Cricket's Biggest International Prize! One Year to Go Celebrations

14 February 2014 marks one year to go until the first match of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2015. To mark the occasion, public events will be held in all 14 World Cup Host Cities over two days.

To mark the occasion, public events will be held in all 14 World Cup Host Cities over two days. The events will include the unveiling of a city countdown clock, multicultural performances and junior cricket activities. Members of the public are welcome to all events.

Thursday 13 February

  

Host City	Event location	Start time
Auckland	Queen’s Wharf	6.30am
Hamilton	Garden Place, Victoria St	7.15am
Dunedin	The Octagon	10.30am
Wellington	Midland Park, Lambton Quay	12.00pm
Napier	Sound Shell, Marine Parade	12.00pm
Nelson	Trafalgar Square	12.00pm
Christchurch	Re:Start Mall, Cashel St	5.00pm

Friday 14 February

  

Host City	Event location	Start time
Sydney	Martin Place Stage	12.00p
Melbourne	Federation Square Stage	12.00pm
Adelaide	Rundle Mall	11.00am
Brisbane	Queen Street Mall Stage	12.45pm
Canberra	Canberra Centre	12.00pm
Hobart	PW1 forecourt (Princes Wharf 1)	12.30pm
Perth	Forrest Place	12.00pm

Also on 14 February, prior to the start of the New Zealand v India test match at the Basin Reserve, a press conference to announce how Government and tournament organisers will work together to maximise the legacy of the tournament.



There will also be a special visit from the members of New Zealand’s 1992 Cricket World Cup squad during the tea break on Day 2 of the test.



Find out more at http://www.icc-cricket.com/cricket-world-cup

Perth Celebrates China Connection with Spectacular Display

Perth has long boasted strong ties with East Asia through trade and a pioneering twinning agreement with Haikou in China’s Hainan province.

The Perthshire Chinese Community Association new year procession through the streets of Perth to mark the start of the Year of the Horse

Perth has long boasted strong ties with East Asia through trade and a pioneering twinning agreement with Haikou in China’s Hainan province.

And on Tuesday staff and pupils from Perth High School immersed themselves in all aspects of Chinese culture when they celebrated Chinese New Year.

Youngsters were joined by Andy Chan, chairman of the Perthshire Chinese Community Association, and Mandarin teacher Yang Jacobsen, for the China Day event which included Chinese cookery, Chopsticks and Paper Cutting, Tai Chi and Chinese Dragon Art workshops.

The Fair City school is widely regarded as a hub for learning about the Chinese language and culture, and is home to what was Scotland’s first Confucious classroom and offers Mandarin as one of its foreign languages.

A spokesperson for the school told the PA: “Perth High School has strong links with the Chinese community and is committed to increasing young people’s knowledge and awareness of Chinese language and culture.”

Meanwhile on Monday Perth and Kinross Provost Liz Grant welcomed in the Chinese New Year with members of the Perthshire Chinese Community Association

The Provost also invited members of the local Chinese community to a civic reception at 2 High Street to mark this Year of the Horse.

Celebrations took take place in Perth city centre starting with a firecracker display at the viewing platform on Tay Street, which lit up the early evening.

This was followed by a spectacular procession which was headed up by two police horses and a Chinese lion dance troop.

The acrobats performed gymnastic poses and tumbles, leading the Provost and community members through Perth High Street, King Edward Street, St John’s Place and St John Street to the Salutation Hotel on South Street to continue the evening’s celebrations.

Also on hand to amaze and entertain was circus-themed entertainment including close-up magical illusions, a stilt walking juggler and a daredevil street show performer who incorporated fire into his act.

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Perth International Arts Festival 2014

Perth International Arts Festival 2014 is the longest running and best loved international arts festival in the Southern Hemisphere.

This year is the 62nd annual Festival. In 2013 Festival shows sold more than $5 million worth of tickets, with attendances of over 500,000 from a city of under 2 million people: we sell more tickets per capita than any international arts festival in Australia.

The 62nd Perth Festival kicks off on Friday, 7 February and runs until 1 March. The diverse program offers a world-class cultural feast for arts lovers of all ages and persuasions. In a quintessentially Western Australian experience, more than 1000 of the world's most exciting contemporary artists transform and disrupt Perth as the Festival spills across unique venues and glorious, outdoor spaces.

Living up to its worldwide reputation for excellence, in 2014 the Festival delivers a program of unforgettable, enriching works, created by artists who are daring, thoughtful, and innovative, with 26 Australian exclusives, 33 Australian premieres and two world premieres.

Perth Festival Artistic Director Jonathan Holloway said: "The 2014 Perth Festival collaborates with the world's greatest artists and many of Western Australia's most creative and talented people to find new and exciting ways to create a Festival in and of Perth. Joining us in our exploration of what it is to be a 21st Century festival in the remotest and yet most connected capital city in the Southern Hemisphere are Robert Wilson, Dawn Upshaw, Martin Amis, The National, William Kentridge, Tod Machover and Public Enemy, to name just 20 of the 1000+ artistic collaborators."

The 2014 Festival explodes in a spectacle of wonder with the Lotterywest Festival Spectacular Veles e Vents, supported by Eventscorp. For three nights over the opening weekend, the Spanish masters of public theatre take to the seas and the sky, recreating a ship's grand and perilous voyage in a sublime visual display of fireworks and light. Suitable for the whole family, the exclusive Australian premiere promises to kick off the 2014 Festival with an explosion of music and movement.

The Festival's free program takes art to the people as the streets of Perth are playfully transformed and life re-imagined. Sam Routledge & Martyn Coutts' I Think I Can brings avatars to life in an enchanted model town. The Lotterywest Festival Celebration, Jeremy Deller's Sacrilege, invites Festival goers to literally leap into ancient history, re-creating Stonehenge as a full-scale bouncy castle.

The Chevron Festival Gardens become the ambient Festival hub as guests gather, discuss and participate, with free entry to the Garden from 5pm until late Wednesday-Saturday and 6.30pm until late Sunday-Tuesday.

The 2014 Theatre and Circus program traverses the spectrum from the gritty to the surreal, inviting the world's most acclaimed performers to the Australian stage. Modern master of the Russian avant-garde, Dmitry Krymov, makes his Australian debut with A Midsummer Night's Dream (As You Like It), a whirling re-imagining of history's first great love story, that of Pyramus and Thisbe. From Israel comes the Australian premiere of Not by Bread Alone: 11 deaf-blind actors take audiences on a profoundly moving journey through their inner world, as bread is kneaded, formed and baked on stage. Raw and explosive, South Africa's Yael Farber adapts Strindberg's classic Miss Julie to post-apartheid South Africa in Mies Julie, revealing theatre at its most potent.

Theatre genius Robert Wilson returns to Perth in the exclusive Australian premiere of Samuel Beckett's blackly comic masterpiece, Krapp's Last Tape. From New York, Perth welcomes An Iliad, superstar Denis O'Hare's riveting one-man performance of Homer's Trojan epic. The UK's internationally renowned NoFit State Circus brings circus as you've never seen it with the Australian premiere of Bianco, a graceful, aerial adventure of drama and breathtaking ability which immerses the audience in the action.


Further highlights include two Festival co-commissions. Malthouse Theatre's The Shadow King is an explosive interpretation of Shakespeare's King Lear, melding contemporary Aboriginal storytelling in a blood-soaked interrogation of kinship, land and belonging. Co-commissioned by the Festival, Opus fuses the contemporary circus of Australia's finest, Circa, with dynamic music of Shostakovitch performed by France's Debussy String Quartet.

You Once Said Yes is unforgettable one-on-one theatre. As part of our Vital Stages program, we bring Look Left Look Right together with Western Australian artists to create a thrilling theatrical experience for the people of Perth. One of the most exciting theatre collectives in the world, Germany's Rimini Protokoll presents the Australian exclusive of Situation Rooms. In this multi-dimensional, interactive documentary theatre experience, audiences explore a maze of stories from people whose lives have been touched by the weapons industry. This is theatre like you've never experienced it before.

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England Eager to Avoid 'Worst in History' Tag

There are many contenders but by this time next week the unofficial title of England's most unsuccessful team may change hands. It will be bestowed on the 2013-14 vintage in Australia who are on a losing streak that shows no signs of abating.

Defeat on Friday – and the resignation in the air is darkening the clear Perth skies – and it will be nine internationals in a row on tour, 10 in all counting the loss in the final one-dayer at home last September. That is a record sequence matched only twice before in England's history.

To judge this group, which has comprised 24 players across all matches, as the worst in history may be harsh, but it is also a measure of how badly this expedition has gone. Anybody who has seen England in the one-day series will be astonished if they manage to prise one of the next two games from Australia's grasp. They are resting several players, including the captain Alastair Cook, from the fourth ODI.

The main hope now is that England will win at least one of the three Twenty20 matches which bring the tour to a close next week. But such is the one-sided nature of proceedings that everyone thinks 13-0 on tour is at least possible.

There was almost a plaintive note in the voice of the off-spinner, James Tredwell, the last player to join the motley band. "That's the Aussies," he said. "When they are going well they can batter you to a degree and, if we're honest, that's what they've done over the course of this winter and it's finding a way to push back against that. We've had periods when we've done that and if we can try and push them back a bit we've the skills to do the job. We have to believe, don't we? And if we don't we're just going to roll over again."

In 1993, England lost 10 Tests and ODIs before drawing a Test match at Nottingham against Australia. Eight years later at home, they lost 10 before beating the Australians in a Test at Leeds.

The difference this time is that all the defeats have been against the same opponents, who are relishing each day as it arrives. That much was evident when Mitchell Johnson came back home to Perth from Sydney, where on Monday night he received the Allan Border Medal for the Australian player of the year.

It was like the return of the conquering hero as he charmed an audience full of adulation at the airport. Johnson has put the frighteners on England for months and he traced the beginning of his ascendancy back to the one-day series in England late last summer. "It felt that there was something going on," he said. "I felt like everything was coming together – all the hard work and the change of my run-up, the lengthening of that through the IPL.

Mitchell Johnson was greeted in his hometown of Perth ahead of Friday’s ODI like a conquering hero (Getty)

"That was my first real sort of tournament after my injury. I felt good through that tournament, but not quite right. And then playing at international level again in the one-day series, I definitely felt something there. And it went on from there."

Johnson took 37 wickets in the Ashes series and threatens to be a handful at his home ground, the Waca, on Friday, when he will probably bowl three short, rapid bursts.

England practised hard at the University of Western Australian campus. There is a desperation to get a win from somewhere, anywhere, a closing of the ranks round Cook. But all that cannot conceal the fact Australia are in swagger mode, playing irrepressible cricket that will, as Tredwell put it, ultimately batter England.

England on the run: Longest losing streaks

10 matches (Mar-June 1993)

Two ODIs in India

Two ODIs in Sri Lanka

One Test in Sri Lanka

Three ODIs vs Australia

Two Tests vs Australia

10 matches (May-Aug 2001)

One Test vs Pakistan

Three ODIs vs Pakistan

Three ODIs vs Australia

Three Tests vs Australia

The current run is 9 matches

WANTED: Nanny for Prince George for Tour Down Under

THE Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are on the lookout for a nanny to look after baby George on their trip to New Zealand and Australia in April, Britain's Daily Mail newspaper has reported. 

Proud mum and dad William and Kate, with their baby Prince George

The royal couple's current nanny, Jessie Webb - who looked after Prince William when he was a child and came out of retirement to tend George - has reached the end of her contract. 

Mrs Webb, 71, took the job on the condition that she would work only for three months, the newspaper reported. "Mrs Webb is still at Kensington Palace and William and Kate are keen to retain her services, but they are discreetly looking for extra help for the month-long trip this spring," the paper said. 


The Duke and Duchess did not hire a maternity nurse after George's birth last July. Instead the couple moved into the Middleton family home in Berkshire so that Kate's mother, Carole, could help out.

When they moved to Kensington Palace last September, they persuaded Mrs Webb to join their household.

It had been rumoured that Carole Middleton could join the tour Downunder to help look after George. However, aides insist that will not be the case and the couple will instead hire a new nanny. 

Prospective candidates would need to be experienced, discreet, trained in paediatric first aid and demonstrate an ability to cope in stressful situations, Janine Bayley of nanny recruitment agency Rock mybaby.co.nz said. 

"We have placed nannies and babysitters for some high profile families including Hollywood actors while visiting in New Zealand," Mrs Bayley said. "We find their expectations just the same as other families, although we do encourage the nannies not to become star struck. 

"At the end of the day, parents want someone who is responsive to their child's needs, able to provide a quality, educational environment and someone who knows how to have fun. Regardless of where we are in society, we just want the very best for our children." 

The royal entourage may include a housekeeper and Kate's personal hairdresser, Amanda Cook Tucker. 

Royal Nannying: Five keys to success 

• Mum is the word. Discretion will be vital as the ravenous media look to exploit any means to find fresh angles on the visit. The nanny should be occasionally seen, but certainly never heard.
• Sleep is over-rated. With near constant travel and a packed diary of obligations to fulfil, the royal couple will be constantly on the move. The nanny can expect to be on call 24/7.
• Say cheese. Photo ops for baby George will be par for the course and there's every chance the nanny will get caught in the lens at some point. A constant smile would be a good idea.
• Keep calm and carry on. George soils his nappy while meeting John Key? No drama. It's just another day at the office. Hand me the wipes.
• A way with children. It may seem obvious, but if wee George isn't taken with his nanny that is going to be one long trip from Kensington Palace and back.

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Arctic Monkeys - Touring Australia May 2014

Frontier Touring is thrilled to confirm that Sheffield Arctic Monkeys will be landing in Australia next May to embark on their biggest tour of our shores to date!

Arctic Monkeys first burst onto the music scene in 2006 with their Award-winning debut album Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not.  The album became the fastest-selling debut album in British music history. 

In the years since their debut, the band have received two Grammy Award nominations, five Brit Awards, headlined the iconic Glastonbury Festival twice and taken to the world stage in front of billions as part of the London Olympic Games opening ceremony. Originally one of the ‘best new bands to watch’, Arctic Monkeys have well and truly cemented themselves now as one of the most important British bands of their time.

The band were last Down Under in 2011 for Falls and Southbound Festivals as well as a handful of Australian headline shows; in 2014 they will return for their most extensive run of tour dates including two New Zealand shows and five Australian shows in celebration of their fifth studio album AM (out now through Domino Records/EMI).

On the charts, AM was the band’s fifth consecutive UK #1 debut, making them the first artist signed to an independent label to achieve this. Closer to home, the album shot straight to the #1 spot on both the ARIA Album Chart and New Zealand’s Official Album Chart.

As well as success on the charts, AM was also heralded by critics  across the globe as Arctic Monkeys’ best album to date and was nominated for the 2013 Mercury Music Prize just two days after its release.

If the demand for their latest album is anything to go by, these tickets won’t last long. Be quick to see Arctic Monkeys; one of the greatest live bands to emerge in recent years.

TOUR DATES*:
Tue 6 May - Sydney Entertainment Centre
Wed 7 May - Brisbane Entertainment Centre
Fri 9 May - Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne
Sat 10 May - Adelaide Entertainment Theatre, SA
Tue 13 May - Perth Arena , WA
*Ticketek is selling for the above venues only.

Indian Tourists Flocking to Australia, Says Report

Melbourne: Indian tourists are flocking to see beauty of Australia taking the total number of overseas travellers from the region to over 134,000 from January to October this year, a report said.

According to latest data of Tourism Australia, a total of 134,000 visitors from India visited Australia during October this year, an increase of 9.5 per cent as compared to the same period previous year.

According to its Tourism Forecast Committee report released earlier this year, visitor arrivals from India were predicted to rise by 7.5 per cent and 7.6 per cent to 1,63,800 in 2012-13 and 176,300 in 2013-14 respectively.

"Markets expected to experience strongest gains in visitor volumes in 2012?13 are China (15.9 per cent), Malaysia (13.9 per cent), Singapore (12.5 per cent) and India (7.5 per cent)," it said.

"This revision represents a difference of 6500 more visitors in aggregate. In the longer term to 2021-22, average annual growth of 7.2 per cent to 306,100 visitors is expected," the report cited while note trends from Indian tourists.

It said that average length of stay rose 20 per cent to 66 nights per trip while total nights in hotels, motels and guest houses and serviced apartments rose 17.2 per cent to 0.5 million compared with same period in 2011-12.

"Visitor expenditure is fore casted to rise 19.8 per cent in 2012-13 to USD 867 million.

In the longer term to 2021-22, average annual growth of 10.9 per cent is forecast to USD 2 billion, representing an upward revision of USD 354 million,"?the?report predicted.

Last year, Tourism Australia had launched India 2020 Strategic Plan which was developed to maximise India`s tourism potential and set a foundation for the future, when long haul leisure travel by Indians becomes more common.