COLOMBO, Sri Lanka -- Six eventful years have passed since that fateful day in the summer of 2003 when Kahuna created the Circus. The blog, that is. Those were the good old days, when Pyra Labs still owned Blogger. Much has come to pass since. Now, in the fall of 2009, after more than six hundred posts, one thing remains certain: the blame for the ensuring chaos must lie squarely on the shoulders of St Vandoofus who introduced Kahuna to the art of blogging all those years ago.
Today, we place on record a conversation that took place several weeks ago between Kahuna and the Holy One on the most unlikely topic of cricket. Kahuna subscribes unequivocally to Kipling's notion of "the flannelled fools at the wicket"[1] and is no friend to the gentleman's game. Sadly, His views are in the minority in a land where the national pastime involves chasing a red ball across a green turf. Like most residents of the native land, St Vandoofus is a card-carrying cricket fanatic who epitomizes the need for a bunch of adults to engage in lobbing projectiles at each other while periodically yelling "howzat?" at the umpire, accompanied by enthusiastic jumping about and weird hand signals.
Despite his usual fervor, Vandoofus was considerably miffed at the dismal performance of the home side the night before, which he had happened to witness in person at the R Premadasa Stadium:
Kahuna (K): Enjoyed the match? :-P
Vandoofus (V): Er no, we lost X-(
K: What did you expect? :-P It's a game of chance X-(
V: It's is NOT X-(
K: It isn't? :-O
V: Are you saying if I was captain of the Sri Lankan team then there is an equal chance of Sri Lanka winning? X-(
K: Winning? No. Loosing? Yes.
V: X-(
K: So this isn't governed by the law of averages?
V: Er, no.
K: Fascinating. So then the result of the match is fixed in advance?
V: No, it's not.
K: Then the outcome is probably determined by the position of Saturn when the coin is tossed X-(
V: Er, no. How about skill?
K: In Newtonian mechanics?
V: No, just play ball skills.
K: That would assume that the ball behaves in accordance with classical Newtonian physics.
V: Sure, why not?
K: Er, because it doesn't. The ball could take one of an infinite number of possible paths between point A and point B, including a squiggly line.
V: OK, so if do go with Newtonian physics and how well a human can apply this physics then it becomes a game.
K: Yes, but the underlying reality is different: the ball doesn't behave the way you want it to.
V: It doesn't?
K: No.
V: It behaves according to the Newtonian physics. So boils down to how well the players can apply this.
K: No, it behaves in accordance with quantum mechanics.
V: Nonsense.
K: You need Feynman's path integrals to solve this problem and as far as I know, the cricket team doesn't consist of physicists X-(
V: The bottom line is, it is a game of physics and humans ability to apply it. Sri Lankans applied it pretty poorly last night. Especially Jayasuriya who repeatedly miscalculated the force/angle ratio until he exerted a little too much vertical force which caused the ball to project upwards to give a New Zealand player a catch X-(
K: Yes, but Jayasuriya didn't factor in the crosswind component, not to mention the solar wind component.
V: He also didn't factor in how old he was and that force applied with a same action is far less powerful than he did 20 years ago.
K: Are you suggesting that he has attenuated?
V: Of course.
K: So, despite being armed with all this data, you visited the venue in person to watch this debacle? X-(
V: Why not? The whole point is how well players apply apply physics.
K: Because you could have made you use of advances in quantum mechanics and watched said debacle unfold over by over from the comfort of your living room, while sipping beer in your boxers, that's why X-(
V: Ah, that's the nice thing about games: there is also the random factor.
K: Ha! So you admit it's a game of chance!
V: Not at all.
K: So you're saying that there's a higher chance of victory if you don't sip beer in your boxers, for instance?
V: It is a game of all universal factors. Of course there is chance and randomness, but lots of physics, application, social stuff, culture and chaos that determined the outcome. Beautiful.
K: Precisely, so unless you have a working knowledge of quantum mechanics it is futile to play cricket. You might as well channel this money into completing the Theory of Everything X-(
V: Depends on your interests X-(
K: You have no interest in the TOE?
V: No. I have interest in how a cricket match unfolds within the TOE X-(
K: I'm sure they'll spare a few sentences in one of the appendices for that X-(
V: You believe in rebirth?
K: This is outside the scope of the current discussion.
V: It is very much part of the TOE.
K: No, despite its name, the TOE does not address everything. For instance, it won't explain why you didn't get lucky on Friday night.
V: It doesn't?
K: No, you might never know the answer to that :-P
Kahuna's blatant attempt to downplay classical Newtonian mechanics, raise the entry requirements for cricket and channel funding towards nefarious purposes did not proceed as He would have liked.
Vandoofus succeeded in locating a scholarly treatise entitled The Quantum Mechanics of Cricket penned by Joe Wolfe, which explains the behavior of cricket balls in terms diffraction and the quantum wave function. Wolfe concludes that Newtonian mechanics would be adequate to explain the motion of macroscopic everyday objects such as cricket balls, dealing a blow to Kahuna's non-mainstream interpretation of the gentleman's game.
Avid cricket fanatics are advised to make themselves familiar with Wolfe's treatise, such that the next armchair-based expert analysis of Jayasuriya's performance may be deduced more scientifically. Interestingly, there is some evidence to suggest that the alternate deification and vilification of national cricket teams exhibit direct correlation with the phases of the moon. However, most experts have dismissed this idea as sheer lunacy.
On that contentious note, we leave you for now. St Vandoofus was in a consultation with his lawyer and not immediately available for comment.
[1] Kipling, Rudyard. “The Islanders,” 1902.
