Cricket...

On the comparison between baseball pitchers and cricket batsman, it's made well in Ed Smith's book about baseball. It is assumed that when a baseball pitcher and cricket batsman play they will do well (not concede runs and score runs respectively). Anything else is failure. If a baseball pitcher or cricket bowler hits a run or takes a wicket it's kind of a surprise.

Cricket bowlers have a reputation for being more eccentric/introverted than batsmen, who generally give pretty bland interviews, even if they are captain.

yes - i was always surprised how fricking OVERJOYED a cricket team would get when one of them, say, caught the ball, or the bowler managed to knock the bails off the stumps - like, "isn't that what you're supposed to do anyway?"

still am, i suppose, but it makes more sense now

hated it when I was at school. The football, eh, soccer coach wanted no-one on the pitch who wasn't interested in the game, so he sent us "bad at sports" kids(which was like 5 of us) to the school swimming pool, with the girls in the class. Somewhere in his fucked up brain he thought this was some kind of emasculating punishment, LOL. It wasn't. It was fucking great. Later on, they sussed out what was (cough) going on and the girls got sent off to play netball or some such thing, we football hataz still went to the pool, but they let us play with the canoes! It was fucking awesome! (not as good as the girls though, obv)

The cricket coach was "inclusive", the bastard. This meant that if you had the good sense not to give (1) fuck about this tedious ritual, you'd get to stand somewhere in the distance as a "fielder", and once about every four weeks, a ball would land nearby, and you'd try to catch it, this fucking rock-hard leather thing would belt into yr hand @ 78mph or something and you'd be like YAAAARGH FUKCER and you'd drop it, and the coach would yell at you. Or you'd catch it, and the batsman would fuck you over in playtime.

Fuck crix0ret, srsly.

I think I understand cricket now!

The best thing about cricket to me isn't the rules they make up as they go along, it's the scorecards they make up afterwards! In other sports you have results like "Roger Federer def. Amer Delic 6-2 6-3" or "Chelsea - Manchester City 2-2" or "Tyson Gay WINNAR". In cricket there is a big box explaining that "Worthamptonfield 6/2 for against 43 wickets, Everhamshire 23 all in. 32 unbowled legs, no outs and overs, runs for 57 minutes. 342 & 14. Mild drizzle at the Dogger Bank. Durham won."

I was terrified of being hit with a cricket ball (theyre hard as rocks!) in school so I always refused to play.

I once bowled a hat trick in schoolboy cricket. That, sadly, is the highlight of my sporting career.

Also, Americans should know that Cricket was directly responsible for the greatest drinking feat in the history of mankind (David Boon, Sydney-to-London flight, 52 cans of beer).

yes - i was always surprised how fricking OVERJOYED a cricket team would get when one of them, say, caught the ball, or the bowler managed to knock the bails off the stumps - like, "isn't that what you're supposed to do anyway?"

Yes, that's what you're supposed to do, but the very best bowlers in the world will concede an average of 20 runs (and 50-60 balls) per out.

The other things is that yes, the batsman CAN score 200 runs in an innings, but if he does get out he doesn't have another 8+ goes like in baseball (if it's a 4 or 5 day match he will get one more go, but in one-day games, it's all or nothing).

My cricketing past features an absolute litany of embarrassing, hilarious, or otherwise humiliating screw-ups. This mostly stems from my style of bowling, which is called 'leg-spin'. I won't go into the specifics, but suffice to say that when it goes right, the ball's practically impossible to play, but it has a far higher risk of going wrong than any other sort of bowling, with the consequence that I'll always get hit around a bit (or a lot) depending on how well it's coming out of the hand. I've always been able to spin it a mile (one coach, who'd played county second XI cricket, said I turned it as much as anyone he'd seen), but I've also always been able to bowl the most unbelievable dross (mostly in the form of full-tosses, balls which don't bounce before reaching the batsman).

I can't go into all the shockers right now, but I'll briefly hang my head and confess to having a) bowled a spell of 3-1-41-0, b) been the second dismissed batsman of a hat-trick TWICE, c) effected a 15-yard run-out with my left boot (okay, that was a highlight, and one that will never be topped), d) bowled a spell of 4-0-65-0, after my opening attack had reduced a frankly woeful line-up to 22-5, e) deliberately thrown the ball for four after dropping a catch (my nadir), f) run out my partner, who was innings top-scorer, and holed out to square-leg next ball, g) come out to face the last ball of a match we'd just lost, against an absolute joke-bowler, played a sweep to a donkey-dropper, missed, and been given lbw amidst riotous celebrations, and h) bowled the last over with 10 runs needed against tail-enders, and conceded all 10 after just three balls.

At least I'm a good fielder! :D

you ARE just making up all those words at this point, right?

okay louis:

i'm led to understand that there are essentially two types of bowlers: the kind that try to throw it past you and the kind that try to spin it so you'll miss or fuck up.

1. explain the difference between the day matches and the (potentially) five-day matches. when i was in oz around the holidays during the ashes really all i gathered was that the mongrels are better than the limeys!

11 guys on a team. everyone gets a turn to swing the stick at the ball once or twice (depending on the type of match): i understand there's a bit about the bowler hitting the wicket, but how often can the swinger swing and miss (if at all)? and what if the bowler isn't throwing anywhere near the batter?

when you hit the ball you run from the stump you're standing near to the other one (and maybe back again depending on how far you hit it). explain plz--sometimes you run, sometimes not, what's the decisive factor? and how many of these running back-and-forths equal one of the hundreds of runs that are tallied?

you get to keep swinging the stick at the ball over and over again until the ball hits the stump or is caught by the opposing team in the air - at which point you are out! so each batter gets one out, thus the team gets eleven? yet there seems to be a bit of back-and-forth beyond this, at least in the week-long games...

how many times at bat do the sides get? what ends the match? ps i know it was a publicity thing by sir richard but seriously the ashes should stay with whomever wins.

ok mookieproof:

when each bowler bowls, they have to bowl six balls before someone else has to bowl from the other end. each period of six balls is called 'an over'.

one-day cricket consists of two innings, one for each team. each innings is generally composed of 50 overs a side. one team scores, the other team chases down that score. the winner is whoever finishes with more runs.

5-day 'Test' cricket is much more freeform; there are about 90 overs in each day, and the sides can bat as long as they want. you can only win this by bowling out the opposition twice and then scoring more runs than them; if a team isn't all out but hasn't chased down its target, the match is drawn.

the swinger can miss as much as they want, but they don't generally miss unless the ball is a good one; with the stumps behind you, there's more of a need to hit the ball.

if the bowler is throwing nowhere near the batter, the umpire signals a 'wide', and the batting side score a run, whilst the bowler has to bowl that ball again in order to complete his over.

you only run if you can reach the white line a yard away from the stumps before the fielders can get the ball to hit that set of stumps. it's a careful balance of risk and reward. if you don't get there in time, you're run-out. in order to complete a run, both you and your batting partner (there are always two batsmen on the field at any one time) have to reach the opposite end.

the team has eleven batsmen, but only ten wickets fall until the side is all out; this is because, as i just said, two batsmen need to be on the field at the same time. the batsman left high and dry when the last wicket falls is 'not-out'. this is common to all cricket.

the match is ended when a team either overhauls their target, is bowled out (loses all 10 wickets) short of their target, or reaches the end of all 5 days and all the overs with neither target acquired nor batsmen dismissed.

hope that helped!

"What I call pleasure, you may call pain/ I'm talking five day tests"

Cricket is class war, as written by L P Hartley in the Go-Between.

Textbook explanation above, JGO...

Cricket is the greatest sport of all time.

I enjoy boo-ing the members stand at Lords.

I can't go into all the shockers right now, but I'll briefly hang my head and confess to having a) bowled a spell of 3-1-41-0, b) been the second dismissed batsman of a hat-trick TWICE, c) effected a 15-yard run-out with my left boot (okay, that was a highlight, and one that will never be topped), d) bowled a spell of 4-0-65-0, after my opening attack had reduced a frankly woeful line-up to 22-5, e) deliberately thrown the ball for four after dropping a catch (my nadir), f) run out my partner, who was innings top-scorer, and holed out to square-leg next ball, g) come out to face the last ball of a match we'd just lost, against an absolute joke-bowler, played a sweep to a donkey-dropper, missed, and been given lbw amidst riotous celebrations, and h) bowled the last over with 10 runs needed against tail-enders, and conceded all 10 after just three balls.

This is one of the funniest fucking things I've ever read. I feel like it's in Esperanto.

"Once I threw a wobbly for 5/0/i/2220 for after my first chugger caused a Pollyanna; imagine my face when the three tits went up on scoreboard! Lawks, what a shocker!"

OK even though that's taking the piss outta me I am dying here

I didn't think it was taking the piss, he's just described precisely what happened to me last time I played

"Once I threw a wobbly for 5/0/i/2220 for after my first chugger caused a Pollyanna; imagine my face when the three tits went up on scoreboard! Lawks, what a shocker!"

Dan, you are a genuis!

That is a direct quote from Blowers on TMS, I'm sure of it.

I can hear him saying it in my head, for sure

50th over - 316-6: Unbelievable scenes! Mascarenhas has just smashed five consecutive sixes from the final over of the innings from Yuvraj Singh. This after a dot ball from the first delivery of the over. The first six was actually caught by Chawla at long leg, but the leg spinner tumbled over the boundary rope, much to his despair after taking a great catch. The next four were slightly less dubious, all launched high into the leg-side boundary.

Amazing.

I know, bastard, and I missed it. Deffo must watch highlights tonight.

I saw it.

Was this even on TV last night??!?!?

It only really worked as a spectacle when you didn't know the result. More twists than the proverbial corkscrew. Anderson bowling like a muppet. Edges. Heroism. An utterly predictable final stroke (yeah, like bringing mid-off up was ever a good idea...)

What a great game! I watched Sky's 2-hour highlights. India looked devastating for a long time. Lots of great individual performances - I reckon Uthappa was unlucky not to get MOTM for his matchwinning runs and fielding genius.

Shame! Touch o' the Bradmans about that. Also, no more Inzy... *sob*

Bye bye Sag Aloo! Good series win for SA...

England, shite as usual

What happened to the great young test side of 2 years ago?

looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool

i repeat: loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool

And given how poorly Sri Lanka played on their recent tour of Australia, the current series really speaks volumes about the state of English cricket...

Australia's still thrashing everyone though. It's just boring now.

kerry o'keefe on the concept of englnd suffering 'stage fright' during the last ashes series: "Nervous? I once went to a nightclub to pick up a supermodel. I wasn't nervous, I just wasn't good enough."

haha, kerry o'keefe is like shane warne with the cheeky rollercoaster lifestyle maxed out and the actual cricketing ability removed...love him

jim maxwell is the best though. super, super commentator.

They're both fantastic.

In Australia we get Mark Taylor on the telly and he's SHIT. Oh god he's so bad. He has no personality whatever, and rambles on and on and on and on and on and on about absolutely nothing. We watch it with the sound down and ABC radio cut in instead.

Also Ian Healy - fucking moron.

Results of Australia-wide vote:

Australia's best commentator   

Place  	Commentator  	Votes

1 	Richie Benaud 	3022

2 	Kerry O'Keeffe 	2171

3 	Bill Lawry 	1441

4 	Jim Maxwell 	1215

5 	Mark Nicholas 	1036

6 	Damien Fleming 	829

7 	Michael Slater 	725

8 	Tony Greig 	625

9 	Mark Waugh 	521

10 	Peter Roebuck 	520

11 	Ian Healy 	483

12 	Ian Chappell 	463

13 	Allan Border 	386

14 	Brendon Julian 	369

15 	Mark Taylor 	336

16 	Geoff Lawson 	324

17 	Glenn Mitchell 	267

18 	Greg Blewett 	174

19 	Keith Stackpole 126

20 	Terry Alderman 	111

21 	Simon O'Donnell 108

22 	Ryan Campbell 	93

23 	Jamie Cox 	81

24 	Danny Morrison 	77

25 	Kim Hughes 	73

26 	Darren Berry 	65

Where's Billy Birmingham?

McNicholas what the fuck. Slimy arrogant hyperbolic choad of the highest order who needs to get over his crush on Michael Clarke ASAP.

I like Mark Nicholas!

He often adds excitement to a passage of play and he isn't boring (often coming out with a decent line or two) but c'mon, the sweat and grease drips off his every last syllable. I find him nauseating more often than not.

Plus, I've heard from an insider on the Hampshire dressing-room (2nd team player in 90's) and by his account he was an absolutely appalling human being.

a right wicket fiddler, he is.

Let's just say that his passion for the game is more pronounced when a young blond player is at the centre of things.

"Once I threw a wobbly for 5/0/i/2220 for after my first chugger caused a Pollyanna; imagine my face when the three tits went up on scoreboard! Lawks, what a shocker!"

-- HI DERE, Sunday, 2 September 2007 16:47 (3 months ago) Bookmark Link

still funny

Wow, that's pretty fucked re Nicholas. He seemed like a nice-ish dude. Well, better than Fucking Shit Heals anyway.