cricket
Mesmerizing. This clip was sent to me by a friend in Hyderabad. When I found it online, this was the word used in one of the comments. I can only agree. Mesmerizing. I’ve watched it so many times. I went for a little surf to learn a little more. The guy on the right, Shankar…
READ MOREI’ve been thinking a lot about flags and have come to some conclusions. In a church worship setting, the display of a solitary flag ‘up the front’ invites and condones idolatry. If God’s heart is for the nations of the world – and it is – and if his mission is to reach all of…
READ MOREEngland starts its 1000th cricket Test match later today. Imagine all the joy and despair wrapped up in that unadorned statistic. The media is awash with the experts picking their best ever English Test matches and the fans picking their best ever English team. I remember many of the former but, as one might expect…
READ MOREI love sports. In recent years, with the Spirit’s help, I’ve become less obsessive (and less idolatrous) with that ‘love’ and a whole lot less nationalistic as well. Rather sadly, with my current nomadic life, I am rarely able to watch live-sports much anymore. But then there is the internet. It allows you to follow…
READ MOREI have this fascination with the history of cricket in South Asia. “WOW – way to go, Paul. Great opening line. You’ve just lost 99% of your readers.” “But doesn’t speaking from out of our passion tend to gain us an audience?” “Well, yes … but cricket? … and cricket in South Asia? That is asking…
READ MOREEvery time I go on Facebook there seems to be yet another Tom, Dick, Harry or Jane contributing their ‘All Time XI’. How come nobody ever asks me?! Well, with it being 553 days since my last cricket-related post (maybe that is called ‘growing in holiness’) and with far, far too much work to do…
READ MOREThey even looked a bit alike. They were even diagnosed with cancer at about the same time. And now they have both died, just 11 months apart from each other. Having both enriched my life in such different ways, I took such delight in knowing that there was that day when they met each other,…
READ MORESix years ago I published my first ‘prw cricket rankings‘. With six of the eight nations playing each other at the moment and the Twenty20 World Cup around the corner, it seems a good time for an update. These are rankings with a difference. Highly and intentionally subjective. As a cricket fan, it doesn’t matter…
READ MORE‘I told you so’. It is such an ugly phrase, isn’t it?! I told you so. Sorry. In the midst of the mess over Ross Taylor being pushed out of the captaincy and then the debacle in South Africa after Brendon McCullum took charge, I posted a piece entitled, black caps at midnight?, in which…
READ MOREAbout Me
the art of unpacking
After a childhood in India, a theological training in the USA and a pastoral ministry in Southland (New Zealand), I spent twenty years in theological education in New Zealand — first at Laidlaw College and then at Carey Baptist College, where I served as principal. In 2009 I began working with Langham Partnership and since 2013 I have been the Programme Director (Langham Preaching). Through it all I've cherished the experience of the 'gracious hand of God upon me' and I've relished the opportunity to 'unpack', or exegete, all that I encounter in my walk through life with Jesus.