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Catholicism's impact on cricket

G.I.Joe

International Coach
Ishant's definitely an adherent to the church of the flying spaghetti monster, and look where that's got him.
 

popepouri

State Vice-Captain
As a Catholic, I'd say so.

I'd wager test cricket in itself is Catholic or religious in general. As Father Robert Barron has said,

"(Who are you to tell me how to behave or what to believe? How can you be so arrogant as to think that you should impose your thought patterns on me?) This is precisely why moralizing and intellectualizing are often non-starters in regard to persuasion. But there is something unthreatening about the beautiful. Just look at the Sistine Chapel ceiling or the Parthenon or Chartres Cathedral or Picasso’s “Guernica”; just read The Divine Comedy or Hamlet or The Wasteland; just watch Mother Teresa’s sisters working in the slums of Calcutta or Rory McIlroy’s golf swing or the movements of a ballet dancer. All of these work a sort of alchemy in the soul, and they awaken a desire to participate, to imitate, and finally, to share. Hans Urs von Balthasar, one of the great advocates of the aesthetic approach to religion, said that the beautiful claims the viewer, changes him, and then sends him on mission."

...and there's something beautiful about a cover drive done with excellent technique or an excellent bowling action.
 

BoyBrumby

Englishman
I strongly doubt AB de Villiers is a Catholic. The number of Afrikaners that are Catholic is negligible. I know he is a devout Christian but he is much more likely to be a member of the Dutch Reformed Chruch, or a charismatic Christian church.
Indeed.

One would guess, given his Francophone surname, he's probably descended from Huguenot stock, who originally left France to avoid persecution from the Catholics.

As a semi-related aside, I remember reading an article once that said one never sees a French rugby player with one of the "South African French" surnames (de Villiers, du Plessis, Joubert, du Preez, du Toit, Rossouw, etc) so I was quite excited (being a sad man) to see one Bernard Le Roux lining up on the flanks for Les Bleus versus England as this bucked the trend.

Turns out he's a South African who qualifies on residence.
 

silentstriker

The Wheel is Forever
Galileo would have been a great cricketer had it not been for Catholicism. Clearly, Catholicism is anti cricket.
 

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