nch her fist as she crossed the line with silver medallist Murielle

Sweden isnt known for its cricketers. Or even its baseball players. Its a proud Scandinavian nation that gave the world Vikings, Abba, Volvo cars, and flat pack furniture. Not willow bats and leather balls. So the mystery deepens as to how a Swedish holidaymaker walked into a game of beach cricket in Sri Lanka, and started launching the local bowlers into the hotel pool.Earlier this month I was - working, I shall quickly add, not sipping cocktails by that pool watching sixes splash into the deep end - in Negombo, a fishing town turned tourist hub just north of Colombo. Between interviewing crab fishermen for my writing assignment, I wandered across the sand to an ad hoc game of beach cricket. Joining the throng of keen Sri Lankans, players drawn from kids barely in high school to men who could be their granddads, there was a single foreigner - apart from me, of course. As I was there working, I decided to take some photos. Rather than walk in when the bowler started his run-up, I squatted in the covers and set my focus. The rough sand track was quickly deteriorating, and length balls either grubbed, leapt or stopped dead in the craters.One of the locals, a lean young man who held the bat right at the top of the handle, fiercely clipped every other ball high over the boundary. The balls he missed darted past his leg stump, had him plumb lbw - if there were umpires - or scuttled across the beach like those famous Negombo crabs. Still, he hit high and hard, and entertained until a leading edge dropped into the tourists crocodile-snapping hands at midwicket.Now, we cricketers are adept at judging, or thinking we can judge, ability by the slightest movement of our fellow players. If the tourist had turned his palms up to the sky and watched the ball into his hands, Id have been certain he was an Aussie. He certainly wasnt English, not with that caramel tan, and the shadow of a six-pack faithfully seeing his body out of a middle age where hed obviously taken care of his physique.Whoever he was, I guessed the locals thought him extraneous to their game until he took a catch. Just another idle foreigner curious about this sport of stick ball. Now he was part of the action he was asked if he wanted a bat. Sure, he shrugged his shoulders. Why not?As he walked to the crease, I asked him where he was from.Sweden.Have you played cricket before?Never. The lean kid handed over the bat. The Swede looked at it, the bowed blade. He inspected the front, and then the back, and tested a grip. He held it like a man preparing to chop down a tree. A pine tree in a snowy forest. Then he faced the bowler. The locals smiled and readied for action, yet the energy of their knockabout had definitely been killed by humouring the foreigner, the smiling novice standing at the crease in his blue trunks and tanned chest, gently wafting the bat up and down.To add some context to what happened next, Chris Gayle made history when he hit the first ball of a Test match for six. On his debut for the Authors CC, Iain OBrien hit his first two balls out of the HAC ground in London, after a bottle of wine at lunch.The Swede swiped his first ball - in any form of cricket - high over cow corner.Is that good? he asked.Very good, said the chuckling keeper. A maximum.The Swede smiled. He had very white teeth. I get another ball?Yes, yes. The keeper laughed. He shouted something in Sinhalese at the bowler, probably a bit of gentle abuse.True, the first delivery had been a slow lob, some sympathy for the man holding the bat like a child. So the next ball was a yard quicker, and it pitched on a length around off stump. And the Swede scythed straight and hard, a sort of golf drive, except this target wasnt sitting on a plastic tee, it was skewering off a sandy wicket and it didnt matter because hed absolutely middled it into the palm trees behind mid-on.This is fun, said the Swede. He was already setting his stance, despite the fact the ball was still being retrieved from a litter of coconut husks.The bowler, embarrassed by the sixes, hurled down the next delivery faster still. And the Swede did the same to that ball, and the two after. Now the Sri Lankans chattered. Some joked. Some looked annoyed. Then the lean kid, whod cleared the boundary half as many times as the Swede, came on to bowl. He was sharp, slingy, firing in a yorker first ball.The Swede picked him off his toes and put him over square leg. The lean kid shouted at a fielder. He wasnt smiling like the Swede, who was now replaying some of his shots. He had no idea how good he was. Hed lifted six or seven consecutive deliveries over the rope. Sure, Sobers launched six of the best decades earlier, but that was on a grass wicket after years of practice.It would take a ball to pitch and roll to bowl the Swede out. A freak delivery to dismiss the freak of nature. In total I counted eight or nine sixes in a row. A fifty in fewer than two overs.Is that it? he asked, turning around to see the tennis ball stopped at the base of the stumps.Nobody said anything, so I piped up and told him that was it. Youre out.Oh. He smiled with those very white teeth.Thank you. He gave the bat to the dumbstruck keeper, and waved good bye.I watched him stride across the sand and back to the hotel, where he vanished into the dark of the lobby. And that was it.I want to neatly finish this article with some sage words on unorthodoxy, how coaches can remove talent as much as they can make it. But it was more baffling than that. It was the greatest debut, and greatest final innings, Ive ever seen. Certainly by a Swede. Custom Orlando Magic Jerseys . -- Sergey Tolchinksy scored his second goal of the game 3:56 into overtime as the Sault Ste. Magic Jerseys China .com) - Rafael Nadal, Andy Murray and Roger Federer were easy first-round winners Tuesday at the Australian Open. https://www.cheapmagiconline.com/288i-gordan-giricek-jersey-magic.html . SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. Markelle Fultz Jersey . The Redskins announced Monday that the quarterback who led the team to the Super Bowl championship in the 1987 season will serve as a personnel executive. Drew Gooden Jersey .J. Ellis hit two-run homers and the NL West champion Los Angeles Dodgers defeated the San Diego Padres 4-0 Saturday night.MOSCOW -- Canadas Brianne Theisen is fourth after the first four events of the heptathlon at the world track and field championships. The native of Humboldt, Sask., has 3,810 points to trail leader Ganna Melnichenko of Ukraine by just 102 points. Shes only 26 points behind American Sharon Day, who is third. Briesen was second after the first two events -- 100-metre hurdles and high jump. She won the 100 with a time of 13.17 second and was sixth in the high jump with a leap of 1.83 metres. Briesen fell to fourth overall after registering 732 points with a 13.07-metre effort in the shot put but accumulated 963 points after finishing the 200 in 24.18 seconds. Dafne Schippers of the Netherlands is second overall with 3,837 points. The final three events -- long jump, javelin and 800 -- are scheduled for Tuesday. The two-day event is considered wide open since Olympic champion Jessica Ennis-Hill and defending champion Tatyana Chernova are both out injured. Theisens husband Ashton Eaton, a gold medallist for the U.S. in the decathlon, was in the stands watching his wife. The two were married in July. Canadians Matt Hughes and Alex Genest advanced to the mens 3,000-metre steeplechase. Meanwhile, the U.S.-Jamaica sprint rivalry is turning into a rout. Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce rubbed it in Monday with a winning margin of Bolt-esque proportions in the womens 100 metres. Her hot-pink coloured hair slashing in the air behind her, Fraser-Pryce flashed to an early lead and kept on building it before crossing in a world leading 10.dddddddddddd.71 seconds. She had time to clench her fist as she crossed the line with silver medallist Murielle Ahoure of the Ivory Coast crossed a massive .22 behind. The first American, defending champion Carmelita Jeter, took bronze in 10.94. Like Usain Bolt, she now has two Olympic and two world titles in the 100. And in Moscow she gave Jamaica a 2-0 lead over the Americans in the sprint duel, showing the Caribbean island produces the fastest runners on the planet. The United States got its part of the glory, too, when David Oliver led a 1-2 finish in the 110 hurdles. It would have been an American sweep had defending champion Jason Richardson not stumbled near the end. In the womens 400, Christine Ohuruogu set a British record to regain the world title she first won in 2007, dipping at the line to cap a great comeback and beat defending champion Amantle Montsho of Botswana by .004 seconds. "When I finished I didnt know if Id won it, I didnt want to get over-excited until my name came up," Ohuruogu said. "I heard everyone screaming and I looked up and Im just so happy." Through three days of competition, the United States leads the medals standings with three gold and six overall. Germany is second with four medals overall after Raphael Holzdeppe upset Olympic champion Renaud Lavillenie of France on a countback to win the pole vault. In the shot put, Valerie Adams became the first woman to win four straight individual world titles. ' ' '