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keynotespeaker

Listed below are comments made by keynotespeaker between Friday, 2nd January 2009 and Saturday, 22nd August 2009.

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A glimpse of life after Freddie 08:52am on 22 Aug 2009 Congratulations Stuart Broad on a great spell of bowling! Finally the Broad fan brigade have their day in the sun ;)

Just to show how 'out of character' Broad's performance has been though: in his last 2 innings he's taken 11 wickets. Normally he would need 7 innings to take 11 wickets (he only had 52 wickets after 34 innings!).

Just as we've seen bowlers such as Flintoff having a similarly mediocre start to their career, but then being able to turn it around consistently, we've seen bowlers like Harmison being able to live for years afterwards on a reputation gained from just a few great performances.

So I take a slightly longer-term view and say that I'm still on the fence: I'm certainly not joining the I-always-knew-he'd-be-good-ers, but calls earlier this series (including mine) for his drop are no longer justified. He has secured his place for the coming couple of series and I hope for Broad and for England that he will use those series to show that the last two innings marked a genuine turnaround and not a flash in the pan.
Second Ashes Test - player ratings 2:29pm on 20 Jul 2009 J'n'S: I very much diagree with the Strauss vs. Flintoff. It was a great spell from Flintoff, and to finally end up on the Lords honours board for his bowling with only his third 5-wicket haul ever is a nice fairy-tale ending to his Test career, but let's keep things in perspective: his 2 top-order wickets were contentious at best because of the umpires and 2 others were tailenders (good deliveries, but still: tailend wickets). The scorecard doesn't make those distinctions, granted, but for MotM one can and should take that into account.

So I'm not drinking the St. Freddie Kool Aid, Strauss was the real reason England won and should've been Man-of-the-Match. His 161 was by far the most impactful for the match outcome put Australia on the back foot straight from day one and ensured that England could bat with confidence instead of pressure in the 2nd innings.
Boat Race returning to the BBC 4:37pm on 29 Mar 2009 I'm very happy that the Boat Race is back with the BBC as it will also give rowing fans outside the UK such as myself an opportunity to watch it (BBC is broadcasted in many more countries than ITV).

About the people complaining about the use of public money: this is *precisely* what the function of a public broadcaster like the BBC is: giving exposure to sports that would otherwise not get any because they do not cater to the lowest-common-denominator that commercial broadcasters focus on.
The downer Down Under 09:33am on 02 Jan 2009 notachucker (89): Australias win over Holland in football came in a friendly. You'll have to forgive me if I don't read too much into those...

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