Literacy

One way that many find helpful is creating mnemonics. A mnemonic works by associating whatever you're trying to learn with something that's already easy to remember. For example, the sentence "Every good bird does fly" is a mnemonic for the lines on the treble clef: EGBDF. On their own, they're relatively meaningless letters, but when they're associated with a meaningful sentence, they're much easier to remember. Another mnemonic is the word "Fast"--it describes things to check for in the case of a stroke (Facial droop, Arm drift, Slurred speech, Time).

Another thing that helps is to repeat what you're trying to memorize over and over, or write it over and over a line at a time until it's memorized. It can be particularly useful to do these things before bed, as "sleeping on it" can actually help you to remember.

Another method some people use is creating a visual image in their head of the item they're trying to remember. For instance, if you were trying to remember a grocery list, you would number the items on your list. Then, for each number, you would think of something you could easily remember visually; for instance, the number 1 looks like a candle stick, so a candle would be a good visual image for the number 1. Then, you'd create a picture in your head involving the number and whatever item is first on your list--the stranger, the better, because unusual things are easier to remember. Let's say the first item was milk. You could picture a farmer trying to milk a cow by candlelight and tripping, spilling the milk. Or you could imagine using milk to put out a candle because the faucets are suddenly running milk. Whatever comes to mind that you'll be able to remember later.

The best way to memorize a list of facts - vocabulary words, math facts, dates, or anything at all! - is to make a set of flash cards. Write each term onto a card, and write the definition or answer on the back of that card. Keep these cards with you at all times! Any time you have a few minutes of free time, take out your cards and study. Read the first card - if you know the answer, then put that card at the back of the stack and turn it upside down; if you don't know the answer, read the answer a couple of times and then stick that card back into the middle of the stack so that you will have to try it again later. When you get all the cards turned upside down, you have learned that material!

The 1970s were the decade in which cricket was transformed: it was a time when a traditional game evolved to fit a changing world. If 1970 was notable for the exclusion of South Africa from international cricket, 1971 was a landmark year because the first one-day international was played between England and Australia in Melbourne. The enormous popularity of this shortened version of the game led to the first World Cup being successfully staged in 1975. Then in 1977, even as cricket celebrated 100 years of Test matches, the game was changed forever, not by a player or cricket administrator, but by a businessman.

Kerry Packer, an Australian television tycoon who saw the moneymaking potential of cricket as a televised sport, signed up fifty-one of the world's leading cricketers against the wishes of the national cricket boards and for about two years staged unofficial Tests and One-Day internationals under the name of World Series Cricket. While Packer's 'circus' as it was then described folded up after two years, the innovations he introduced during this time to make cricket more attractive to television audiences endured and changed the nature of the game.

Coloured dress, protective helmets, field restrictions, cricket under lights, became a standard part of the post-Packer game. Crucially, Packer drove home the lesson that cricket was a marketable game, which could generate huge revenues. Cricket boards became rich by selling television rights to television companies. Television channels made money by selling television spots to companies who were happy to pay large sums of money to air commercials for their products to cricket's captive television audience. Continuous television coverage made cricketers celebrities who, besides being paid better by their cricket boards, now made even larger sul!1s of money by making commercials for a wide range of products, from tires to colas, on television.

Television coverage changed cricket. It expanded the audience for the game by beaming cricket into small towns and villages. It also broadened cricket's social base. Children who had never previously had the chance to watch international cricket because they lived outside the big cities, where top-level cricket was played, could now watch and learn by imitating their heroes.

The technology of satellite television and the world wide reach of multi-national television companies created a global market for cricket.

Matches in Sydney could now be watched live in Surat. This simple fact shifted the balance of power in cricket: a process that had been begun by the break-up of the British Empire was taken to its logical conclusion by globalization. Since India had the largest viewer ship for the game amongst the cricket-playing nations and the largest market in the cricketing world, the game's centre of gravity shifted to South Asia. This shift was symbolized by the shifting of the ICC headquarters from London to tax-free Dubai.

A more important sign that the centre of gravity in cricket has shifted away from the old, Anglo-Australian axis is that innovations in cricket technique in recent years have mainly come from the practice of sub-continental teams in countries like India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Pakistan has pioneered two great advances in bowling: the doosra and the 'reverse swing'. Both skills were developed in response to sub-continental conditions: the doosra to counter aggressive batsmen with heavy modern bats who were threatening to make finger-spin obsolete and 'reverse swing' to move the ball in on dusty, unresponsive wickets under clear skies. Initially, both innovations were greeted with great suspicion by countries like Britain and Australia which saw them as an underhanded, illegal bending of the laws of cricket. In time, it came to be accepted that the laws of cricket could not continue to be framed for British or Australian conditions of play, and they became part of the technique of all bowlers, everywhere in the world.

One hundred and fifty years ago the first Indian cricketers, the Parsis, had to struggle to find an open space to play in. Today, the global marketplace has made Indian players the best-paid, most famous cricketers in the game, men for whom the world is a stage. The history that brought about this transformation was made up of many smaller changes: the replacement of the gentlemanly amateur by the paid professional, the triumph of the one-day game as it overshadowed Test cricket in terms of popularity, and the remarkable changes in global commerce and technology. The business of history is to make sense of change over time. In this chapter we have followed the spread of a colonial sport through its history, and tried to understand how it adapted to a post-colonial world.