Cricket...

Mohammed Asif is brilliant

p.s. i'd never have kicked pakistan out of world cricket for any of their offences. some people have something against them, but i think they liven the sport up like you wouldn't believe. it's NEVER dull on or off the pitch with the green army around

there's something v. similar in baseball called a "cut fastball" or "cutter", which is almost as fast as a normal fastball but has movement on it

taking sides: chad bradford vs lasith malinga for wackiest ball release action in sport?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutter_(baseball)

haha steve also don't forget kent tekulve... or josh papelbon, seen here:

http://www.kieranchapman.net/images/weblog/joshpapelbon.jpg

In cricket, defeating the batsmen through ball deviations is achieved both through the air and off the pitch (sometimes both, if you're a top-quality spinner). How does baseball manage to have such a variety of different deliveries when the legal target is so small and the ball can't bounce?

It doesn't

argh ffs my beloved worcestershire have lost to durham, now we'll be relegated for sure ;_;

not sure i understand the question? pitching deliveries in baseball are actually pretty uniform except for a few weird outliers; the real differences come in the type of grip a pitcher will use, which affects how the ball spins in the air, and hence its flight. you're right that the strike zone a very small target compared to cricket, which makes high-quality pitching, well, very difficult. and because a baseball bat is smaller than a cricket bat - and cylindrical rather than flat - high-quality batting is also very difficult. and because you have to hit the ball in front of you rather than behind you or to the side, and because if you do hit it in front of you you have to run whether you want to or not, baseball is famously known as a game of failure (sort of like soccer), and very low-scoring. you don't have the luxury of pounding out run after run (like in basketball). one slip-up and you can screw the whole game.

Baseball = pitcher's sport
Cricket = batter's sport

... roughly speaking

I am baffled.

Cricket can also be a game of failure, although more for batsmen than for bowlers. If a bowler bowls three bad balls, he can always come back and take wickets, but if a pitcher does so, the stakes are higher for each individual error.

ok, i am baffled now too (i have no idea what "taking wickets" means, nor "bad balls" - explain!!)

what i mean about failure is, in baseball you don't see a batter reaching base, say, 100 times per game

the very best batters in baseball make an "out" on more than half of their chances

Taking a wicket means getting a batsman out! I mean, a bowler getting a batsman out... by bowling him out... not by running him out or any other method. A bad ball is just a poorly delivered ball, e.g. a full toss or a long hop (sorry, that's going to confuse matters moe)

But then I don't know what "the very best batters in baseball make an "out" on more than half of their chances" means either

Taking a wicket means getting a batsman out! I mean, a bowler getting a batsman out... by bowling him out... not by running him out or any other method. A bad ball is just a poorly delivered ball, e.g. a full toss or a long hop (sorry, that's going to confuse matters moe)

... that's better

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Playing-Hard-Ball-Cricket-Baseball/dp/0349116660/

^^^ good book

Cricket is pretty damn tedious, I think.

I 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.

There hasn't been enough drinking on this thread for any of it to make sense yet.

Watching Test Match cricket ws a big part of my summer, but ever since what happened in the Ashes last winter I've lost a bit of the love I had. Couldn't even bother to start a thread for the series against India. And it isn't bcz we were 'winners'. I watched betting collapse after batting collapse all through the 90s. Losing the TV rights might be another factor.

Tom, what makes a ball "poorly delivered"? The batsman hits it? It sails into the stands, causing patrons to fear for their lives? It has incorrect postage?

What i mean by baseball batters making an out on over half their chances is this: the batter arrives with a bat in his hand, ready to try to hit the ball. There are two options: he reaches base safely, or he makes an out. In baseball, more than half the time, he makes an out, even if he is among the very finest specimens of hitter today. In cricket, the guy can sit there all day, whacking the ball, running if he wants, not running if he doesn't. See?

We need more stories like Pashmina's though, TBH

Stick Cricket is an absolute joy.

Wish we had got cricket at school, but sadly that could never happen in Scotland(unless you went to a private school).

My cricket anecdotes:

I currently have a bruise on my left hip the size of an orange from getting hit by my team's 80mph bowler in nets (batting+bowling practice). On Wednesday night we lost a very entertaining 20/20 game by 9 runs. I came in the last over needing to score 20. I hit 3 : (

When I played at school (state school in Sheffield) I was the only white kid on a team of Pakistanis. This wasn't unusual in Sheffield. The fact that none of these kids even considered looking to go on to club (or even county) cricket is a real shame. I get the impression things are slightly better now, 10-15 years later.

This is my stock ball: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-arm_orthodox_spin

This is my variation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-arm_unorthodox_spin

Twice in my life I have been on a hat trick, and both times I have gotten excited and bowled a wide (a ball so innacurate the batsman couldn't hit it so gets a run and another ball to compensate).

Also, it is difficult not to laugh at the first recording here, even if you don't like cricket or very posh people: http://www.bbc.co.uk/fivelive/sport/bestcommentary/index.shtml

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!