Ah, the English summer: Pimm’s on the lawn, sandcastles on the beach, socks inside sandals, and the gentle sound of leather on willow. Yes, along with tennis, the nation’s sporting thoughts at this time of year turn to cricket – and, this month, to the Twenty20 World Cup.

Cricket mystifies many people from outside the former British Empire¹. Quite apart from its arcane terminology (googlies and doosras; backward short leg and silly mid off), some struggle to see the appeal of a game where you can play for five days and still end up with a draw.

In recent years though, a new and – dare we say it? – more exciting form of the game has become increasingly popular. In Twenty20 cricket, as the name suggests, each side bats for only 20 overs² and essentially just tries to slog the ball for as many runs as possible. Purists complain that this takes all the finesse out of the game and could spell the death of Test cricket³, but many fans are just happy to be able to watch a complete match without having to take a week off work…

2009’s Twenty20 World Cup, the second in the event’s history⁴, is being contested by 12 nations at three venues in England, two of which are in London. First up is Lord’s, where the final will be held on June 21.

Often called “the home of cricket”, this is the headquarters of the world’s oldest cricket club, the MCC⁵. The current location, which dates from 1814, is actually the third incarnation. Thomas Lord built his first ground in the area in 1787, near the site of present-day Dorset Square, then a second which had to be abandoned due to the building of the Regent’s Canal.

It looks as if there was a match being played on the day the Street View car drove past Lord’s, judging by the marshals and crowds. Let’s hope those big black clouds went away!

We head south of the River Thames for our next venue: The Oval, or, to give it its proper corporate-sponsored name, The Brit Insurance Oval.

This ground dates from 1845 and in 1880 became the first venue in England to hold a Test match (England v Australia). Two years later, after Australia beat the home nation at The Oval, a mock newspaper obituary mourned the death of English cricket, stating “the body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia”; to this day the two nations compete for The Ashes.

The Oval hasn’t always hosted cricket though: the first ever international football⁶ match took place here in 1870 (England v Scotland), and all but one of the first 20 FA Cup finals were held here. Despite being in the London Borough of Lambeth, The Oval is the home ground of Surrey County Cricket Club.

Street View doesn’t show too much of the ground itself, but one of the large gasometers to the north, a well-known landmark associated with the venue, is clearly visible.

The last of our three locations is a hundred miles or so to the north, in Nottingham. Trent Bridge is the home of Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club and takes its name, unsurprisingly, from the adjacent bridge which carries the main London road over the River Trent.

Cricket has been played on the site since the 1830s, when Nottinghamshire’s club captain married the landlady of the Trent Bridge Inn, and set up a ground in the meadow behind it. The impressive pavilion was built in 1886 and served as a military hospital during the first world war. It can be seen in Street View, but only end-on.

Also on view are the smart new stands and floodlights that were completed last year. A rather less lovely landmark of the ground is the ugly office block that was built after a corner of the ground was sold off in the 1960s.

If you haven’t learned enough about cricket yet, you can read more about Lord’s, The Oval and Trent Bridge at Cricinfo.

Steve Prefontaine. His is a name synonymous with running; a name all of your running-junky friends are sure to be familiar with.¹ In 1975, at the time he was struck and killed in a car accident, he held every U.S. track record from 2,000 to 10,000 meters. When he was dead-out sprinting there seemed to be flames coming from his Nikes. In fact, he was the first athlete to endorse Nike.²

Prefontaine, lovingly referred to as Pre by those that knew him and us that admire his abilities, so enamoured the sports world that there are many places that bear his name in memorial. Here are just a few of the memorial locations set up in and around the state of Oregon, including Hayward Field, which is the location of the annual Pre Classic, due to take place this Sunday, June 7th.

Prefontaine Memorial Park with Pre Rock

“Prefontaine Memorial Park” could be a contender for The World’s Smallest Park, as it consists of not much more than one rock that stands near the site of Pre’s car accident. The stone memorial commonly known as “Pre Rock” bears a plaque that tells the story of Prefontaine’s death.

During the night on May 30, 1975, Pre swerved his 1973 Gold MG to avoid hitting an oncoming car. By the time emergency services had arrived, Pre was dead. Pre Rock is constantly covered in wreaths, notes, and U.S. flags; as we can see in this Streetview image.³

Pre’s Trail

When Pre competed in Europe he came to appreciate the style and terrain of their cross-country courses, and wanted a similar experience for Tracktown USA⁴ runners. When he returned, he won over Eugene city officials to the idea who worked with U of O track coach Bill Bowerman to design and build it, with the trailhead being just south of Autzen Stadium in Alton Baker Park.

Pre’s Trail Western Trailhead / Eastern Trailhead

The trail had yet to be built at the time of Pre’s death. However, the city was able to finish the 5.5km trail within four months, just in time to be used in a memorial run that would see over five hundred runners come out to remember their friend.

Steve Prefontaine Memorial Hall

When guests arrive at the Nike Campus at One Bowerman Drive in Beaverton, Oregon they are ushered into Steve Prefontaine Hall. Pre is often referred to as the “soul of Nike” by founder Phil Knight because of his commitment to running and his intense desire to always come out on top. Within the Hall are many of Nike’s newest developments, as well as individual pieces of memorabilia of Pre’s and many other athletes that have worked with the company in the past.

Several movies have been made chronicling Steve Prefontaine’s life, and Hayward Field played itself in each of them.

You can also check out the the Prefontaine Memorial at the Coos Bay Visitor Center. Each year over 1,000 runners compete in the Prefontaine Memorial Run held there in his hometown.

The island of Gotland is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Sweden, and is also home to the Gotland Ring, a motorsports racetrack carved into an old limestone quarry which, once finished, will be the longest racetrack on Earth.

Today about 3km of the Northern loop are currently in use¹, but around 7km will be ready by next year. As well as the track itself, Google’s images let us see the absolutely massive wind turbines that form part of the operator’s vision to be the most environmentally friendly racing facility of its type in the world.

Although it’s far from complete at this stage, these images do also let us begin to see the profile of the Southern Loop, which will apparently be ready for “tarmac installation” next year, but won’t be ready for racing until 2012. As this diagram demonstrates, when finished the two loops will be joined, allowing drivers to race around one complete circuit totalling 28km.²

The land on which the track is being built belongs to a company called Nordkalk, and as the imagery makes quite obvious, it used to be a large limestone quarry. It looks like production of limestone is still in full flow here, judging by the activity going on at the nearby lake, and in fact much of the crushed stone needed for building the circuit was provided by the mining operation.

Gotland Ring does have a Wikipedia page, but it currently reads like a badly translated press release. Perhaps a kindly Swede could do a better job of translating the key points from the official site?

As one of Google Street View cars drove past the Laguna Seca Raceway, it happened to capture a photograph of a race in action.

Aware of its own existence as a fuel-efficient-but-not-exactly-a-racecar Toyota Prius, the anthropomorphized car obviously dreamed of one day being in the Le Mans.

Then all of a sudden, and with some wavy lines down the screen, the dream came true! The Google Street View car was part of the race!

Feeling the wind through its hair as it raced round the track, the car was bolstered by some trackside fans who didn’t spot it as a fraud.

But the dream was on shaky ground, with the car inexplicably being transported back up onto the overbridges as it tried to drive under them.

Eventually though, our plucky camera car took the chequered flag.

Then, awaking from the dream, the street view car went back to the drudgery of capturing pictures of people’s houses.

The road between the Indian city of Amritsar and the Pakistani city Lahore crosses the border through the village of Wahga (or Wagah, depending on which side of the border you’re on), which was divided in half when the subcontinent was partitioned in 1947.

While most border posts are mundane places where you fill out forms and get your passport stamped, this one is the scene of possibly the most spectacular – and the most well attended – border ceremony in the world, with crowds from both nations packing their own grandstand for a lively and festive celebration of nationalism.

By day, people and goods flow across the border, often with porters of one nation handing packages across the border to porters from the other. However at sunset, troops from the two countries parade in aggressive fashion, with much stamping, staring, brandishing of weapons, slamming of gates and coordinated flag-lowerings, all timed precisely such that one nation’s flag is not removed earlier than the other.

Check out the pictures at Panoramio and view some of the many YouTube videos to get a true sense of this border ceremony as a spectator sport.

Thanks to Mukesh Kanchan.