Development or Sport? I'll take both please, with a side of riata

It is the cricket world cup, if you haven’t picked up on a bit of a theme in this blog, or you haven’t turned on a television in the Eastern hemisphere, or you are in South Asia and have been living in a cave you might have missed this. But the women in my office have not!

I work in a research center (as I may have mentioned) dedicated to examining poverty, development, and society. It is a female-majority work place. It is a Sri Lankan (Sinhalese and Tamil and Muslim) mostly workplace. There are 2 English women and me, who make up the non-Sri Lankan population. Lunch is a mixture of analyzing the merits various research strategies and their impact on the centre's ability to influence long-term development policy and arguing over which team performed better in the previous days’ ICC World Cup match.

And arguing we do well.

Is there more grace in a Test match than in a 50-overs match? What is the best approach to analyzing poverty? Why does the Australian team suck? (because they slighted the Sri Lankan team and there is no arguing with a Sri Lankan on these grounds, it is fact) How is India looking? Where the hell did Malinga learn to bowl a ball like that? Who had to play cricket in gym class and who hated versus loved it. (The older English lady hated it, a few youngish Sri Lankan women didn’t mind and at least 4 Sri Lankan women L-O-V-E-D it.) Do we want to use a quantitative approach to the next project or qualitative?

Our conversation really never strays far from development/politics and cricket. In fact sometimes they are happening simultaneously and interwoven…ly. Everyone has equally strong opinions on both, and are equally quick to laugh about both.

During lunch we sit in long tables with red rice and spicy dhal and fish or chicken or veggie curries of the hottest variety. I’m not joking even the native Sri Lankans reach for the cooling creaminess of raita or curd (yogurt). Most of us eat with our fingers, I’m telling you the food does taste better that way. We eat and chat and laugh or sometimes sit quietly on the veranda for about 30 minutes. Then we all take our plates to the kitchen, where the Kitchen Goddesses are tidying up, and we all wash our plates and hands. Our Kitchen Goddesses have been here since the place started and treat a lot of the researchers and policy officers like their nieces and nephews.

Then it’s back upstairs for more reading, and analyzing, project planning and computing, and I suspect for more than a few, a little live streaming of the latest game, which always starts around 2:30 in the afternoon. We'll all watch the highlights of the game that evening and be refueled for tomorrow's lunch-time analysis.