Until yesterday, a cricket player beating a 116 year old batting record and becoming the first batsman to score 1000 runs in one innings.
Right. Could you clarify what your claim is exactly? Mine is that if you’re down by exactly 3 with time expiring, you should only go for the field goal (tie) if doing so has a > 2x chance of success vs. the touchdown.
I agree. I don’t think you know well the chances of success though.
A few people have mentioned that a long kick needs a low (and thus easily-blocked) angle. This surprises me: The textbook maximum range is at an angle of 45 degrees, which doesn’t seem all that blockable (assuming the blockers have a 10’ jump-and-reach, you only need to keep them more than 10’ away). Now, compared to the textbook case, the real world has air resistance, which will lower the optimal angle somewhat, but your target is also at higher than ground level, which would increase the optimal angle, and it doesn’t seem like air resistance ought to be all that important.
Is it possible for a kicker to achieve the same “muzzle velocity” while launching at a steeper angle?
That’s a really good point. Here’s an article from Wiredthat delves into the subject. It seems to say increasing launch speed of the ball will lower the optimal angle significantly, and you’ll need maximum launch speed for the long field goals.
The all-time record, at any level, is 69 yards, done in 1976 by Ove Johansson with the aid of a tee, now illegal. The biggest downside, as mentioned, is that the opposing team gets the ball at the yard line where the ball is kicked, which would be giving them the ball at the kicking team’s own 40 yard line. Aside from a last-second try nobody will sacrifice that kind of field position, and since a Hail Mary is possible while a 70-yard field goal is not no team would dare try it except going into halftime. It’s also worth noting that there can only be 8 attempts at this in any given year as it will only really be possible in Denver with the notably thin air. Those extra yards really do make a difference.
So, a doable record… it is conceivable that a baseball player could hit .400 in a season, and even break Rogers Hornsby’s modern record of .424 in a season. Hitting .400 hasn’t been done since 1941, but it’s been approached.
I’d have certainly rated this as “achievable but will never be done”, but the level of ability clearly varies much more greatly in schools cricket than in the first-class game, while still being organized enough to count as “proper” cricket (eleven a side, all official dimensions and equipment, umpires, scorers…). This was obviously a horrendous mismatch given that one side scored 1400 runs in an innings, and the other side only 30-odd in one of theirs; and for further evidence, the batsman who scored 1009 this time had a previous personal best of 80. Also, since he scored his runs at better than three a ball, it’s clear that he could do just as he liked with the bowling.
Interestingly, the previous best score of 628 was made in a match between two different houses in the same school in Bristol, so you’d expect that the sides would be better matched on the whole. (Similarly, Victoria’s record first-class score of 1107 was made against another State side who, IIRC, beat Victoria comfortably the next time they met.)
Still, 1009 runs - he’ll remember that for the rest of his life, and so will about a billion Indians. (I don’t think I’ve ever scored 1009 runs in all my cricket put together. 1000 runs in a month - traditionally May in England - is a giant landmark seldom achieved.)
63 yards is nothing special. According to Wikipedia Yevhen Delneko, the goalkeeper for Dnipro Cherkasy, scored a goal with an 80m kick from his own penalty area. Essam El-Hadary scored similarly. Oscar Zijlstra scored from a goal kick. And so on.
There’s also this video and this one which ends with goals shot from 72 and 73 metres.
This rugby goal kick was 70m, but the longest is 81 yards, and the longest drop kick is 77.7m.
I suppose he should have specified American football…
The 70 yard field goal is getting a lot of attention here, I think that may be because it’s a likely record to fall. It’s not so much about beating the odds as it is about kickers getting better.
Even so, 63 yards has a way to go: rugby uses the same ball and I gave cites for kicks from 70m, 77.7m, and 81 yards. And these weren’t at rarefied elevations. Perhaps the heavy body-armour American footballers wear slows them down?
From watching the video(70m), the kicker took six steps and didn’t have blockers rushing the ball.
An American football kicker only has three steps while being rushed.
The soccer videos showed free kicks. In real football you have a place holder and kicker occupied with the kick, leaving 9 men to stop 11 men from tackling the kicker and/or blocking the kick. I don’t know how rugby works but there’s no comparison between a football field goal and a free soccer kick. Football does have a rare circumstance where a field goal can be attempted with a free kick. That might be the way the record gets broken, but it doesn’t opportunity is rare.
American football kickers don’t wear the same body armor that regular players do, and rugby doesn’t use the same ball as American football. Both are prolate, but the rugby ball is closer to spherical than the American football is.
Place kicks at goal are either conversions (“extra point after touchdown”) or penalties. The former may be charged but are not normally long-range efforts (though they may be at a narrow angle from near the touchline - they are in line with where the try was scored). Penalties are not charged - if a defender should forget this then the penalty would be advanced ten metres and re-awarded.
Field goals in rugby are invariably drop-kicked - I read a book once that suggested there’s nothing in the laws to disallow their being place-kicked much as in gridiron, but you would get even less breathing space and no blockers although you might be able to set it up as a surprise move; you would need a placer who, however, would have to release the ball the instant before contact. In former years it was possible to attempt a place-kick at goal from a “mark” (“fair catch”) but it is now no longer possible to score directly from a free kick as opposed to penalty, and the kick after a mark is (a) free and (b) only allowed within your own 22-metre zone anyway. “Goal from a mark” could be charged just as a conversion kick could be, but I have no idea what the range record was and they were often drop-kicked anyway as this minimised the time available to charge, so it would be hard to say what the longest place-kick at goal from a mark ever was.
A minor league pitcher named Ron Neccai struck out 27 batters in a game in 1952. He struck out 24 his next start. Pittsburgh GM said he was one of the three greatest pitchers he ever saw (Christy Mathewson and Dizzy Dean were the other two).
In 54 2/3 innings Neccai pitched in the majors he went 1-6 with a 7.08 era and 31 strikeouts
If you call darts a sport, then the eight dart finish hasn’t been done yet. Nine darters are getting increasingly common, so it can only be a matter of time.
How would you achieve an eight dart finish? Using standard scoring rules, the maximum score for 8 darts is 480.
It is a joke!
I don’t think any dartist has ever done a T20, T19, and checked out on 3 bullseyes in a leg in pro game of arras before. But this would be silly, as a 9 dart finish is tough enough in pro competition for even the best players without making it insanely and unnecessarily difficult.