Basketball and Cricket

My sporting weekend...well, watching that is.

On my way home last Friday, I got a call from my friend telling me to get off the bus now and head back to the city coz he had an extra ticket for a basketball game. Its the game between the Sydney Kings and the Cairnes Taipan of the National Basketball League (NBL). This is their professional basketball league equal to the NBA. Well, not exactly equal because they suck! They play like high school. Not even as exciting as the college NCAA. Most of the players were caucasian, they had a couple of blacks (but we think they're Americans who never got the playing time in the NBA so they joined the NBL).

The Kings won! Yay! The Sydney Kings have won the last three championships of the NBL. Unfortunately, most people probably don't know that because Australia is just not into basketball. Forget that they have Andrew Bogut who currently plays for the Milwaukee Bucks or Andrew Gaze who played with the San Antonio Spurs in the early days, Aussies still prefer cricket and rugby over basketball. Australia winning a cricket game could be top news of the day.

Next day, I was invited to go for dinner at Pancakes on the Rocks and a karaoke night at the Retro Bar on Sussex St (by Darling Harbour). So I got to meet a few more people and hopefully through them, I can branch out. Its really hard to meet people and get your own circle of friends. Anyway, I didn't do any singing coz the bar was public. You get up on stage and sing infront of people you don't know. I guess that's better than people you know coz you'll never see these people again.

Sunday was the big cricket game between Australia and Sri Lanka. My first taste of Australian cricket. As I call it, being cultured. I went with Natasha and a couple of her friends to the Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG). SCG was packed that day.

I'm beginning to understand cricket now. It gets complicated on how the players get taken out of the game. But scoring, I'm getting it. Of course with international competition comes rowdy fans between the two countries. You won't believe how many Aussies and Sri Lankans were thrown out of the game.

Here are some pictures: