{"id":713,"date":"2015-07-23T11:55:24","date_gmt":"2015-07-23T11:55:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/?p=713"},"modified":"2015-07-25T12:18:07","modified_gmt":"2015-07-25T12:18:07","slug":"cricket-tragic-john-howard-reflects-on-his-backyard-bowling-in-pakistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/?p=713","title":{"rendered":"Cricket tragic John Howard reflects on his backyard bowling in Pakistan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Howard.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Howard-300x169.png\" alt=\"Howard\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-714\" srcset=\"http:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Howard-300x169.png 300w, http:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Howard-200x113.png 200w, http:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Howard.png 650w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>It is a moment former prime minister John Howard would rather forget.  <\/p>\n<p>During a visit to earthquake-ravaged Pakistan in 2005, Mr Howard joined in a game of cricket with Australian military personnel and local children \u2014 only to be left red-faced at his attempt to bowl a ball.<\/p>\n<p>A decade later the unabashed cricket tragic has reflected on his backyard bowling while in London where he is attending the Ashes.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Howard, who was part of a panel discussion at King\u2019s College on \u201cCulture Wars: The Ashes and national character\u2019\u2019, recounted how troops had arranged the cricket match with local children and persuaded him to join.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey had a ball that was basically the inside of a tennis ball with some white tape around it,\u2019\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd of course I had a go and it stuck in my hand &#8230; and of course it played for ever and a day afterwards,\u201d he said, referring the television footage which continues to resurface.<br \/>\nSource: The Australian\/  News Corp Australia<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It is a moment former prime minister John Howard would rather forget. During a visit&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":714,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[5,9,10,16,3,33,2],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["http:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Howard.png",650,366,false],"thumbnail":["http:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Howard-150x150.png",150,150,true],"medium":["http:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Howard-300x169.png",300,169,true],"medium_large":["http:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Howard.png",640,360,false],"large":["http:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Howard.png",640,360,false],"1536x1536":["http:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Howard.png",650,366,false],"2048x2048":["http:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Howard.png",650,366,false],"enternews-featured":["http:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Howard.png",650,366,false],"enternews-medium":["http:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Howard.png",650,366,false],"enternews-thumbnail":["http:\/\/southasiantimes.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Howard.png",480,270,false]},"author_info":{"display_name":"admin","author_link":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/?author=1"},"category_info":"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/?cat=4\" rel=\"category\">Stories<\/a>","tag_info":"Stories","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=713"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":715,"href":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713\/revisions\/715"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}