Sport Folio

What are you reading currently?
• Finished Da Vinci Code and loved it. Also read Brad Gilbert’s Winning Ugly, and learnt so much.
Your favourite superstition?
• When I hit a winning streak in a tournament, I eat the same thing for dinner every day. So, I have eaten butter-chicken and roti for days on end. Ditto with my water or sports-drink
The one athlete you’d pay to watch?
• I’ve already watched Roger Federer in action but would love to see Tendulkar bat. In an imaginary time, Michael Jordan, for what he has done for basketball
Your most embarassing moment?
• I remember giving a speech after winning a tournament, and thanking everyone but my parents. It was quite embarrassing when my mother told me I had forgotten them.
If you weren’t a tennis player, you’d have been…
• A doctor or something connected with science. My mother would have ensured that. I’d have liked to be associated with the movies or something in showbiz

Sri Lanka
vs
India
(First ODI Live on DD, Tuesday 9 a.m.)
’Nuff said. For the record, India enter yet another home series surrounded by the usual intrigues. The islanders, ranked second in the world ODI rankings, take on the hosts at Nagpur, where India (ranked 7th) lost a Test match to the Australians last November

The Nobel laureate is also a cricket buff — his idol is Len Hutton — and deals with both in this miscellaneous collection. Includes the cryptically titled Poem which runs in its entirety: ‘I saw Len Hutton in his prime/Another time/another time.’ Another deals with Somerset fast bowler Arthur Wellard, who held the record for hitting the most sixes in an over till Sobers took over

I was invited to Bush’s ranch and when I said I had a home in Antigua, he asked me to explain cricket to him because it looks a bit like polo and baseball combined … only without the horses. We discussed it for half an hour.
Allen Stanford, who is investing $28 million in West Indies cricket, on his conversation with the American President