Well, hello there! It’s a Thursday morning, and I knew I’ve been chasing the Kable this week. I finally found a couple of hours and here we are, with a special edition to boot - this one is about sports and games. I hope you enjoy!
1. Jackie MacMullan Is the Great Chronicler of Basketball’s Golden Age (The New Yorker):
I loved reading this profile of MacMullan, one of American basketball’s best writers, and her journey to break in as a woman in the pre-WNBA era.
2. Juan Martín del Potro Strikes Back (GQ):
One of my (and many others!) favourite tennis players - I remember watching him in New York in that iconic match in 2017. This 2018 profile is one where he’s on the ascendancy again, and it’s a positive one to read.
3. Modrić: The Refugee Who Changed Football (Dunya Digital):
Wow, Luka Modrić’s journey to football is super inspiring. So unlikely, and so special.
4. The Ride of Their Lives (The New Yorker):
I had no idea that rodeo bull racing was still so popular, and that the lack of opportunities of rural US towns meant that so many young kids would get into calf-riding.
5. Twilight of the Velocipede: Typesetting Races before the Age of Linotype (Public Domain Review):
“Before Linotype revolutionised typesetting in the 1880s, compositors set texts by hand — and they set them fast. Alex Wright rediscovers the thrilling world of typesetting races, which drew crowds in the thousands, offered huge cash prizes, and helped women “Swifts” fight for workplace equity.”
6. What the World Got Wrong About Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (The New York Times):
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is one of the most fascinating and misunderstood basketball players - and possibly the player with the most interesting post-player career (as an author, primarily!).
7. Whitewater (Fifty Two):
It’s been a long time since I shared something from Fifty Two! This essay about an Indo-Japanese group’s 1991 attempt to kayak the entire Brahmaputra river is… eventful and hectic! And fun to read.
8. Why He Kayaked Across the Atlantic at 70 (for the Third Time) (The New York Times):
A visual delight. I recently stumbled upon NYT Magazine’s “Voyages” series and it’s well worth your time. Alexsander Doba is the kind of person who likes to kayak across the Atlantic multiple times, and is thus the type of fun crazy you want to read about.
9. Meerut’s carrom board makers (People’s Archive of Rural India):
Nice 2024 profile of the people making carrom boards, the equipment used by crores of people in India to play a beloved (mostly amateur) game. Now I feel like playing!
10. Taking it to the streets (The Cricket Monthly):
What a fun essay to round it all up - this is about street, or gully cricket, in India, and how it manifests in different ways in different parts of the country. One of the grounds the writer visits is right next to our home in Chennai where I grew up!
