Euro 2012 began tonight, and if the Old World preening gets any worse these guys are going to dislocate shoulders from clapping themselves on the back. The quadrennial Euro soccer tournament involves 16 national teams from Uefa, and right about here in the discussion all Euro fans are obliged to inform the rest of the […]

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Wide tracts of Paris are less than green. A large park is never far off … but often it isn’t nearby, either. I’m thinking of the Marais, and much of the rest of the right bank of the city. Lots of stone and cement. It’s not as if Paris is Hong Kong, where you can […]

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I am editing sports copy tonight. I have been at The National in Abu Dhabi long enough to recognize that our newspaper is most interested in the British sports suite — which includes cricket, rugby, snooker and (I kid you not) darts. But I have been through several particularly “inside snooker” sorts of stories tonight, […]

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I now have an idea of how ridiculous I must have sounded. A couple of years ago, early in my time in the UAE and at The National, I asked a co-worker of Indian origin whether Major League Baseball ought to make a push to penetrate the India market. India is nuts about cricket, and […]

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The things you learn on Twitter. Well, from links posted on Twitter. With 140 characters, you can’t divulge much information on the site. In this case, it was a link to a site ranking sports teams globally by the number of their Facebook followers. And guess who was No. 4. (Did the headline tip that, […]

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I have mentioned how big cricket is here. Huge. Not just big. Monstrous. A big match will stop traffic. If I see 50 guys from the subcontinent massed outside an electronics store, jostling as they try to peer in the window, the odds are about 100-to-1 they are trying to see a cricket match. (World […]

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Many of us in North America, in particular, have no expertise in various major sports competitions in other parts of the world. But we have a vague idea of them. The Copa Libertadores is big in South America. The UEFA Champions League is huge in Europe. So is the Euro Cup. The specifics may be […]

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Just did something I hadn’t had the courage to try since May. Maybe even April. I took a half-hour walk. Outside. In Abu Dhabi. On purpose. What passes for fall is arriving … or I’m about to jinx us all and we will be back into 110-plus days by Monday.

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While researching the concept of “great sports venues” in Asia, it was deeply impressed upon me how enormous was the scope of the topic. Daunting, even. How to know about that grand old place in what is now Kazakhstan? Or the charming race track in Mongolia? Or whatever it is that Nepal, Uzbekistan, Georgia or […]

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To celebrate the addition of “cricket” to my categories, I have decided to give you some cricket “game story play-by-play” from this morning’s editions of The National. Remember, hundreds of millions of people understand this. Completely. And for those of you who don’t get it … go ahead and read. If just for the comedy […]

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