[HPFGU-OTChatter] Cricket (was: What's the fun in baseball?)

[Shaun Hately]

On 19 Oct 2003 at 7:56, Iggy McSnurd wrote:

> > > Iggy:
> > > Anyone care to explain Cricket to me?  (I can't understand the
> excitement in
> > > that... but then, I don't know nearly as much about that as I do about
> > > baseball...)
> >
> 
> 
> >Dreadnought:
> > Well, I'm a cricket fan - one of the few sports I like, and the only one I
> really like to
> > watch. I even like test cricket (Australia v Zimbabwe, heading up to a
> thrilling
> > conclusion at the moment) which is the form where a match can take 5 days
> and
> > is just as likely to end in a draw.
> 
> *snip*
> 
> Thanks for such a detailed explanation of the game.  I think I get the idea
> now.  (Kinda makes me want to watch a game just to see if I do...)
> 
> Just a few quick questions:
> 
> Why does the bowler throw the ball with his arm twisted the way it is?
> (compared to the form used in baseball... or even underhand like in
> softball...)


Partly a matter of tradition, partly because it's adds an element of skill to the 
game.

It's an action that has evolved over time - in the early days of cricket, the ball was 
actually bowled along the ground underarm. When ladies started playing cricket, 
several adopted an overarm action simply because the dresses they wore at the 
time were too wide to make underarm bowling convenient - male cricketers saw 
that and realised it allowed a lot more skill on the part of the bowler, because it 
allowed the bowler to put spin on the ball, so it would bounce in an unpredictable 
(to the batsmen) fashion. So overtime the overarm action became standard.

Straight 'pitching' as in baseball doesn't really work in cricket because while in 
baseball, most swinging is done involving the ball at the level of the upper body, 
the presence of the stumps (which are about waist high) in cricket necessitates 
playing around the legs - if bowlers were permitted to hurl the ball at the stumps 
without requiring the bowling action, games would probably be over in a few 
minutes - the game would change dramatically from a duel between the batsman 
and bowler, to something that gave the bowler a massive advantage.

Underarm bowling remained legal under the laws of first class cricket until a 
couple of years ago, but was virtually never used at a high level.

In fact, bowling arm is considered (if you pardon the expression) very 
underhanded.

Back in 1981, in an Australia v New Zealand match, New Zealand was in the 
situation of needing six runs (ie, to hit the ball out of the stadium) off the last ball 
to tie the match.

This was *incredibly* unlikely - the New Zealander facing the bowling wasn't a 
specialist batsman and such a hit would have been very unusual coming from 
him. But it was possible, and tension was pretty high because of that.

The Australian Captain, Ian Chappell instructed the bowler (his brother, Trevor) to 
deliver the last ball underarm in a fashion that made it absolutely impossible for 
the New Zealand batsmen to get under the ball and score a six.

That incident is regarded as one of the most disgusting in cricket history. It 
followed the letter of the law, but grossly violated the spirit. And it caused a *lot* of 
ill feeling.

That's another thing about cricket being a gentleman's game - the codes are 
important as well as the rules, and teams that violate those codes are 
condemned. "It just wouldn't be cricket" is an expression that means "It wouldn't 
be fair."

The infamous Bodyline series of the 1930s, when England's Captain devised 
tactics that sought to neutralise Australian batting by bowling at the batsmen 
rather than the stumps, lead to a rather famous phrase: "There are two teams out 
there, and only one is playing cricket."
 
> Did the term "sticky wicket" come from cricket, or croquet?  (I imagine it
> being a term like being in a "pickle" in baseball, where the runner is stuck
> between two bases and, since the basemen can toss the ball to eachother, the
> runner doesn't really have a safe base to get to, but hasn't been quite
> gotten out yet...)

Sticky wicket is a cricket term, but it may have come across from croquet - early 
forms of cricket where the ball was rolled along the ground and hit with something 
like a mallet had some pretty serious similarities to croquet.

A sticky wicket is quite literally sticky - because the ball in cricket bounces on the 
bowler to the batsman, the consistency of the ground can make a huge difference 
to the game - if the ground is slightly wet and soft, the ball will bounce differently 
from if its rock hard (and again, tactics come into it - over the course of a match, 
especially a five day tests, the ground will change consistency and you tailor you 
attack to those changes). A sticky wicket is quite nasty to play on, because you 
will have a hard time making decent scoring shots.
 
> Does cricket have anything that's the equivalent of a "strike" or a "foul
> ball" in baseball?  (I understand that they have outs, runs, and "home runs"
> of a sort...)

No real equivalent to a strike (if the ball goes past you and doesn't hit the stumps, 
you're fine - indeed, you can even run on it if the ball goes past the fieldsman as 
well, and you want to risk it). No real equivalent to a foul ball either - although the 
leg bye is probably worth mentioning - if the ball comes off your leg and gets past 
the fieldsman, you can run on it, and score leg bye (although if a ball hits your leg 
in a position where it clearly would have hit the stumps if your leg hadn't got in the 
way, you're out - LBW or Leg Before Wicket).
 
> Ok... about runs...
> 
> (wicket) ------------------------------------------->(wicket)   = 1 run
> (wicket) <------------------------------------------ (wicket)   = 1 run
> 
> Right?

Yes - for every single length of the pitch, you score one run. If you go there and 
back so you wound up where you started, you've scored two.


Yours Without Wax, Dreadnought
Shaun Hately | www.alphalink.com.au/~drednort/thelab.html
(ISTJ)       | drednort at alphalink.com.au | ICQ: 6898200 
"You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one
thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the 
facts. They alter the facts to fit the views. Which can be 
uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that 
need altering." The Doctor - Doctor Who: The Face of Evil
Where am I: Frankston, Victoria, Australia