Cricket is one of the sports that made it onto the program for LA 2028. It’s one of the world’s most popular sports….except in the US. We’ve decided to give ourselves a five-year learning curve to understand how the sport works, and to kick off that learning, Andrew Nixon, writer at Cricket Europe, joins us to explain the sport and its colorful, colonial history.

Check out Andrew’s piece on cricket’s Olympic inclusion, and follow him on Twitter / X and Blue Sky: @andrewnixon.bsky.social.

In our Seoul 1988 history moment, Jill has the story of the men’s super heavyweight division in Greco-Roman wrestling, which had an Olympic first–and was the start of an Olympic legend.

In our visit to TKFLASTAN, we have news from:

• Shooter Tim Sherry
• Race walker Evan Dunfee
• Commentator Rob Snoek
• Curler John Shuster
• Author Andrew Maraniss — if you have connections to the first Special Olympics at Chicago in 1968, contact him on Twitter / X. You can also contact him through his website.
• Para shooter McKenna Geer — find her family’s GoFundMe page here.

We also have news from Paris 2024, including:

• More details about those free Opening Ceremonies tickets along the Seine
• Protests in Tahiti
• Student housing issues
• New flights to Paris from Perth

Thanks so much for listening, and until next time, keep the flame alive!

TRANSCRIPT

Note: This is an uncorrected machine-generated transcript and may contain errors. Please check its accuracy against the audio. Do not quote from the transcript; use the audio as the record of note.

Cricket in the Olympics with Andrew Nixon (Episode 311)

[00:00:00] Jill: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keep the Flame Alive, the podcast for fans of the Olympics and Paralympics.

If you love the games, we are the show for you. Each week we share stories from athletes and people behind the scenes to help you have more fun watching the games. I’m your host, Jill Jaracz, joined as always by my lovely co host, Alison Brown. Alison, hello, how are you?

[00:00:52] Alison: Hello, I feel like I’m dressed inappropriately for today’s show.

I feel like I should be wearing all white.

Because? Because we’re talking

[00:01:04] Jill: cricket. Oh, okay. You don’t have to wear all white anymore. I know, but

[00:01:11] Alison: I feel like I should be sitting in a lawn chair with my appropriate whites, sipping some tea.

Andrew Nixon Interview

[00:01:18] Jill: going to be back on the Olympic program in 2028.

And we know that it’s a complicated game. So we wanted to give ourselves a five year learning curve. And we are joined by Andrew Nixon, a writer for cricket Europe. He tells us what the inclusion of cricket means to the Olympic program. He tells us what the inclusion of cricket on the Olympic program means for the sport, and he gives us a little primer about the game.

Take a listen. Andrew Nixon, thank you so much for joining us. Cricket is back in the games.

[00:01:52] Andrew Nixon: Uh, yes, it’s been a, it’s been a long time coming, Jill. Thank you for having me on the show.

[00:01:56] Jill: So cricket hasn’t been in, , since 1900?[00:02:00]

[00:02:00] Andrew Nixon: Yeah, , that’s correct. Yeah, there was 1900, there was, , two teams, and there was supposed to be four, two didn’t turn up.

, So it was, , Great Britain and France. In reality, it was , an amateur low level club from England against a bunch of British residents in Paris. , like all things early in the Olympics, nobody really knew they were in the Olympics. , there was an attempt to include it in the 1904, games in St.

Louis. and the organizers, and I know organization and that Olympics. Our words you often hear together, , from my knowledge of it, , the organizers either didn’t get enough entries or didn’t request enough entries and it never, and the competition never took place. So, it’s been a long time coming, .

[00:02:47] Jill: .

So what is the response from the cricket world about getting back into the Olympics?

[00:02:55] Andrew Nixon: It’s mixed as, I think part of that is because it doesn’t necessarily Have much of an impact on those countries at the top of the game the countries at the top of the game Don’t really need the olympics as such but from the Cricket for those who don’t know and I think that might be a lot of your listeners The international cricket council is a very sort of top heavy Organization.

It has 108 members of those 12 are considered full members and each get one vote at their annual conferences 96 are called associate members and between them they get three votes. So as you can see, it’s not particularly, , democratic in that sense. , the annual revenue from the ITC from their TV rights and events and whatnot, in the next sort of media rights cycle, which starts after the current World Cup.

Which, which finishes, in the middle of November is, uh, 600 million U. S. dollars a year. Of that, , 230 [00:04:00] million goes to one cricket board. Which is the Board of Control for Cricket in India, the BCCI, who are already the richest cricket board in the world, . , and the, those 96 associate members between them, , get 67 and a half million US a year.

and within that, the countries right at the bottom will get round between sort of 30 and 50,000 US dollars a year. Which if you do the, maths, That means that some boards make less per year than the Indian board make per hour. So, as you can see, it’s financially a very disparate organization.

And I can see the podcast will be able to see the open mouth reaction. tHat is a reaction. So I think in those countries that are already rich, already getting a lot of money. It’s not going to have much of an impact. Those countries at the bottom, I have spoken to people in who run cricket in places like Estonia, Mexico, Brazil, their governments that when they choose what sports to fund, they’ll prioritize Olympic sports.

And in some countries that are earning your 30, 40, 50, 000 US dollars a year from the ICC. From their government could be getting up to 10 times that amount. So you can see there that it has a transformative impact on those countries at the bottom of the pecking order. We’re probably never even going to qualify for the Olympics.

So I think they’re talking about a six team tournament. Those countries will be able to perhaps start professionalizing cricket a lot more, invest in better facilities, better equipment, and generally bring on the game a lot more in those countries. So those countries towards the bottom. You know, those associate member countries, most of them have been pushing for this for a long, long time, but the power base has been a bit not as keen on the Olympics for various reasons.

Australia, who are one of the sort of top earning [00:06:00] countries, they have always been keen on cricket in the Olympics. They’ve always been pushing it. The English board didn’t like it because it was it would interfere with the English domestic season and the English international season. The Indian board wasn’t keen on it for a long time because it would mean more government oversight of cricket in India.

For various reasons those things have now, , changed. So the English international season has become more and more condensed and actually now more room to actually be able to send a team to an Olympic tournament. And I think for reasons we’ve I’ll probably be on the score, but this podcast and the relationship between the BCCI and the Indian government has become a little, , incestuous, if I can use that term.

I

[00:06:41] Jill: mean, like their Olympic committee has many issues as well. So yeah,

[00:06:47] Andrew Nixon: so yeah, so that’s changed. So those barriers have moved out of the way. , I know cricket has been, the IOC has been very keen to get cricket into the Olympics because , they see how rich the game is in India and the Olympics in India don’t have a big share of the market there.

, I think one estimate I saw the other day said that the Cricket being in the Olympics will add about a hundred million dollars to the Olympic TV rights in India. So that’s why the IOC have been keen to get cricket into the Olympics. Cricket, it’s been a sort of will they, won’t they relationship, if you like, for a long time now.

I think last year the ICC appointed the chair of the Board of Control for Cricket in India to their Olympic working group, and I think that was when they finally started to really push it. Even, even then, I think having it in for 2028 in Los Angeles was always thought to be a long shot. Obviously, 2032 in Brisbane in Australia, where cricket’s a major sport, was thought to be a better chance, and everybody thought.

Your baseball’s going for the Olympics, uh, baseball, softball, sorry, [00:08:00] lacrosse, flag football, all games that are popular in all sports are popular in America. Cricket, not very popular in America. So I think everybody thought 2032, if they get 2028, it’s a bonus. And obviously we’ve got 2028. So I think, as I said, those countries that, are not getting a lot of revenue are very excited by this.

They sort of see a lot more investment from their governments, access to high performance programs, all that sort of thing. Very exciting times for those countries. Not necessarily the countries are actually going to be playing in the Olympics.

[00:08:33] Jill: That’s so interesting because Yeah, , for what we were watching on our side, the Indian TV rights were a big deal for Cricket being in the games.

Do you really think that… India cares to see? I mean, are they going to pay up, do you think, to see cricket in the Olympics?

[00:08:53] Andrew Nixon: I think they will. , international cricket is a big business in India. The IPL’s TV rights, that’s the Indian Premier League, the main cricket league over there. And now I think out, , higher than the, , ones for the NFL and behind all of the, uh, Premier League football over here in England.

, so it’s, it’s big business. , they like to see the best players playing. There was occasionally talk about it being like football where you’d have under 23 players with a few overage players. The IOC wasn’t interested in that, they wanted the best way because they knew that’s how they get the big money from Indian TV companies.

[00:09:30] Jill: As somebody who doesn’t know much about cricket, , and I think, , like you said, a bunch of our listeners are in this boat, when I think of cricket, technically, I think of something that lasts several days, one match lasting multiple days, , A, why, but B, I know there’s going to be a shorter version of cricket in the games.

So let’s first talk about why cricket takes so long to play and then get into the version that was developed for, , More, I wouldn’t say TV consumption, but maybe for non [00:10:00] cricket countries.

[00:10:01] Andrew Nixon: the why is, I think, probably lost to history. it just became, it just sort of became that way. . , so the longest form of cricket, which is, , multi day cricket, if you like, would last four or five days.

Most cricket doesn’t last four or five days. At the top level of the international game, the top level of the domestic games in the major cricket playing countries, it will last three or four days. most cricket around the world lasts one day, , where they play one innings a side. You bat for as long as you can’t bat until you reach a certain, , limit of overs.

An over is a set of six balls or pitches, if you like, to use a baseball parlance. as far as the shorter version of cricket that’s going to be in the Olympics, which is called 2020 cricket, uh, which Coincidentally enough was founded 20 years ago, quite happens, quite fortunately, it lasts, , 20 overs per side, so that’s a total of 120 balls per team.

It was invented , partly for TV reasons, , partly because it was invented in England. Um, partly it was because cricket attendances were down because if it’s taken all day, you can only really go to an entire match if it’s at the weekend. So in England, 2020 cricket was, you know, the game started at, half five, six o’clock.

So after work, you can go, you can watch for the evening. Obviously in the summer here, we get quite long evenings. It’s light till nearly, till after 9pm , in the north of England. , so it’s easier for people to go to the games. And then it sort of spread around the world from there into the major cricket playing countries.

And then it spread alongside, outside of there. The ITC, eventually, identified that this is a potential growth area for the game. So being very keen to push. those associate members, those lower ranked members into T20 cricket to grind, grow the game there because it’s short.

It lasts between [00:12:00] three and three and a half hours, so about the same length as a baseball game. , so it’s thought to be more marketable, , and be able to spread around the world. And that was, that’s the form that’s obviously going to be in the Olympics.

[00:12:11] Alison: How do Cricket purists feel about the change in format?

[00:12:16] Andrew Nixon: Oh God, that’s a tricky, that’s a tricky subject. Cricket purists have a sort of reaction to T20 cricket that can be a little, yeah, a little negative, sometimes very negative, but a lot of those. Cricket purists still don’t like the fact that cricket went down to one day, domestically, rather than three days.

So, and they don’t like how it’s no longer played in whites. It’s played in colored clothing. Purists in any sport will always bristle against innovation. a very easy way to start an argument. amongst cricket fans is to talk about, T20 cricket. a lot of them do not like it. , and will sometimes adamantly refuse to watch it.

, including some commentators even, will refuse to commentate on T20 cricket. , It’s here to stay, you know, I think anything, I’m very much not a traditionalist, I think anything that gets more people interested in the game , is a good thing in any sport. And I think tradition count is important, but , you shouldn’t get bogged down by it.

[00:13:24] Jill: I need to go back to the multi day cricket matches. How long are you there a day? If it’s a 3 day match or a 4 day match, how, how long?

[00:13:36] Andrew Nixon: Uh, usually six to six and a half hours. there’s intervals every two hours. The cliche is cricketers break for lunch and for tea, which is true.

, in T20 cricket in the dark, there’s a sort of 10, 15 minute break between. between innings and that’s, that’s it. There’s no lunch break. There’s no tea break. , but if you’re out there for six, you know, six and a half hours, you need some breaks. You know, you can’t actually be physically out there [00:14:00] in the sun for six and a half hours.

[00:14:02] Jill: , let’s just go through some basic , cricket terminology. So T20 game, how many players are on a team?

[00:14:11] Andrew Nixon: , There are 11 players, but…

[00:14:13] Jill: Will all of them be on the field when it is their turn to field? Yes. Okay. So there’s no necessarily reserves in

[00:14:20] Alison: the back.

[00:14:21] Andrew Nixon: , so there are reserves in the back.

, who can come on in the event of injuries to the fielders, the reserves aren’t allowed to bat in the game. If you get an injury, that’s tough, unless it’s a concussion, in which case you are allowed to replace. Replace the bater.

[00:14:38] Jill: What does the field look like?

[00:14:41] Andrew Nixon: Yeah, so the whole cricket field, there’s no sort of, you know,

Distance or size of a photo shape. It’s normally sort of roughly oval shapes about 150 yards in each direction. , a diameter of 150 yards. , and then there’s a strip in the middle of it, which is just rolled and with a heavy roller. Until that’s really flat and hard. I’m bouncy. , I will have minimal grass on it.

, that’s where most of the action takes place. You have a bowler who will come in running and bowl the ball. they specifically don’t throw the ball like you would in baseball. , I won’t get into the technique that what defines a throw is very complicated and has changed over the years. As sort of super slow motion photography came in, it turned out that by the letter of the law, every single ball that was actually throwing the ball.

So they had to change the rules, to allow some straightening of the arms, the term that they used. The ball would not, most of the time would bounce in front of the batter and there are two batters at each end. They run from one end to the other to score a run. there are ways to score so if you [00:16:00] hit there’s a boundary rope around the field if you hit the ball Over the boundary on the fly.

That’s an automatic six runs if you hit it over the rope and it’s bounced first That’s an automatic four runs That’s the sort of gist of the scoring There’s various ways of getting out. You’ll see there are Two sets of, there’s a set of stumps at each end, so that’s, uh, or a wicket. Everything in Cricket has multiple names depending on who you’re talking to.

It’s not, which is one of the reasons why I think it gets a bit sort of, opaque for newcomers.

[00:16:37] Jill: Yeah, and a wicket looks a little like a croquet wicket, correct?

[00:16:42] Andrew Nixon: Yeah, I think if you, uh, go back into the, depths of history, they probably do have this, it probably does have the same etymological sort of origin.

buT it’s, obviously there’s three, , stumps rather than two, as you can see in croquet. , And on top of the stumps, there’s what are called bails. , so if the bowler hits those, hits that wicket while the batter’s batting, that’s an out. So that’s sort of like a strike out in baseball, if you like.

if you catch the ball on the fly, again, like in baseball, it’s an out. Various other forms of getting out. Probably beyond the scope of this podcast. Some of them are quite esoteric. Some of them are more common. The more common ones would be a run out. So if the fielding team get the ball to the stunts before the runners have completed a run, that can be an out.

, if the ball hits the batter whilst they are in the process of taking a shot and it would have gone on to hit the stumps plus various other conditions that can be an out as well. , those are the most common types of bouts in, in, in cricket. There’s lots of other esoteric ways that don’t happen particularly often.

To be honest, most cricket fans, as I was saying earlier, probably don’t even know all of them and know exactly , how they, and most even cricket players don’t really know how the , other forms of [00:18:00] getting out happen.

[00:18:01] Jill: do you bat until you get out? Yes. Is that the deal?

[00:18:05] Andrew Nixon: Okay. Yes, uh, yeah, you do. There’s, and unlike, obviously in baseball where, You could, the batting order circulates, is in a circle.

Once the number nine hitter is out, the number one hitter would come back in. That isn’t the case in cricket. Once you’re ten, once there’s been ten outs, that ends the inning, no matter how often, how long it’s lasted. So, ten outs is all out.

[00:18:28] Jill: Okay. Which then makes sense as to why a game can last so long.

Yes. You’re batting and batting until you get out. You just keep going sometimes. Yes.

[00:18:38] Andrew Nixon: Okay. And as I say, you know, believe it or not, in the past, there have been games that I’ve played with no time limit. There are two games in the history of international cricket that went to 10 days, and in one of those cases, The game had to be abandoned because the England team had to leave to get a boat back home.

that is in the past. That’s before World War II. that doesn’t happen anymore. You very occasionally will get a six day game, but for the majority at the top level of international cricket, the longest form is five days.

[00:19:12] Alison: I’m trying not to make a joke about boats and airplanes, but… That’s fantastic. Okay, so in baseball, things that are really exciting would be say a home run and a strikeout. So what would be really exciting plays that we would see in cricket?

[00:19:28] Andrew Nixon: So obviously a six, as I said, which is when the batter hits the ball over the boundary rope.

on the fly. That’s a six. That’s a bit, that’s cricket’s equivalent of a home run. a strike out would be balled, , when the ball hits the wickets at the other end of the pitch.

[00:19:42] Alison: How big is this ball and how heavy is

[00:19:45] Andrew Nixon: it? Well, that’s a question. It’s about the same size as a baseball.

, it’s harder than a dance pole. It’s made with a harder leather. Um, and then the seam is, , around the equator of the ball, rather than sort of like a tennis ball [00:20:00] type of seam. Um, I think the weight of it is about five and a half ounces off the top of my head. I could be wrong. … So it’s not something I particularly look up.

All in all, if it does hit you, it does hurt. Um, so that’s why cricketers wear a lot of padding, certainly more than they do in baseball. So again, obviously in baseball, hit by pitch, the runner goes, the batter goes to first base. Cricket, that’s not the case. , hitting the batter is, unless you have been trying, purposely trying to injure the batter, hitting the batter is actually allowed in cricket.

What is the

[00:20:34] Jill: strategy behind that?

[00:20:36] Andrew Nixon: basically to, disturb the batter. To try and sort of get them off, off strike. , actually see what’s called short pitched balling, , where the ball bounces some distance away from the batter and goes up towards the head. That’s usually limited in how often you can do that.

If you, if, and the un by thinks you’re doing it too often, they’ll issue a warning and if you carry on to it, you’ll be prevented from balling anymore. So it’s, it’s not. Unlimited. It’s not, you know, it’s probably sounds like it’s a very violent sport. It isn’t. It isn’t violent at all. We’ve learned more about the damage that cricket balls can actually do to the body.

Ridiculous. Famously, , the, helmet was invented in the 1970s, to use the euphemistic term abdominal protector. For the area a bit lower down was invented 100 years before that, um, which probably gives a bit of, insight into, men’s priorities, I suppose.

[00:21:36] Jill: so we have a hard ball that we’re hitting with velocity, but the fielders… Don’t have any mitts or any gloves or anything, do they? So

[00:21:47] Andrew Nixon: one, one, one fielder does have gloves. That’s what they call the wicker keeper, so the equivalent of the catcher in baseball. He does have gloves. , mostly because he’s fielding, fielding the ball a lot.

It’s coming into him at [00:22:00] some pace, you know, 90 miles an hour, 80 miles an hour. So he needs gloves, otherwise his hands are going to be broken by the end of the game. , Other field don’t have gloves. And that’s probably the main sort of distinction between, , baseball and cricket. In terms of the fielding such things, the lack of a glove.

[00:22:19] Alison: So baseball fans just, we’re using baseball as a, as a, the easy analogy are rowdy and loud and can be very obnoxious. Is this true in this very gentlemanly? Cricket game

[00:22:32] Andrew Nixon: game. So the , I mean the cricket being a sort of gentlemanly the game is a bit of a myth. , there was probably, there probably is a period when it was very sort of gentlemanly, again, the history of cricket.

It was largely. I’m going to get into a very deep history of cricket. It was rich landowners would get their strongest players, the working class players, to play the game for them and bet huge sums of money on it. it was never really a sort of genteel pastime between, you know, people who live in the country.

, that’s the image that cricket likes to portray itself as. Like all things, it’s a bit of a myth, but the, the English spectators tend to be probably more reserved than a lot of spectators in other countries. That sounds like I’m making some generalizations, but even , within England, there are some spectators that will be more rowdy than others.

Certainly if you go to somewhere like India, Their spectators are incredibly passionate, loud, noisy, , really cheer on the team. And same in sort of Australia, New Zealand as well, , all over the sort of Indian subcontinent. And yeah, so the fans like any sport can vary from being very sort of, Gentile and polite, in T20 cricket, they tend to be a bit more rowdy.

[00:23:50] Jill: Are there cricket

[00:23:51] Andrew Nixon: hooligans? Oh, um, occasionally. Yeah, most of it, most of the early sort of cases of streaking in [00:24:00] sport happened in cricket, , believe it or not. , there are various famous instances from the 70s and on the onwards of people streaking at the cricket. It’s tended to be a bit more, , I think certainly in England, I think spectator safety became quite.

, important in all sports. We had a couple of crowd disasters in the 80s. , you may be familiar with them. , which sort of meant that spectators were a lot closely policed at sporting venues. , and you, you rarely get those incidents. Now, occasionally you’ll get a fan who’ll run onto the field. They are very swiftly dealt with, as they should be.

Because, we’ve seen incidents in other sports where People have rushed onto the field without your good intentions and, , you never know what’s going to happen these days. So yeah, it’s rare. It does happen like in any sport, but when it does happen, it’s usually swiftly dealt with and, and everybody moves on.

[00:24:55] Alison: Okay, good. So we who have never seen a cricket match do not need to worry about certain fan behavior. We can just sort of follow the crowd and we’ll be good.

[00:25:05] Andrew Nixon: Yes, and I think the best thing to do is to just To learn the game is to watch it, , and it becomes difficult because, , a lot of, , TV coverage of cricket in non traditional cricket played countries is on, minority, sort of, cable channels.

Willow TV is the one that’s in the US. Some cricket is now, in the US, it’s on, um, ESPN Plus, the, sort of, ESPN streaming service, so there’s some cricket on that. There are sort of free streams of cricket, various around the world, in various places around the world, which you can find as well. Not always the top level of stuff is available for free.

Anything in life. You can find it if you look for it. And the best way to learn is is to watch the game is a case I think in a lot of sports, if you watch it enough, you’ll pick it up. And as I do recommend T20 for newcomers, because it’s a short version of the game.

And it’s very sort of easy to [00:26:00] pick up. And it’s very easy to if you know baseball, you will be able to figure out what’s going on eventually. If you’re watching enough, , I came at it from the , other side of things. I sort of discovered baseball about 25 years ago. And I just, I figured it out by watching the game and it works in the other direction as well.

There are, American cricket journalists and American cricket writers, who have sort of come to the game from baseball and, but have managed to understand the game through their knowledge of baseball and it works. And so it works in both directions.

[00:26:31] Alison: The UK. India. Who else should we be looking for in Los Angeles?

[00:26:36] Andrew Nixon: Australia, I would imagine would, would be sort of a dead search to qualify. Pakistan, Sri Lanka. I think they talk about a five teams tournament. Uh, with you, obviously the U. S., well, I say obviously, it’s not always the case. I know that host nation doesn’t always get to play.

but I would hope the U. S. does. So I reckon those are probably the most likely five participants. one of the best sort of T20 teams in the world is, , the West Indies, which is a group of mostly English territories and countries. English speaking territories and countries in the Caribbean, so the former colonies, or in terms of these current colonies, , we will get into a colony.

Cricket is very intrinsically linked with colonialism, but we will get into that, I think, for this podcast. but obviously they would participate separately in the Olympics, so. You wouldn’t see that West Indies team in there. I think if the West Indies were at the top of the rankings or whatever they do for the qualification, I would expect they would have an internal qualified team, so you may see Jamaica or Barbados at the Olympics.

It’s impossible. That happened in the Commonwealth Games, , here last year. So the West Indies had a women’s cricket team that had met the qualifying criteria, but obviously they had to have a qualifying competition internally there. , so I guess, as I should probably say, [00:28:00] cricket, it was in the Commonwealth Games last year, it was in the Commonwealth Games back in 1998 at men’s tournament.

It’s been in the Asian games on and off since 2010. It’s been in the Pacific games on and off since going way back to 1979. And that was more of a longer 50 hour form. And obviously in the Olympics back in 1900, it was one multi day match, which lasted two days in that case. , so yeah, it’s, it’s been in these multi sport events before.

I think it’s in the, , African Games next year. I think it’s next year. so yeah, it’s been in these events, events before.

[00:28:38] Jill: So they would have to split up West Indies unless they made it. Exception.

[00:28:43] Andrew Nixon: Yes. And

[00:28:46] Jill: England would become part of Great Britain. Much. Yes. Yeah. So much like other team sports, but then in like World Cup soccer, England and Wales and.

They all split apart in Scotland.

[00:28:59] Andrew Nixon: So the England team actually represents England and Wales. There’s a sort of silence and Wales in the England team. Scotland play separately and Ireland play as an all Ireland team as well.

[00:29:11] Jill: You can’t get

[00:29:12] Alison: away from colonialism in these sports because of this. As you’re talking, it breaks up and you’re like, wait a second, that’s…

But I think that matters. In cricket in a way, because that’s where it, that’s where the growth came

[00:29:27] Andrew Nixon: from. Yeah, the common sort of thing is you get independence from England. You get good at cricket, then you beat England at cricket. that’s, that’s a sort of journey for a lot of countries.

Canada hasn’t quite done that yet. Um, so, um, you know, a lot of the, of those 12 full members, Only Afghanistan is, is the only one that’s never been part of , the Commonwealth or British Empire as it was.

In fact, going back, and this will tell you a lot about[00:30:00] cricket’s administration, when the ITC was formed, which is now the International Cricket Council, it was the Imperial Cricket Conference, very grandiose name. And at that point, actually, , your listeners may be interested to know the USA were actually one of the best teams in the world.

In cricket, , who they were probably after England and Australia were probably the best team in the world , but they weren’t allowed to join the imperial cricket conference because You’ve sort of left us, uh, a few hundred and fifty years earlier. A political war

[00:30:35] Alison: a few hundred years ago. Missouri still hasn’t

[00:30:37] Andrew Nixon: gotten over it.

Yeah, um, but yeah, and on that as well. So cricket, the founding fathers played cricket. , There is evidence of George Washington playing cricket at Valley Forge. , during the Revolutionary War or War of Independence, depending on which side of the Atlantic you’re on. So cricket, , and even in that, some of the founding fathers objected to the use of the term president for the head of state of the U.

1. because The head of a cricket club is a president and it was considered to be beneath the head of state to have the same job title as the head of a cricket club. So cricket has a quite a sort of key place in US history, which I think a lot of people aren’t aware of. So coming back to, , so Cricket and as I say, there was an attempt to include it in the , 19 0 4 games.

The US had, as I say, one of the best players in the world at that point. One of the best players ever to play the game was an American who set records that were not beaten for 50 years, 50, 60 years. Um, in some cases. the guy by the name of Bart King, who I recommend your listeners look up, he’s a very, um, not very well known player in, even in cricket circles, , and in American sports circles, almost unknown, , but he’s a, was one of the best players in the world.

Some early baseball [00:32:00] players played both sports. , George Wright and who, uh, led the first ever professional baseball team played cricket as well. He played major league baseball, , as did his brother, Harry Wright and both played for the U S national cricket team. And they’re both in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Their dad actually played in the first international cricket match, which was in New York. It was USA against Canada. I’m sorry to tell you that Canada did win that match. , That was in 1844. So cricket has this long history in the U. S. But when the ICC formed, , The cricket community kept the U. S. out, so South Africa joined the ICC instead of the U.

1. A. And cricket, and part of this was, cricket was mostly popular in sort of wealthy communities in Philadelphia and in New York. They weren’t particularly, as wealthy people tend not to be, weren’t particularly open into sharing , their sort of big country clubs with. You know, the, common folk, the, uh, working class.

, Bart King happened to be an exception because he was so good they couldn’t ignore him. he wasn’t a working class kid. They got him a job so that he could play cricket, you know, an amateur sport in those days. , so there’s this long history and then it’s because they weren’t trying to… , reach out and certainly in New York, they wouldn’t let West Indian immigrants, , play.

So obviously there’s a racial element to this as well, as often crops have been in the history of sport in the U. S. sadly. Um, so it didn’t sort of try and expand what was a small cricket community and it sort of withered and died as a result , Until the sort of 50s and 60s where you start to get a lot of immigration from the Caribbean and from South Asia.

and that’s sort of when cricket had a bit of a renaissance in the USA. So the ICC , changed the I from Imperial to International in 1965. [00:34:00] and that was the first point they, , allowed non Commonwealth countries to join. The first two non Commonwealth countries were the USA and the Netherlands.

Dutch cricket has a long history as well that I think a lot of people aren’t aware of. The Netherlands are probably one of the best sort of non Commonwealth countries in the game. Obviously Afghanistan are the best at the moment. Netherlands, probably second best. And so they joined in 1965. The USA have been, uh, at various times, expelled from the ICC or suspended.

, I mean, the politics around cricket administration in the U. S. Um, probably makes the sort of presidential election look positively sane. Um, so to give you an idea of what it is, there are various, I recommend that your listeners Google Ken Win Williams and Facebook. It’s Ken, K-E-N-W-Y-N, Williams, Facebook, and you’ll be entertained at what was previously a high ranking cricket administrator in the us , was doing on social media.

I won’t get to the details. I’ll, I’ll leave that as a nice sort of surprise for all listeners. it’s very entertaining of what was going on, so the. As I said, the ex, they suspended the USA Cricket Association at various times. I’m trying to remember this off the top head in 2005, then again in 2007.

Then again, I think in 2014 and they were finally expelled, I think 2016. I think I’m getting my dates right here. , and then a new cricket board was formed. . And the ITC let the USA back in. The ITC has long targeted the U. S. as a major place for Espanyol, because there are a lot of cricket fans in the U.

S., such a big country with a large sort of immigrant population from the Caribbean, from [00:36:00] India and Pakistan and places like that, who have sort of kept cricket alive in the U. S. So any cricket website, usually they’re sort of… The top sort of readership will be from India, and the USA is normally somewhere in the top five.

That’s certainly the case for the cricket website I write, so even though we very rarely would cover the USA, a lot of our readership is from the USA. And so there is a big market for cricket, and… And again, you could say this is sort of modern day colonialism, except it’s now, , money that people are after rather than resources.

, and yeah, and people in another sense. , so it’s eyeballs that cricket has been after in the US. There’s been a long, there’s been several attempts to launch a T20 professional league in the US. There was one attempt right in the very early days of T20 in 2004, which until this year was the only league to actually have a season.

, A friend of mine by the name of Peter Della Penna, who’s an American cricket journalist, has long said whenever you see news of a T20 league launch in the U. S., Do not believe it’s going to happen until the first game starts until the ball is actually running in to ball the first ball. Do not think it’s going to start.

, and then last year, eventually after a couple of delays because of COVID, Major League Cricket was launched in the US, uh, sorry, this year. Minor League Cricket was launched a couple of years before that. And that was reasonably successful. And that’s going to hopefully continue as long as the Cricket administration in the U.

1. doesn’t have another meltdown as it has had a tendency to do in, in recent years.

[00:37:46] Jill: It’s amazing that they got it in for LA 2028. And I get from the International Olympic Committee side, well, we would really like to see cricket to get the Indian money, but with USA being the bad [00:38:00] seed of cricket, I’m just amazed that they got it in for this.

[00:38:04] Andrew Nixon: Yeah. And a lot of that is to say, you know, the ICC, when they look at the U. S. cricket sees dollar signs, , and they see lots of cricket fans and if they can have, you know, the T20 World Cup is being co hosted by the Westerners in the U. S. A. next year. I think they are playing, somewhere on Long Island.

In the sort of New York metro area, in the Dallas area, and in, I think in Florida. I’ll have to double check that. There is a cricket facility in Los Angeles, in a place called Woodley Park. Interestingly, this may interest people, the cricket in Los Angeles was originally founded by…

British actors in the 1930s, so you would have games where it was, um, you would have Boris Karloff playing, , so you’ve got, you’re coming out to bat and behind the wicket is Frankenstein’s monster, so, he, and, um, there was a guy, Who’s name escapes me now, who actually captained England at cricket and later became a Hollywood actor, and he was sort of behind it, and I’m racking my brains and I can’t quite remember the name now, unfortunately, , but, um, yeah, , that was where sort of cricket in Los Angeles was founded, and then the Woodley Park facilities were opened, we just hosted a couple of low level international tournaments, I think for the Olympics, they’ll probably want to, You know, there’s no sort of facilities for spectators, for example, at the ground.

I think they want to

sort of for the media , and the like. So to be able to actually host that tournament. So there is, there is a facility in Los Angeles there. It would need, I think, a lot of work Karloff.

[00:39:43] Alison: Coming back for Los Angeles, which I’m going to be thinking about that for a long time. Why should we be watching cricket? What’s the, what’s your elevator pitch for cricket?

[00:39:58] Andrew Nixon: it’s a fun [00:40:00] sport. It’s, it’s, it’s entertaining. I think especially in the T20 format. You don’t get long pauses in play like you see in the longer forms of the game.

I wouldn’t say it’s all action all the time, but , it’s a lot of action a lot of the time. It’s, it’s quick, it’s fast, it’s , high scoring. , the common sort of thing where you’d say is the difference between baseball and cricket is In baseball outs happen a lot. Runs happen rarely in cricket, it’s the other way around.

S happen rarely Runs happen a lot. A normal score in AT 20 game might be, it’s a 50 to 200 runs each side. , there have been even higher scores than that. So 2 52 18 even. you wouldn’t see this in the Olympics. In the Olympics where you the best teams playing, but.

So your teams playing that are a very different skills. You will sometimes get scores of over 300. So that’s off, as I say, 120 balls, 120 pitches. If you want to use the baseball to, so they’re scoring a lot of runs. , the fielding is, tends to be more athletic in T20 cricket because you’re You, as I say, outs are at a premium, so you want to try and, you know, you’ll see diving catches, one handed catches, and you’ll see your players making, you know, really good throws.

You’ll see, especially when it gets to boundary fielding, you’ll see very sort of bizarre athletic moves where they will try and parry the ball over to another player to take the catch rather than it go off of the rope. So you get lots of very entertaining and very… quick, , play in T20 cricket in the Olympics, the U.

1. I hope will be playing. , cricket has a tendency to not do the obvious when it comes to promoting itself, which is unfortunate. , so I hope the U. S. will be playing. And it’ll be a chance for the wider public in the U. S. to see cricket and see cricket at a very high level.

[00:41:56] Jill: What about the women’s side?

How well developed [00:42:00] is women’s cricket?

[00:42:01] Andrew Nixon: So in the top level countries, cricket is very well developed for the women’s side. Especially in the UK, in Australia, in India and New Zealand, probably the strongest teams in international women’s cricket. Less so in the in some of the other Asian countries for largely for cultural reasons.

So Pakistan women’s cricket isn’t as well developed women’s cricket in Afghanistan for reasons that I think your audience will be really right is at the moment non existent. There was an Afghanistan women’s cricket team. that were trading before the Taliban takeover. They have now fled the country and there is a, there is some controversy at the moment over the, , Afghani, one of the requirements to be a full member of the ICC is to have an active witness team.

And Afghanistan don’t have that active women’s team. So there’s a lot of controversy around that at the moment. I just, I think I read recently that the IOC are looking at actually banning Afghanistan from the Olympics because of that sort of lack of women’s support. So Afghanistan probably would be in the running to qualify for the men’s tournament, but obviously may not be able to because of that ban.

Um, which is unfortunate in a sense, because there’s some very exciting players in Afghanistan. It’s not their fault, I suppose, that, that the Taliban have taken over, and a lot of them are very, sort of, anti the Taliban, um, but aren’t necessarily vocally opposing it for obvious reasons, because, you know, for safety reasons.

so women’s cricket, so New Zealand, India, England. Australia, probably the strongest teams. You probably, you may see Sri Lanka as well. Another team from the Indian continent. Go back. The USA women’s team is not as strong as the men’s team, , to put it as politely as possible. , they have added a couple of.

, players come in from other cricket playing countries recently who have U. S. parents or who were born in the U. S. There’s a female [00:44:00] player I’ll be about who plays domestically in England called Tara Norris, who was born in Philadelphia. So she’s played for the U. S. national team. So they’ve had some good players, but women’s cricket, I think, is With all the sort of administrative problems that U.

1. cricket has faced, that, and I think it’s sadly, it is the case in a lot of sports where the administration sort of falls off, women’s cricket tends to be the, uh, the one that sort of falls off the most. , because most cricket administrators are men, of course, as is sadly often the case.

, but yeah, women’s cricket is a growth area. And in terms of a sort of non traditional playing coaches as well. It’s very different in the women’s game than it is in the men’s game. For example, some of the best teams in women’s cricket outside of the big cricket playing countries are teams like Thailand.

Brazil, Germany, who are almost nowhere in men’s cricket, were well short of qualifying for the World Cups. Thailand are qualified for a Women’s World Cup. And so, push on the sort of door of qualifying for those as well. , so I think a lot of countries have targeted women’s cricket as an obvious sort of way of actually getting to the top of the game.

It’s a lot probably easier. There are less really good women’s teams than there are men’s teams. So it’s a lot easier for them to get to the top. Certainly that’s the case in, as I say, Thailand and Brazil. So Brazil actually have a professional women’s team. The men’s team are completely amateur, which is very different than what you often see in sport.

[00:45:32] Jill: Interesting, Alison, opportunity. Are you saying I need to play cricket? Well, I mean, there’s an opportunity there. We

can learn the game and learn how to play at the same time. Okay, because before

[00:45:47] Alison: we sat down, all I know about cricket is that the cricket bat gets used as a murder weapon in a lot of British TV.[00:46:00]

[00:46:04] Andrew Nixon: That is what I mean, it’s a hefty piece of lumber. It doesn’t break as easy as a baseball bat. I would much rather have a cricket bat under my bed than a baseball bat. As a weapon. You can very easily knock someone out with a cricket bat. That very rarely happens. There was an incident in Canada about 15 years ago where Pakistan were playing, , I think India actually, just outside of Toronto, and one of the crowd hurled some insults at Pakistan.

One of the Pakistani players who wasn’t exactly known for his athletic build, shall we say, and the Pakistani player actually went into the stands with a cricket bat to try and swing at him and was arrested by the Toronto police. Um, so, I know I said earlier there isn’t cricket hoodlingism. You’re probably more likely to see it from the players than you are from the fans.

That is mercifully rare. That’s just one sort of incident from the annals of cricket history.

Andrew… If you do want to play the game, there are some, you know, I suppose there’s transferable skills in sports that are popular in America. Obviously, baseball and softball, there is an obvious sort of… Similarity there. But there’s transferable skills from sort of tennis and from hockey, both ice hockey and field hockey.

But one, a recent U. S. international, , cricket player actually transferred from field hockey. She played at a high level of field hockey in college in the U. S. and transferred to cricket late in life and got picked for the national team. She started playing cricket in her mid thirties. I’ve got picked for the national team, so it’s not, it’s not out of the question that you can start playing cricket late in life in a sort of developing cricket nation and make the national team.

So it’s not out of the question. Obviously, at the time of the year we’re at now. There’s not much cricket going on even, even in [00:48:00] America, I think some of the sort of southern states do have some cricket being played at this time of year. I know there’s a cricket league in, I think, either Arizona or New Mexico that plays at this time of year.

, because it’s obviously it’s so hot in the summer there, um, they would play in sort of October to March season. So there will be some cricket going on in America, but obviously it really picks up pace in sort of May, June, , like in any sort of northern hemisphere country.

[00:48:24] Jill: Excellent. . Andrew, thank you so much. You’ve given us a ton of stuff to think about. I’m starting to look forward to this. I’m excited.

[00:48:33] Alison: Andrew buried the lead on the hooligan story.

Laughter

[00:48:38] Jill:

Thank you so much, Andrew. You can follow Andrew on Twitter or X. He is at AndrewNixon79. On Blue Sky, he is at AndrewNixon. bsky. social. And Cricket Europe’s website is cricketeurope. com. We’ll have links to all of those in the show notes. And a special thank you to listener Hilary for connecting us with Andrew.

We have a Kickstarter going, speaking of getting

[00:49:06] Alison: to the next

[00:49:06] Jill: Olympics. That’s right.

[00:49:08] Alison: So we launched the Kickstarter campaign on October 27th. It’s gonna run through December 9th. We’ve got some amazing incentives, , including our fantastic new Paris Pin and the Paris Viewing Guide.

And you can be in an exclusive WhatsApp group with us while we are in Paris.

[00:49:31] Jill: That’s exciting. Did you know about that? I did know. I’m very excited about it, to be chatting with everybody. So

[00:49:38] Alison: you can find the Kickstarter campaign through our website. It’s right on the Facebook. if you go to our website, flamealivepod. com, there’s some Kickstarter icons right there and that’ll take you to the project and you can give us a shout out for that.

[00:49:53] Jill: That’s right. we’ve launched okay, but we do need support in order to make this trip [00:50:00] possible and to keep the show going.

So, please help keep our flame alive.

Seoul 1988 History Moment

[00:50:04] Jill: That sound means it is time for our history moment. All year long we’ve been looking at the Seoul 1988 games as it is the 35th anniversary of that event. My turn for a story. And I wanted to talk about Greco Roman wrestling. Specifically the super heavyweight category, which for the first time at Seoul, and we love first times.

We do. This super heavyweight category had a weight limit. So prior to this, it did not have an upper weight limit. So you had wrestlers weighing upwards of 182 kilograms or 400 pounds. Oh, geez. Now, the maximum is 130 kilograms or 286 pounds. Also, no big. That’s not a, not a small size to move around either.

[00:50:55] Alison: Though, I would be concerned about the people who are trying to make weight and they had to lose a hundred pounds.

[00:51:03] Jill: Well, the final of this event was a battle of Iron Curtain Strongmen. In one corner you had Bulgarian Rangel Gerovski , the reigning bronze medalist from the 1987 World Champs. Gerovski won his final.

First three bouts by passivity, he beat Egyptian Hassan El Haddad by 5 0 decision, and then he beat Japan’s Kazuya Deguchi 14 0 to make it to the gold round match. Does

[00:51:29] Alison: passivity mean they took one look at him and just laid down and said, No, I am not. I am not wrestling

[00:51:36] Jill: that man. , not today. Um, the other side of the bracket featured a young upstart, 21 year old who had joined the Soviet National team just the year before, but had been a two time world junior champ.

His promise was so great that he was the Soviet Union’s flag bearer for Soul 1988. [00:52:00] His name, Aleksandr Karelin. Oh, we’ve heard that name before. That’s right, this is Karelin’s first Olympics. He is out to prove himself. In his first two rounds, Karelin won on passivity calls.

In round three, he took down Austrian Alexander Neumuller in a fall. In round four, he trounced. American Dwayne Kozlowski, 15 0, racking up the maximum number of points allowed and within two and a half minutes. In the finals, Dwarowski quickly got three points by throwing Karelin.

Shock. But then, uh, There was a penalty, so Gerovski had to go into the parterre position where he gets down on the ground and Karelin has to try to lift him up and throw him over. And that’s Karelin’s signature move, as we would come to find out over the decades. Karelin, even at this age, looks like he’s chiseled out of marble.

If you look at it, and, and Gerovski looks like a big guy, big super heavyweight type of guy. Karelin is a chiseled statue at this point. Uh, he could lift another super heavyweight man and throw them down to the ground. This time, he did not quite get Gerovski down, but he got a couple points, so they’re now 3 2.

And that’s what the score is going into the final round. In that round, Karelin gets penalized. He has to go into parterre, but Gerovski can’t lift him up at all. Because he is a marble statue. Pretty much. Uh, Karelin wins an additional point on a warning. Which forced Drowsky back into parterre, and that’s when Curlin does it.

He flips him over, makes it a 5 3 game, and then runs out the clock to win the gold medal. One of the videos I watched, uh, which I will link to it in the show notes. It’s a British commentator who says after the match, This could be a man with a very, very bright future.

[00:53:53] Alison: What an understatement. My

[00:53:55] Jill: goodness. So Aleksandr Karelin would go on to dominate the sport [00:54:00] for over a decade. He won golds at 1992 and 1996 before a massive upset in the finals at Sydney 2000 by American Rulon Gardner. Gardner handed Carellon his first loss in 13 years. Uh, Karelin’s three golds and one silver would be the biggest medal haul by an Olympian in wrestling until Tokyo 2020 when Mijan Lopez of Cuba won his fourth gold medal.

So, um, Karelin has gone on to have beyond sport. He went on to have a career in, uh, the government in Russia, uh, Drovsky. Uh, also competed at Barcelona, but he only made it to the second round, and sadly he died in 2004 on a fishing trip when his fishing line hit an overhead power line and electrocuted him.

I was about to say

[00:55:02] Alison: shocking and then I realized how bad that would be.

TKFLASTAN Update

[00:55:05] Alison: Welcome to Shookfluston.

[00:55:14] Jill: And now is the time of the show where we check in with our team, Keep the Flame Alive. These are past guests and listeners who make up our citizenship of Shookfluston, our very own country. , some Pan Am Games results, , Tim Sherry won silver in the men’s three position, 50 meter air rifle.

[00:55:31] Alison: Evan Dunphy.

Evan Dunphy’s hamstring injury from earlier this year took a toll on his fitness and he finished ninth in the 20 kilometer walk at the Pan Am Games.

[00:55:45] Jill: And also Shafastani Rob Snook has been commentating at Pan Am Games.

[00:55:50] Alison: And also if you check out his Instagram. A little

[00:55:53] Jill: DJing . Nice, nice, nice. Uh, team Schuster has qual qualified for the playoffs [00:56:00] at the Sioux Curlers Fall Classic, but did not make it past the quarterfinals.

[00:56:04] Alison: Andrew Marnianiss’ xt book will be on the first Special Olympics, which was held in Chicago 1968. If you have a connection to that event or know any of the organizers, participants, or their families. or have expertise on how people with disabilities were treated in the 1960s. Andrew would be very grateful for some input and advice.

[00:56:27] Jill: His

[00:56:27] Alison: Twitter handle is TrueBlue24, that T R U. B L U 24.

[00:56:34] Jill: And Parachuter Mechanic Gears husband was in a work accident and , sustained a back injury. Although workers compensation is involved, he will be off of work for 10 to 14 weeks to heal.

And… Workers compensation in the U. S., it varies state by state for what you get. So we don’t know if his full compensation, his full salary will be compensated while he heals. so a GoFundMe has been started for them and we’ll have a link to that in the show notes.

Paris 2024 Update

[00:57:04] Alison: Je regarde le cinéma.

[00:57:15] Jill: Duolingo is going well for you. I got a whole sentence there. Other things you can regard, uh, that would be the opening ceremonies. We have a little bit of news from French TV channel, RMC Sport. They report that there’s going to be 300, 000 free seats for the opening ceremonies and these will be on upper platforms along the Seine.

This is in addition to the 100, 000 ticketed places that are going to be. On the lower part of the Seine, the article said something like close to touching the water, but , the lower ticketed places will have a better viewing position, it sounds like. This is important if you want to see the opening [00:58:00] ceremonies for free.

You will need a ticket. So this ticketing plan is supposed to launch at the beginning of 2024, and it’s going to be run by France’s ministry of the interior. So we’re going to do a little bit of research to figure out what needs to happen for, , people who want these tickets, what the process is. , the ceremony is also going to remain what they call adaptable, meaning that if there’s going to be a strong security threat, The numbers of free tickets could be reduced and that sounds like it could go all the way up to.

Right before the ceremonies, they could decide how many people get in and how many people don’t get in, , based on the threats around. , there will, yeah,

[00:58:44] Alison: go ahead. And if people waiting to get in are being stupid.

[00:58:48] Jill: Could be, could be. But I also think that if, if they start this, I mean the ticketing process will probably be sold out pretty quickly.

Oh, I would expect. So, you’ll have to claim your ticket pretty soon and hopefully not just show up and think you can get in. , that I think will be an issue as well. , and , there’s also going to be 80 giant screens along this 12 kilometer route so that you’ll be able to watch things that aren’t happening right in front of you. Zolegad!

There’s some protests going on in Tahiti over a tower that the organizing committee wants to build in the surf. , generally when there’s a surfing competitions, there is a, a viewing platform for lack of a better word, but it’s covered. So it’s like a viewing cabana. In the water, but it’s on a platform.

So the one in Tahiti is wood and they take it apart , and dismantle it. It sounds like when there is no surfing competition, the, , organizing committee wants to build one that is bigger. They say it needs to be bigger. It needs to be air conditioned and it’s going to be [01:00:00] metal or aluminum. It’s, but it’s going to be, , not wood.

Basically. It

[01:00:05] Alison: does not need to be air conditioned.

[01:00:09] Jill: I cannot imagine. You went to

[01:00:13] Alison: Tahiti. You do not need your tower air conditioned. Come on.

[01:00:18] Jill: Let me make sure I have this right. Yes. And it’s going to have toilets. Well, that. Right. Uh, well, I mean, you could run down in shifts, go back to whatever thing is on land to get a toilet.

, it’s supposed to have space for 40 people and, , the tower is supposed to meet some safety standards. The residents… say the new construction is going to cause damage to the coral reef and impact the marine ecosystem and potentially impact this perfect wave that the organizing committee is trying to chase.

There’s a ton of articles about this. One of the ones that we read is from the Guardian, , but there’s also, , words from The Tahitian president who said who wasn’t in charge when this was started, but it’s like, I really don’t think this is a great idea now. . And there’s a lot of saying that there, it’s kind of hypocritical to say you’re going to have this environmental friendly games and then build this giant tower here.

, the Tahitian president also said, I really wish we weren’t putting it at this beach to get this wave. We could have put it in other areas that maybe didn’t have this coral reef and have perfectly nice waves, but, , this is. Causing a little bit of concern now,

[01:01:44] Alison: or maybe we could have, I don’t know, had it in France.

[01:01:47] Jill: Totally different story.

But we want the wave. We want the wave. I’ll give you a wave. Yeah. Also other issues about housing. So several [01:02:00] news Présien say there are plans to rehouse more than 2, 000 students During July and August 2024, and use their dorm rooms for firefighters, law enforcement, security, and other types of, , people for the games.

, the students would be rehoused for two months, given a hundred euros and two Olympic tickets for their troubles. , this of course is now tied up in the court system, so we’re gonna see what happens. If the rehousing

[01:02:28] Alison: is so good, why don’t we just rehouse the people that they’re rehousing? Like why don’t we just put the firefighters, the law enforcement, and the security in the rehousing instead of making the students move?

[01:02:42] Jill: One would think. I guess they want the location.

it’s another one of those sticky situations, I will say. And you didn’t

[01:02:50] Alison: think this through. Once again, you didn’t think it through. L. A., take note. Think it through.

[01:02:58] Jill: I think they’ve already got a lock on those dorms, though, for the summer. Well, yeah,

[01:03:02] Alison: I mean, right off the bat, you know, July, yeah, but there are still students, I mean, like this, there are still students who are there in the summers.

There are a lot of summer students. Yeah. But if you know ahead of time, like now for 28, you can’t have a dorm for this summer, you plan

[01:03:19] Jill: around it. Right. And I, I would hope, I don’t want to assume, but I hope and I’m pretty sure that’s what LA 2028 has done. , Also in the hopes and assumes, did you see the director of the opening ceremonies talking about, oh, it’d be nice to have Daft Punk reunite for the opening ceremonies?

Yes, and Daft Punk said,

[01:03:39] Alison: No,

[01:03:40] Jill: thank you. Like, again, the, let me just come up with an idea and it will happen, or, , let me get embarrassed in the press. You might

[01:03:52] Alison: have wanted to, I don’t know, knock on their helmets and ask them first.

[01:03:59] Jill: Just a [01:04:00] thought. let’s end on a better note, Aviation A2Z reports that Qantas is adding a non stop flight from Perth to Paris.

It is similar to the flight they added, , to London in 2020, in 2012. This flight will start July 12th, 2024. It’s a 17 hour non stop that will be available four days a week and reduces the time to Paris by three hours.

[01:04:26] Alison: Though a 17 hour flight is no joke.

[01:04:28] Jill: No, it’s a long, it’s a long flight. That’s a long

[01:04:31] Alison: haul, but better than having to transfer and wait and sit, because that’s when things go wrong.

The non stop flight, there’s fewer things to go wrong.

[01:04:38] Jill: Exactly. So, you folks in Western Australia? You get a good option. And that is going to do it for this week. Let us know what you think of Cricut.

[01:04:49] Alison: You can connect with us on X and Instagram at flamealivepod. Email us at flamealivepod at gmail. com. Call or text us at 208 3 5 2 6 3 4 8 that’s 2 0 8 flame it. Be sure to join the keep the flame alive podcast group on Facebook and don’t forget to get our weekly newsletter filled with other fun stories about this week’s episode.

You can look for that and our Kickstarter campaign at flamealivepod. com.

[01:05:21] Jill: Next week, we are going to look at what life is like for an elite athlete who has no country funding. We’ll be talking with Irish skeleton racer, yes, you’ve heard that, skeleton racer, from Ireland, Brendan Doyle. We had a fascinating conversation with him that you won’t want to miss. So, thank you so much for listening, and until next time, keep the flame alive.