So posting in a “Cricket World Cup 2007” thread is possibly not the best of your or anyone’s else bandwidth?
:rolleyes:
I hope it is a rusty one.
Not necessarily.
It’s possible to bet on almost any aspect of a cricket match with the layers in Pakistan (and elsewhere). You can bet on a side scoring more or less than a given number of runs, a batsman doing likewise, a bowler taking a given number of wickets, the total of extras, the options are numerous. It just may be that a major punter waded in to one of these options for a large amount of cash and got badly burned in the process.
The chances of anyone investing heavily purely on an Irish victory are slim. Legal gambling operations in the UK, for example, would have reported any unusual betting patterns by now. However, gambling is illegal in Pakistan so the industry thrives underground. It is therefore unlikely that a Pakistani, or any other illegal bookmaker, would highlight the incidence of a flood of money for Ireland since this would identify them to the law, with somewhat unwelcome results.
I was coaching a kid’s cricket team when Murali first came to prominence in Australia. After the first weekend that he played I turned up to practice to find that 4 or 5 of the kids could replicate his “action” and suddenly bowl off spin. It was very hard to explain to them that I would not let them bowl like that because it is cheating.
Indeed. I haven’t followed the whole controversy very closely, but when I did hear snippets my strong impression was that attempts to have his action declared illegal resulted in a tidal wave of accusations of racism and worse, and the Powers That Be caved under political pressure. Is that fair?
Your preception is absolutely right. The Sri Lankans played the race card faster than beer money goes on payday. And the ICC, at that time headed up by an Indian gentlemen, fell over it’s own feet trying to rationalise Muralitharin’s action as something acceptable. Ian Meckiff’s comment, what ever it may have been, went unreported on.
I disagree with mamboman. The biomechanical realities are inconsistent with old views about what constitutes chucking. This site goes into the difficulties cricket is now belatedly grappling with.
I understand that Murali sometimes looks bad and usually looks dodgy. But that doesn’t mean that his action is really worse than other bowlers. And it doesn’t mean that there was some sub-continental conspiracy to save him.
It would be nice if we could get to talking about the World Cup, but it hasn’t really started yet except for the unfortunate murder.
No, no, no, no, no. Anyone who bothers to actually acquaint themselves with the facts of Muralitharan’s action and its reviews will know that independent biomechanical studies performed at Australian universities discovered the following facts.
[ol]
[li]Murali’s arm does indeed exhibit a bend (he can’t actually straighten it further due to weird phsyioloy), but does not excessively straighten during delivery, nor does his arm rotate around the axis of the bend.[/li][li]Yes, on one type of delivery Murali’s action did exceed the then-official 5 degrees of straightening, however…[/li][li]The study discovered that so did basically everyone else’s; many people with “non-suspect” actions in fact straightened their arm by considerably more than Murali. Moreover…[/li][li]The study discovered that only one bowler in the world was not breaking the rules, and finally…[/li][li]The study concluded that it was not physically possible for bowlers to stop their arms from straightening within the limits prescribed at the time.[/li][/ol]From Wikipedia:
I defy anyone to argue with the plain facts of this. The facts, remember: no nonsense about racism, politics and conspiracies. I would like you to contradict, if you can, two scientific studies that transformed the understanding of throwing in cricket, and then explain why you believe Murali to be a chucker in contravention of all the evidence. “Because it looks like it” is not sufficient.
This seems like an appropriate place to ask this question. In cricket, can 2 players both be called out on the same play?
Nope. The ball goes dead when a batsman is dismissed (Law 23, right at the top). I guess run-outs are the only area where this might make a difference, and I think double run-outs would be very rare indeed. The length of the wicket is a lot less than the distance between bases in baseball, for example; the batsman usually isn’t that far from being safe in most runouts.
Unless it’s Inzy, of course, who is quite likely to be fully at the other end of the pitch.
Incoming player could be timed out. That does not mean he is out on ‘the same play’. But it is two people out with only one delivery
Actually, not a sir, but a ma’am, I suppose. (although I like to think I am too young for that title yet)
And I wouldn’t begin to argue about Muralitharan, not knowing what I would be talking about. I can say that whatever his “action” is, it was very noticeably different than any of the other bowlers I had seen that day. I remember thinking if I was a batsman, I would rather anyone else bowl to (?) at (?) me than him. So if my uneducated eye could see something quite different about him, I can understand how there could be controversy about him.
I find this side discussion started here very interesting. And I am glad to know that should I happen to meet any other cricket fans, expressing an opinion on Muralitharan might start a heated debate, which I would not intend, so I am glad this has come up now.
And the other side story, the death of the coach and rumors of betting scams are reminding me a bit of my favorite sport, horseracing. That was one parallel I was not expecting to find. Although in racing it is the horse who is found dead under suspicious circumstances, or the competition suspected of drugging a horse pre-race, or jockeys taking the bribes. And similar to horseracing, it seems the only time cricket would make the national news here is because of suspected corruption or tragedy.
……….“In a sport generally associated with white trousers, green lawns, cut-glass accents and breaks for “teatime,” the news of Woolmer’s apparent murder is a stunner, but passions run deep in the world of international cricket, especially on the Indian subcontinent where it is a rough-and-tumble sport followed avidly by the masses.
After the loss to Ireland, which eliminated Woolmer’s team from the tournament, irate fans in Pakistan demanded the arrest of the coach. Mobs gathered in the streets to chant “Death to Bob Woolmer” while burning his effigy.
When India, another cricket powerhouse, lost to Bangladesh earlier this week, fans attacked the home of a star player who failed to live up to expectations.
In addition to fanatical fans, the game has a shabby underside of gamblers, match fixing and performance-enhancing drugs. Two of Pakistan’s players were banned from competition earlier this year after failing drug tests.”……………
I would not have suspected something like this in cricket, thinking racing had the monopoly on gamblers, race fixing and performance-enhancing drugs.
I saw that the Scottish gentlemen did not meet their goal of beating the Netherlands. They are getting quite a beating now in some forums by disappointed fans. The captain, one of the players I met, resigned. That also leaves me feeling a bit sad, as he and the other players and team manager I met were all great ambassadors for cricket, most definitely excited and proud to representing Scotland in the World Cup. I hate that even with their low expectations that they are disappointed in how things turned out.
Oh well, on to the Super Eight (our college basketball tournament just finished its “Elite Eight” games.) matches……
A bowler taking a caught-and-bowled (translation: when the batsman has hit the ball straight back to him) might be able to run out the non-striking batman, who’d very likely have gone a few paces down the pitch while the shot was being played (after the ball was delivered). But I don’t think the game’s poorer for the lack of such a feature.
As to “timed out”, I’d say that as far as the bowling record is concerned it happened “nowhere” - between one ball and the next. (Obviously it isn’t credited to the bowler, who did nothing to earn the dismissal.)
Does the ball not go dead once the bowler has caught it?
{Deleted by Monty}
Law 23 (Dead Ball) is the governing rule to determine if there is, as the law’s title indicates, a dead ball. Please take a gander at sections 1(i) and 1(iii).
If the Bowler catches the ball, then either rule (actually both) show the ball is dead.
Ah, when is the ball dead. What a hoot. I umpired in a match where the batsman played the ball defensively to short cover, who proceeded to throw the ball back to the bowler stupidly hard. He jumped out of the way and the ball went to the boundary. After signalling four and explaining it to the players I then had to run to the boundary to tell the scorers (who had obviously already scored the ball) that they had to debit the bowler 4 runs and credit the striker 4 runs.
It’s not that simple, I don’t think. The key is “finally settled”. I don’t think this rule means simply that once the bowler has caught the ball it’s dead. If that were true, the bowler could never run anyone out, which certainly isn’t the case.
Yes (in the sense of “catching out” a batsman - if there’s a run in progress then it’s not dead until the possibility of a run-out is settled). I was speaking of the hypothetical possibilty that, *without * the Law stipulating that the fall of a wicket causes the ball to become dead, two men could realistically be out on one play. A double run-out would be nearly impossible; a catch and run-out could happen. See my previous post and the text quoted therein for context.
Another cricket question, since all of you handled my first one so easily:
Is it common for batters to sacrifice themselves (i.e. intentionally get out)? Here is why I ask: I inferred from looking at the cricket scores that the better batters are usually the first 6-7 positions in the batting orders. The bowlers occupy the final 4-5 slots in the order, for obvious reasons. This is very similar to baseball. But in reality, cricket isn’t at all about not getting out, but about scoring the most runs in 50 overs (300 balls). Oftentimes, the last few batters never even get a chance to bat since the 50 overs have already been completed. Thus, even if a batter isn’t out, he may not be producing the desired amount of runs. For this reason, it seems worthwhile for the batter to sacrifice himself to give someone else the opportunity to produce more runs.