Okay, I’m game. I’ll attempt to translate what appears to be, but is certainly not, English.
Sri Lanka batted first and wasn’t doing well. The Australian bowler Lyon appeared to be doing really well (I’m assuming ‘5fa’ means a 5 wicket haul in a single innings), but then Dickwella for Sri Lanka stopped the bleeding and had a good stand to put Sri Lanka at more than 200 runs.
It’s a pitch that favors the bowler rather than the batter.
Sri Lanka brought in a bowler that generally bowls in a particular style (‘offie’), but he isn’t particularly successful as the Australian batter Warner gets some runs in relatively short order before the Sri Lankan bowler does something wrong and some guy named Dharamsema (umpire?) says ‘uh uh’ which is reviewed by some other guy (who agrees with him? - who knows).
Commentary on the bowling of the Sri Lankan. Apparently things are not going his way.
Australia looks to be in good shape, but some of their batters are doing stupid stuff which results in their being out.
Australia are no longer doing so well, plus another guy got out when he shouldn’t have, and apparently some other Australian would have owed him big time if he hadn’t gotten out.
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Will explain the one bit of cricket argot you struggled with (regarding the successful review of an LBW decision) when i get home later.
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Khawaja is an AUS batter
Dharmasena is the umpire
Smudge is AUS batter and ex captain Steve Smith of many many runs vs Poms and Sandpapergate fame
Correct. Indeed, this is not a game with any expectations to last into the 4th day. The pitch is very dry, dusty and cracking already and a minefield to bat on. This is curious because everywhere else in the precinct the grass is verdant as befits the subtropics. The curators must have worked very, very hard to stop water getting onto the playing surface.
SL’s Embuldeniya is a right arm off spinner (or orthodox). In his bowling action, when he releases the ball the fingers of his hand holding the ball rotate sharply clockwise, imparting spin on the ball which will cause the ball to move from left to right when it lands.
Then when bowling to Usman Khawaja (who is a left handed batter) a delivery is directed across the body towards the (LH) batters legs. Khawaja assumes it is going to spin but not so much and looks to play the ball on his legside. Instead the ball spins very sharply and hits Khawaja on his front pad and the DRS ball tracking projects it will go on to hit the off stump. The SL fielders appeal for an LBW decision and the umpire Deshabandu Handunnettige Deepthi Priyantha Kumara Dharmasena (more generally known by everybody including his mother as Kumar Dharmasena) gives him out. Khawaja reviews the decision with confidence and the DRS process shows that the ball has pitched outside leg stump and so, regardless of where the delivery might go from that point, the batter cannot be given out LBW.
Things are going OK for the bowler, generally.
There are (broadly) two form of spin bowling. For a right arm bowler, off/orthodox/finger spin uses a clockwise rotation of the hand to move the ball on pitching from left to right. Leg/wrist spin uses an anticlockwise rotation to move the ball from right to left. The biometrics used in the action of off spinners means far less spin can be imparted by the fingers onto the ball than with wrist spinners. In “normal” conditions on a Test standard pitch an offie might only get a couple of inches of lateral turn, often much less on the first day when the pitch is at it’s best for batting. The offies advantage is the action gives more control. For a good leggie the “over the wrist” action causes the ball to rotate so quickly that it will hum disconcertingly during it’s flight. On a responsive pitch a top leggie can get the ball to spin a yard or more laterally. Again, much less so on a good batting pitch.
The delivery from Embuldeniya spun a very long way for an offie. In ENG, SA, WI or AUS you’d usually only expect to see so much spin on a worn and cracked pitch in the 5th day. Not on the 1st day.
Not at all. I have a few MAJOR gaps in nascent cricket knowledge.
I don’t really have a good mental sense for the positioning of the fielders (and certainly not their crazy names - gullys, and slips, and legs - oh my)!
LBW and no-balls - I get it in concept, but the finer points aren’t there.
The bowling terminology hasn’t sunk in. I sort of get pace vs. spin, but again, the finer points aren’t there. Your comparison of off/leg spin was very helpful. On the other hand, I can tell you all about heaters, sliders, cut sliders, curves, and change-ups.
The problem is that I “watch” cricket via online commentary with no video (espncricinfo generally). I’ve seen a couple of matches when ESPN is showing it (I think it was a World Cup of some kind) and I happened to be home to catch it, but I haven’t really watched a full match with the attendant commentary to help get a better mental sense for the game.
In other news, the US is playing Namibia in a T20 today. Currently it is:
USA 194/5
Namibia 105/3 (50 balls remaining)
Namibia’s run rate is below the required (9.08/10.61 as I type this), so right now the US looks decent, but I would expect Namibia to start swinging harder here in the next over or two and things could get very interesting very quickly. Namibia is actually slightly ahead on the worm chart.
And some good old-fashioned tonking by the lower order and AUS get there before light cuts the day a couple of overs short.
Given that at anytime in an innings you were going to get a good 'un with your name on it that was OK. Carey did OK until he holed out going for Plan B when Plan A had worked well.
Green looked sound and his 70 odd probably worth 120 in a more typical game context.
I’ll take you up on that at some stage.
I got myself into an unpleasant argument at one stage with an American baseball fan who wanted to know if cricket bowlers had as much variation in their deliveries as a baseball pitcher. I rather undiplomatically told him there was over a hundred times more variation in cricket available under the laws of the game and the laws of physics.
Well sure. You get that bounce to let the spin move the ball instead of just relying on stiches in air!
What I would love to see hard numbers on is what’s the spin rate for a good bowler? For an MLB pitcher, the general average is around 2,300 rpm for a 4-seam fastball and 2,500+ for a curveball. The relatively recent crackdown on pitchers using substances has had an impact of around 200 or so rpms less spin than in the years immediately prior although it’s rather widely variable by pitcher, of course.
Ball rpm is only something that has come up recently with cameras capable of taking sufficient frames per second to measure.
Have done a bit of googling and the best I can find is a report of Sky Sports had this facility in 2015. I can recall seeing it on a Test telecast from ENG though can’t recall the year, but about then. Moeen Ali was apparently bowling around 2,000-2,200rpm and Nathan Lyon 2,200-2,400. Graham Swan was reported at getting closer to 3,000.
Now these three are off spinners so it would be presumed that the big leg spinners e.g. Shane Warne and Stuart McGill would be higher again but the appropriate camera technology wasn’t available then.
Not sure of the physics but with spinners bowling 50-60mph then I would have thought they use more of their technique to rotate the ball rather than straight line speed seen in baseball.
Interesting. We have that tech (pitch analysis including rpms, rotational direction, speed, etc) down into your better high school baseball programs now. I wonder if the distance of the equipment to the bowler makes it that much harder in cricket. It’s usually some combo of optical and radar.
England/India tomorrow! It’s the rescheduling of a 5th Test match from last year. Bazball is about to be put to a more rigorous test (pun intended) although the real test (as noted above) is if England can keep it up overseas.
Foakes is out with COVID. Overton is also out. I assume they’re looking to shore up the bowling with Anderson. With bazball though, wouldn’t you rather have the explosive bat - especially with Foakes out? I would have gone with Anderson/Overton, but then again, I’m a newb, so what do I know?
So England came out bowling on a damp pitch and tore into India 98/5. Then two guys named Pant and Jadeja teamed up. 222 later (Pant with 146 from 111 - Jadeja at 83 still batting), India is back in good shape. Some rain cut the day short with an hour plus delay, but India stands at 338/7 (73 overs - 4.63RR).
Anderson got 3 of the early wickets to lead England, so I guess that was a good call to bring him on. Potts got 2 but gave up 85. Leach was ineffective and got shelled in 9 overs for 71 - 0 wickets.
Could be an interesting day tomorrow, since England will almost surely be chasing 350+ and maybe 400+.
For the series (going back to last year), England needs a win, India would settle for a draw, but look to be going for the win. They’ve been aggressive since lunch. Currently it’s 2-1-1 in India’s favor.
You know, it’s funny you say that. I’ve been noticing that the early order batters tend to be very cautious in general. Is that because they’re generally dealing with a new ball and their primary job is to wear the ball down for the bigger hitters a little down the line?
I mean, it’s not like baseball where you put your power hitters in the 3-4-5 slot so that when they hit the long bomb, there’s a better chance of somebody being on base to up the score.
I’d argue that it’s precisely the same reason that in baseball you don’t send your power hitters out as 1&2.
It’s about expectations and history.
If you are 5-50 and the #7 hits out, gets a quick half century and saves the innings then they are heroic.
If they hole out for a duck, then well what could you expect if the top order has failed?
But put that same #7 in at #1 for the next innings and almost regardless of their intent or instruction they don’t hit out EXCEPT in T20s or lesser extent ODIs when there is limited potential for the side to be bowled out in the allotted overs.
Now yes batting is more difficult at the start of the innings (things being equal).
The ball is new and hard. It will bounce and seam more than later. The pitch is most likely to respond predictably with movement and bounce. The bowlers are at their fittest. You are facing their best in the most conducive conditions.
If the top order can last long enough to take the shine off the ball, the sting out of the pitch and sap the energy out of the quick bowlers then whomever has the good fortune to be at the crease at that time is the most likely to profit under the gentler conditions.
It’s sort of counterintuitive that you can only play your natural game in your natural position but since it’s beginning in the 16th century that has been the psychology of batters with very few and no lasting exceptions.
I’m headed out and won’t be back until late Sunday night, so this’ll be it for me for a bit, but Bumrah has just set the all-time record for runs in a Test over with 35! (4, 5w, 7nb(!), 4, 4, 4, 6, 1) - Broad gets to the trivia question answer to “Who was bowling when Bumrah set the record?”.
Jadeja got to 104 before being bowled out, so that partnership from yesterday both got their century and between them account for 250 of India’s runs.
India all out for 416. RR of 4.9.
With Bazball and what appears to be a VERY batter friendly pitch, I can’t count England out of this all together, but they certainly have a huge hill to climb.
