Brooklands Avenue

The two towers of Ely Cathedral, homeward journey.

The nearest i came to getting a complete picture of Ely Cathedral.

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