Question: Do you regard test cricket (multi-day) as the real thing, and one-days as a pale shadow? I’ve encountered this prejudice full-blown in some people, and am ever so slightly inclined that way myself.
[/QUOTE]
Oh, IMHO Test cricket is infinitley superior to the abbreviated forms. Of course as Australian, I’m inclined to say that given the absolute dominance of our boys. I don’t even watch shortform cricket, it’s just so boring…
mm
80 overs - although the fielding captain doesn’t have to take the new ball when it becomes available, if the old ball is working for him (spin and/or swing bowlers being effective), he can keep going as long as the ball holds out.
From the ICC Rules page
Back to front and misspelled. Michael “Whispering Death” Holding was the bowler, Peter Willey the batsman. Willey wasn’t the most talented batsman of his generation but he had guts enough for three ordinary men, and that was what was mainly needed in Holding’s time and for a decade afterwards when it looked like the procession of West Indian fast bowlers who were both quick and straight would never end.
And in a match against Australia, he once caught Dennis Lillee off the bowling of Graham Dilley, and though the commentators had seen this coming and practised beforehand, they still struggled to announce “Lillee, caught Willey, bowled Dilley”. 
My Dad tells me that he once played in an RAF team against Canada and scored 110 runs. I was impressed are you?
That would depend on who your Dad was. For a strong club player it’s a noteworthy achievement but not out of this world, 'cos that’s about Canada’s playing strength. For a Test batsman it’d be a case of needing to pick on someone your own size
This is just me showing off here…
I’m in Wisden. That’s it. (A captain’s innings (though I say so myself - even if I wasn’t captain) against Eton.
It says (sort of)
O.S Time c Bloke b Chap 88.
That’s about the only place you can find my name in print.
I’ll slip off quietly now. Or maybe not:
Anyone follow the County game? I fancy my boys - Hampshire to do well this year. We have Warne and Kaitch as overseas players and Pietersen as a new signing. It’s been a long time since we won anything.
Not sure what a stong club player would be but my Dad was a footballer! At the time he was training to be a pilot during WWII, hence ending up on on the RAF cricket team… so I guess it is impressive yes?
I don’t understand how long a match lasts. Does everyone on a side bat once and then whichever side has the most runs at the end is the victor? Please explain that a little more.
Also, can you please describe the ball to someone who has never seen one. How does it compare to a baseball in size, wight and material?
Lastly, regarding Bradman, I wanted to mention the song Bradman by Paul Kelly. It’s a beautiful song that I assume many Aussies have heard…the singer and the subject being Australian. It makes me sad that never has such a good song been written about baseball.
Correct me if I am wrong , but I have heard that if a ball is lost for some reason then the replacement must have the same sort of wear as the original ball . A selection of balls are kept in reserve and the umpire will choose one which he thinks is in the same condition as the lost one. I don’t think this happens very often but a ball could go missing during a game . Either a spectator hides it, or the ball is driven right out of the ground and cannot be found , especially in some of the smaller venues.
Side B overtakes Side A - Side B wins by however many not-out batsmen they still have. (Two members of an 11-man side must bat at once, so 10 dismissals end an innings. So if Side B had only 3 men out, they would win by 7 wickets.)
Side B are dismissed for less than side A’s total - Side A wins by (A-B) runs.
Side B are dismissed for exactly the same total as A. A tie (very rare).
The allotted playing time runs out with none of the above happening: A draw.
Serious one-day matches including many club games allow for each side to bat for a given number of overs (one over = six fair balls from one bowler. No bowler can bowl two consecutive overs). The above results can apply except for a draw - when side B runs out of overs, it loses if it has not caught side A. (Except: In some club cricket, this does still count as a draw.)
Serious professional matches allow several days playing time (five for an international) and both sides bat twice. However, in this instance, if Side B’s first effort leaves it far behind side A’s total, side B can be made to bat again, side A reserving the right to take its second innings last. This means that side A need not waste time on batting again unnecessarily. Whenever a side fails in two innings to match the score its opponents made in one, it loses by “an innings and” the difference in runs. (i.e. if side A bats, side B makes a basinful, side A bats again and falls short; or side A bats, side B makes hardly any, side B is made to bat again – “follow on” – and still falls short.)
The ball: Thread-wrapped cork encased in red (usually) leather with thick stitches in three rows either side of where the two halves of the case meet. It weighs 5.5oz and is slightly smaller than a baseball, and is of comparable hardness. On a new ball the seam is appreciable and has a noticeable effect on how the ball flies through the air and deflects off the pitch, and one of the bowler’s arts is to exploit this. As the ball is hit, bounces off the pitch etc, it becomes duller and the seam flattens, but it is then easier to spin it so the fielding side may gain on the roundabouts what they lose on the swings.
Declaring: In a match played to the clock rather than limited overs, a batting side may opt not to bat any longer and make the other side bat instead. This is done when the side thinks they have enough runs, and want to leave plenty of time to put the other side out. For the purposes of the score, there is no difference between declaring and being all out.
Exactly correct - to the extreme that they will sometimes bang the ball against something hard (e.g. the steps up to the changing rooms) if it is a little newer than desired… This will also happen if the ball is considered to have become “deformed” during play, or a seam splits or whatever. They actually have a little hoop through which the ball must pass without touching to determine whether it is deformed or not.
As for the Ashes - outside chance is about right - if a few things fall England’s way early on, who knows…
Grim
Thanks Malacandra. So is batting first considered to be an advantage? Seems to me that making your opponents run around chasing balls in the sun for hours beofre they get to on offense would be seriously advantageous.
Also, how much does it hurt to get hit by a bowled ball? In one or two of the matches I’ve seen, guys really looked like they were hurting after getting hit. On the TV it doesn’t look like the ball is travelling all that fast when it is bowled.
Ordinarily batting first is considered an advantage. Sometimes there may be reasons to want to field first - some pitches start out spiteful when they have moisture in them and then become benign once they dry out a bit, and a new ball is reckoned to swing (swerve) more when the air is humid. But yes, making the fielding side wear themselves out through a long innings is a large part of the reason for batting first, along with getting first use of a pitch that may start to bounce inconsistently and offer more purchase for the spinners once it’s been played on for a day or two.
A cricket ball is certainly hard enough to hurt at speed, and the quickest bowlers can top 90mph, with the very quickest being close to 100. Pads, gloves and a box have all been normal wear for a century, but helmets only started to come in during the late 1970s; they’re now pretty universal.And trust me, if you were facing a top-class quickie the ball would seem to be moving very fast indeed - 90mph gives you about half a second to see it coming from 22 yards. (Actually you’d see his arm come over, you’d hear a noise like a peeved hornet, and you’d hear a smack twenty yards behind you as the wicket-keeper took it. After a fair bit of practice, you’d begin to register a red blur.)
I’m just waiting for someone to ask “what is a box ?” 
I’m going to dispute this right now. 90mph is not that difficult to see. Baseball pitchers routinely throw this fast (indeed, it is difficult to even reach the minors without being able to pitch about this speed). Difficult to react to in order to get the bat on it in time? Absolutely. Difficult to see? Not really.
Isn’t it actually a little more complicated than that? Something to do with the ball pitching in line with the stumps and then going on to hit them, had the batsman’s leg not been in the way?
This may be a little more advanced than you were expecting, but can you explain the Duckworth-Lewis method for calculating rain-affected ODI results? I realise it has something to do with run-rate, but I’m blowed if I can understand how.
Sorry, that was me, not Grace. After all, what does a Texan know about cricket?
Thanks for the correction. I’ve never had to umpire Test Matches!
Neurotik, I’d agree about the difficult to react/difficult to see distinction. AS someone playing on the public school circuit in the same sort of era as Owl - except my highest score in Wisden is 91* - the fastest bowler I ever faced was Tony Pigott (who played for Harrow). I was out to the fourth ball I faced, which was also the first I managed to hit, caught at fourth slip. Yes, he had four slips, two gullies and mid-off, a short leg and a fine leg. He later gained a certain sports quiz notoreity by postponing his wedding to play for England in New Zealand. He happened to be there and they had a spate of injuries and needed a bowler. He’s now Chief Executive of Sussex, I think.
Legolamb, the LBW Law has been tinkered with down the years. Currently, it’s main provisions are as follows:
Any legal ball that when delivered pitches on the line of the stumps or outside the line of the off stump and strikes the batsman on the person, without first touching his bat, or hand holding the bat, and would in the umpire’s opinion have gone on to hit the stumps will have the batsman out LBW (on appeal), providing:
a) The ball strikes the batsman on the line of the stumps (NOT, as you write, “pitching in line with the stumps” - common mistake), if he is attempting a shot;
b) If he is not attempting a shot, he may be out if the ball strikes him outside the line of the off stump [this law was brought in to stop defensive play - batsmen padding up to bowlers]
If a ball pitches outside the leg stump, the batsman can never be out LBW. This is a throwback to the Bodyline tour of 1932-33, where England’s bowlers Larwood, Voce and Bowes attempted (successfully in the main) to nullify Bradman’s threat by constantly pitching it short outside leg stump and aiming for the batsmen’s head and heart. This Law is redundant in my opnion, as various additions regarding fast short-pitched bowling have been added. In effect, it means that a right arm bowler bowling to a left hand batsman is put at a disadvantage. I would change this Law, and also abolish Leg Byes.
Re the D-L method, I have absolutely no idea how it works, mainly because I never have to apply it. (Local competitions use a much simpler method of calculation should a match be curtailed.) Its rationale, though, is a very good one - to make it fairer to the side batting first in a rain-affected game. In the past (as indeed in our competitions) it would be a straight pro-rata calculation. Team A scores 200 in 50 overs (4 runs per over). 15 overs need to be bowled in the second innings to constitute a game; the side batting second need to make 61 (15x4 + 1) to win the game. Well, they sense the rain coming, go out and slog, and make the total losing 6 or 7 wickets. The D-L method basically takes this into account and requires the side batting second to score 60+whatever in 15 overs, and, 100+whatever in 25 overs. Much fairer for anyone who’s ever played the game.
Cricket has the reputation for being a sport with a thriving literature. Some excellent books have been written about the game, which has also attracted some top-class journalists (Neville Cardus, Robinson-Glasgow, John Arlott), as well as one or two poets (a West Indian poet of some renown, Smith - the first name eludes me - was a cricket nut who wrote a lot about the game). Is there any equivalent in American sports?
For anyone interested in the corruption aspects, read this paper: Seizing the Moment: A Blueprint for Reform of World Cricket (PDF) (Google’s HTML rendition). It’s not a minor, contained problem. It is rampant. There’s tons of money wagered in matches, especially those involving India. According to the Anti-Corruption Unit of the International Cricket Council, on an average one-day game, roughly $250 million is gambled. With that kind of money, only the wildly optimistic would think the games aren’t rigged.
Onto more positive (or atleast neutral) discourse, roger thornhill, what do you think about the new 20-overs a side contest? Will that replace 50-overs as the preferred limited format? Should it?
What’s your favourite test match? One-day? Best knock?..etc
(Attempted) match-fixing in cricket is probably as rife as it is in football, boxing and horse racing. Any sport where loads of money’s involved.
The Twenty-20 concept is taking off at the moment in England. I believe Middx v Surrey at Lord’s was sold out last year. I’m not a great fan of one-day international cricket, but I think a 100 game is more likely to survive long term as it gives better value for money. It’s not as if people in the developed and rapidly developing world are getting less and less free leisure time.
Test match I’ve seen: England v Australia at The Oval, August 1985. Gooch and Gower added around 250, most of which I missed as a bunch of us were having a very long, and very liquid lunch, in the Pavilion. But just about the last meaningful Test we won at home, so I’ll vote for that. (Also, one of the waitresses was stunning.)
First-class: when doing an MA at Birmingham, I buggered off to Edgbaston at lunchtime having phoned the ground to check whether Brian Lara was still in. (He had been 100 not out over night.) Yes, they said. I arrived the first over after lunch, just in time to see his score pass from 199 to 200. At least, that was what I thought until the guy sitting next to me said he had just reached 300. He had scored around 180 runs in the pre-lunch session. Even though I went on to see him get to 501 (a world record) off the last ball of the day, the bastard next to me kept reminding me I’d missed the best bit.
One-day: to be honest, they all get mixed up. I saw most of the Gillette Cup/NatWest Trophy finals between 1978 and 1987 and there were some exciting (and a number of others from 1967 on) finishes.
Best innings: Every time I saw India play at Lord’s in the 70s and 80s, Dilip Vengsarkar seemed to score a hundred. He was a lovely player to watch, and the Indian fans in the Grandstand would keep up this (back rows) “Dilip” (front rows) “Vengsarkar” chant up throughout the whole of his innings.
Best bowling: Bob Massie, 8 wickets against England for Oz on his debut in 1972. He got another 8 wickets in the second innings. It was swinging all over the place. Lillee was at the other end.
Most memorable: the Centenary Test (in 1980??) when the umpires were assaulted by MCC members after the rain and the booze had got to them. I was sitting in the Pavilion that day. No - it wasn’t me!