At 14:30 is the incident every Pakistani wants to talk about.
There is no reason why the batter needs to leave his crease. So all’s fair about it to me. In fact, it should be an actual bowler’s responsibility, as far as I’m concerned. But sure about the specific incident you’re referring to. Seems there was one in a woman’s game recently.
Why did the batter leave her crease? She was trying to shorten the distance of her run. That’s trying to steal a run.
She left the crease after the bowler would normally have bowled the ball.
To me this is like pretending to serve in tennis repeatedly to see which way the receiver moves. Then randomly serving on one of three attempts.
Yeah, I acknowledge that this one has some “grey area”. But then why was she allowed to do it? You would think the rule book would not allow that sort of run out. But in most of these situations, in which the runner already leaves the crease while the bowler is still running up, it’s fair game. For a bowler to not bowl, and reverse direction, I can see your point. But that should written into the rules then.
I don’t know the law in tennis, but if you try this in Badminton it would be a fault and immediate loss of point (then again, in Badminton the receiver has to stay still until the serve is hit, too). Either way - laws of the game.
Having reviewed the latest incident, it is a pretty egregious example in terms of how late the bowler left it before turning round and taking the bails off - definitely a ‘gotcha’. But yeah, up to the batter to make sure that doesn’t happen. Especially when there have been several precedents, so it’s not like it’s a surprise that this could happen. Just stay in your ground until the ball has been bowled (and keep your eye on the bowler) and you have no issue. And I say all this as an England fan.
Seems like I’m on the wrong side of history on this.
While I’m a fan of many sports for many decades, I am generally not concerned about history as precedent for fair play. To me, logic and fairness matter more than anything. Now, I acknowledge that many actions are frowned upon. But, aside from the legal actions that can lead to injuring a player, I think all is fair game. So (even if it were legal) a chop block in football would be off-limits. Throwing a 100 mph fastball at a batter’s head is not copacetic. But there are all kinds of tricks or “dekes” that fielders use in baseball to get runners out, and they all generally play on the carelessness or laziness of the runner. To me, Mankading is this, but even more fair. In the case of cricket, every run matters. Because the runner is getting an advantage to score more runs.
An analysis showed the batter had left the crease 72 times before the ball was bowled. So, she was a serial offender - not a one off. Leaving the crease early definitely give the batting team a distinct advantage.
For the 100 codgers on the planet who still care, Yorkshire were relegated on the last day of the County season as Warwickshire defended 138 to win by three runs against Hampshire.
Probably the only 100 people on the planet who agree with me on the Mankading issue 
So what is your rationale? That getting a head start is not an advantage, or that it’s just not sporting to knock off the bails since “everyone does it”, or something else?
I (vaguely) care, but as this is the International cricket thread, I didn’t post about it 
To be clear - just messing, obviously a reasonable (tiny) hijack and not worth starting a separate thread. I don’t follow the county championship closely, and support Somerset and Gloucestershire (my local teams) when I do, but I kind of feel like this is karma for Yorkshire (vis-a-vis the racism scandal). Plus not being a Yorkshireman, always happy to see them knocked down a peg or two.
So while I was “away” paying attention to baseball, England won the T20 series with Pakistan 4-3. We had 4 failed chases, and 2 of the 3 successful chases went to the last over. It was, by most accounts an exciting series. The consensus is that Pakistan has some fairly serious batting issues to solve and quickly.
England is next up for 3 against Australia (10/9, 10/12, and 10/14) as a World Cup tune-up - which starts on the 16th.
Meanwhile, India has a 2-0 lead over SA with 1 to play (tomorrow) in their World Cup tune-ups.
Can anyone explain what the (N) or (D/N) means next to a fixture in the espncricinfo website? Are these the equivalent of friendlies or something?
Night and Day/Night
Night = match begins after sunset e.g. 6:30pm to 10pm for a T20
Day/Night = match begins before sunset but ends after sunset. e.g. a T20 that starts at 4pm and ends at 7:30
(in Pakistan in September)
Er, excuse me, this is the cricket thread - that will be 9/10, 12/10, and 14/10 please .
I didn’t follow the Eng/Pak series closely, but it seemed to me the overall result was a fair reflection of where both teams are (which probably means neither will be among the favourites for the world cup - then again, no-one is looking invincible at the moment, so who knows?). If only because England were better able to bat themselves out of trouble, albeit not too consistently. But that’s the nature of the format - they do seem to have enough depth of batting to be able to afford to be expansive from the off. Whereas when Pakistan lost their openers, they floundered a bit. I gather they took some criticism for being too conservative, especially in the last game which they lost by a distance with a few wickets in hand.
I mean I can see you giving up when you need 65 off 12, but Pakistan seemed to be aiming to bat out the overs long before they were anything like mathematically eliminated.
Never! I’ve learned to use “are” instead of “is” in these threads. I’m slowly picking up the lingo, but I do have standards and you can have my mm/dd when you pry it from my cold dead fingers. 
@Mighty_Mouse - makes complete sense, thanks for the information - and now I do see some matches are called “warm-up” matches - which I assume don’t count for standings.
International T20 ENG v AUS at Perth
England
208-6 (20 overs) Hales 84 Buttler 68 Ellis (3-20) Stoinis (1-36)
Australia
200-9 (20 overs) Warner 73 Marsh 36 Wood (3-34) Curran (2-35)
In a pretty good example of the tonkfest that is T20 cricket ENG prevail based on a very good start from Hall and Buttler. ENG probably should have got to 220+ but 208 is a solid target. In textbook fashion AUS lost an early wicket and were always chasing. At the 14 over mark AUS were within striking distance but 3 wickets worse and that was it in the wash.
I have a irritating itch with these phenomenal air dried bats they use which allows a good length ball to be hoiked way, way up into the 2nd tiers of the grandstand but also a dinky chip off the leading edge which crosses the roped in boundary just 61m from the bat but doesn’t reach the fence similarly scoring 6. It’s not unfair, the equipment and the venue are equal for all sides but we set the boundary 60m for the U16s.
Also my heart bleeds for the junior coach trying to teach technique and application while their U12s charges see buckets of fame and riches being the reward for stepping back legside to a yorker on middle stump and twatting it over the cover fence. [shrug]
The AUS T20 line seems about ready for a generational change. There is a general view that they cannot go the World Cup playing both Finch and Smith and quite possibly not playing either. I’m happy enough with Finch heading into retirement and Smudge focusing on the Tests … but any team in which Steve Smith isn’t good enough just feels wrong.
What did you make of England not appealing for obstructing the field? I didn’t like the way Buttler handled it, to be honest - fair enough the part about he didn’t see it properly because he was watching the ball, but not a fan of him saying 1) he basically didn’t want the home crowd on his back (away teams need to thrive on that sort of thing) and 2) he might have appealed had it been in the World Cup itself. The latter smacks of double standards - either you want to win a match that way, or you don’t. This wasn’t a friendly or a testimonial, it was a match in which you precisely should be playing in exactly the same way as a World Cup, that’s what it’s for. Far better, in my view, to just stick to you didn’t see it, that’s more of a power move - the unspoken implication being that you didn’t need to ‘resort’ to such an appeal in order to win.
Well I was rather darker on Wade for obstructing the field.
That wouldn’t have been acceptable in an under-age game.
And as hard as Wade plays the game, that was a brain fade and not something I would have expected of him.
It would have been better, IMHO and in the obfuscations of cricket etiquette, for one of the other ENG fielders to have appealed, the umpires would have consulted, maybe even invoked DRS and they’d have given Wade out then for Buttler as captain call him back.
A clear and emphatic warning to anybody that if/when it gets to the World Cup, even right at the pointy end and you, or one of your mates, or one of the guys watching, tries anything similar you are on your bike, son.