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Yesterday, I spent the day at the cricket. I spent the day watching the Australian cricket team play the Sri Lankan cricket team at the ‘Gabba. Much to the delight of the majority of the crowd, including myself, the Australian team won the match, and also the triangluar one-day match series (South Africa was also involved, but were eliminated earlier in the series).

Adam Gilchrist had a magnificent innings with the bat, and I thought Ricky Ponting and Andrew Symonds were just unbelieveable in the field.

For the Sri Lankans, I think Russell had a good bat, and I hope the Sri Lankan selectors persevere with Fernando - he has pace, and just needs some more experience to really ruffle some feathers at this level.

It was good fun for the most part. Some elements of the crowd disrupted play for about five minutes by throwing litter onto the field, although I think the stadium management have to take some responsibility for that also. They have recently banned the popular “Mexican Wave”, and have evicted those starting it from the ground. When the “Wave” got a bit of momenteum late in the game, the few hooligans in the crowd seized the opportunity to make as much mess as they could. Frankly, by that point the game was a bit boring (Simon Katich scored a century, but it was one of the most boring innings I’ve ever seen), and the crowd was restless and wanting to make some of it’s own fun.

Making your own fun has always been part of a day at the cricket, and I think it is foolish to ban the “Mexican Wave” - it just creates more tension.

I’ve been watching a really interesting documentary series called Race: The Power Of An Illusion on the ABC recently. As the issue of race relations is something I’ve written about here and here already (funnily enough, it wasn’t a subject I was planning to write about when launching this site), I thought I’d share this gem of a documentary with you.

The first episode dealt with the genetic differences of all different races. The result surprised even myself. There aren’t any differences! Genetically speaking, I’m just as likely to have as much in common with an Inuit, a Nigerian or Scot than I am with anyone else. Wow! I was always under the impression that science told us otherwise.

The second episode was also very interesting, dealing with the political forces that aimed (and still aim) to focus on apparent racial differences. Many of these differences didn’t exist then, but they were promoted to further particular political causes.

The third episode airs this coming Monday night - I recommend you watch it. You might just start wondering if Race is merely a myth.

Interestingly, this documentary series follows in the same timeslot as the Guns, Germs and Steel documentary series, which sought to find the answer to why some civilizations prospered and conquered, while others struggled and were conquered. If you ever get the chance to watch this, it is also very interesting.

[Update] In a related topic, I just found this post by Jon Husband that discusses how differences in socio-economic classes are being perpetuated at the moment.