19 needed off the last two overs, with 8 wickets down. Sam Curran playing out of his skin, but I honestly don’t think it’ll be enough!
I’m following on ball by ball text and I can feel my heart rate rising. Christ knows what the players’ must be. Two drops!
India’s fielding was like the Bad News Bears. Fortunate/unfortunate result for both teams. That last England wicket killed them. But really great series overall.
ETA: Does Curran regret not taking those singles? Seemed like Wood can hold his own in rotating the strike.
It’s difficult to tell, really, and hindsight is easy. The fact is, he did take the game deep and into the final over needing a getable total.
Apparently his previous best ODI score is 15, so 96* is a hell of a knock.
Now have a Kayo subscription and so have been able to follow these internationals much closer than was technically possible before. Been a good series.
Sydney Shires Grand Finals were played last weekend after widespread and heavy rain washed out all games in the Semi-Finals.
As #2 we needed to win vs the minor premiers, won the toss and sent them in on a near First Class standard pitch and quick outfield.
Rolled them for 138, and were 5/103 at stumps and looked in a reasonable position.
Then at the start of Day2 lost 4-22 and with our 10 & 11 at the crease needed 14. Then our #11 tearaway quick in a Boys Own Annual effort, having a season aggregate of 4 @ 0.5, facing their leading wicket taker with figures of 3/20 of 18 overs, clinically went 4,4,2 and we were in front.
With a lead of just 4 Epping batted again looking to set a target and knock us over cheaply to win outright. They knocked up a rapid 141 and left us 51 overs to get 137 which we did one down for the outright win and win on first innings. Premiers for the 15th time.
And one a personal milestone I have been called in as assistant scorer in the Sydney Premier Grade Grand Final (over 3 days) this weekend, possibly making me the first person ever to score both the 1st grade grand finals in the same season!
Did you miss a boundary in your otherwise excellent match report? Try not to do that at the weekend 
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There was a time when cricket scoring just meant scratching some marks in a consistent manner in a standard formatted book.
Now we do all those the scratches, plus linear score, plus live score, plus operating an electronic scoreboard and now livestreaming video. Missing a boundary is not an option. 
(yes, our #10 who is a reasonable bat scored a boundary before the bunny took matters firmly into his own hands)
LBW rule question:
I understand the logic of an LBW not being called if the ball is pitched inside the line of the leg stump. Makes perfect sense. However, it seems that sometimes an LBW isn’t called by the umpire if the ball is pitched outside the off stump, even if the ball is clearly headed onto the stumps. And when there is a video review, the analysis always shows “umpire’s call” when the ball is shown to impact outside the off stump. Is there a clear criteria for when this situation results or doesn’t result in an LBW being called? Also what is the rationale for this rule?
If the ball hits the pad outside off it can only be LBW if the Barstow not making a genuine attempt to play the ball.
All other necessary conditions apply of course.
I’m sure you know this, but you mean “outside” not “inside” in this sentence.
It applies to all batsmen, not just Bairstow. 
Strange autocorrect.
I will leave it to others to explain why the rule came to be this why - because I have no idea and would like to know, too! Except I believe it wasn’t all that long ago that you couldn’t be out lbw if hit outside the line, full stop - but they tweaked the rule to stop making it so easy for batsmen to simply pad the ball away (especially to spinners) all the time.
There’s a good article here on the whole evolution of the LBW law - pretty much constant debate since the game was invented.
The “out only if not offering a shot for balls hitting the batter outside off” clause came into being in 1980 as an amendment to the 1937 rule change that allowed batters to be out to balls pitching outside off.
The 1937 amendment, though more beneficial to bowlers, allowed batsmen to thrust their front leg outside the line of off stump to defend deliveries with the pad, a practice that grew increasingly prevalent in the 1950s and 1960s. The impact of the ball on the pad would be outside off stump, which eliminated the possibility of the lbw. After trials in Australia, the West Indies and England, the MCC in 1980 amended the lbw law to say that batsmen could be given out if the ball hit the pad outside off stump but was going on to hit the stumps, provided the batsman was not offering a shot. This is the version of the law as it stands today.
Reading that article, there’s no obvious reason why the law shouldn’t be symmetrical and apply the same rules to balls pitching outside leg. It seems that back in 1937 people basically couldn’t conceive of good, wicket taking deliveries that pitched on the leg side. But that’s a self-fulfililng prophecy - as the article says, permitting lbws from outside off soon led to plenty of bowlers who swing or spin the ball into the wickets from that side. As Shane Warne famously demonstrated to Mike Gatting, such balls can be bowled from the leg side too.
Yes, forgot the convention. For some reason, I think of “inside” as leg-side and “outside” as off-side.
Okay, so when the fielding team uses DRS to appeal for an LBW decision, and the ball is shown to pitch outside off-stump, there is no way to overturn the decision in favor of the fielding team, correct? And the “umpire’s call” in this case is the umpire’s determination that the batter was indeed making an attempt at striking the ball, which is purely a judgment call that cannot be overturned with DRS. Do I have this right?
The laws and terminology of LBW are tortuous.
But yes, a batsman can be given out to a delivery pitching outside off stump and considered to be going on to hit the stumps. A decision of not out could be overturned on referral. But the point of contact for the ball needs to hit the pad inside the line of the off stump.
If the contact is made outside the line of off stump the batsman can only be given out if not playing a shot.
The judgement call as to whether a batsman is playing a shot can’t really be answered thru DRS by any replay, alternative angle or technology. It is a question of intent and needs to be assessed in real time and the standing umpire is in by far the best, if not only position to assess that.
You also might recall that in the 1930s there was a thing called leg theory.
It has always been a concept in cricket that bowling at a batsman’s legs is defensive and not to be encouraged. Bowling at the off side gives the batsman every opportunity to use the bat to defend their wicket. If they chose or allowed their pads to defend their wicket they would become vulnerable to the LBW law since 1839.
There were any number of leg spin bowlers in the 1930s quite capable of knocking over the stumps with deliveries pitched wide outside leg stump. And they played on some apalling turning wet uncovered wickets. Of the Test Aussies Clarrie Grimmet, O’Malley, Bill O’Reilly etc.
The LBW has been gradually expanding in scope through the timespan of the game
Evolution of the LBW rule.
1774 the first lbw law was devised. “The striker is out if he puts his leg before the wicket with a design to stop the ball and actually prevent the ball from hitting it.” No mention of where the ball needed to pitch or hit the batsman, and the phrase “design to stop the ball” indicated that the batsman’s action might have to be intentional.
1839 the MCC decided the delivery needed to pitch in line with the stumps for a batsman to be lbw. If the ball landed outside off or leg stump, the batsman could use his pads as a second line of defence to protect his stumps.
1888 a proposal was sent to the MCC for consideration saying that where the ball pitched should be irrelevant for an lbw. The MCC did not amend the law, it condemned the use of pads as a method of defence.
1902 , the MCC voted on whether to give the batsman lbw irrespective of where the ball pitched, but the motion did not receive the necessary two-thirds majority to change the law, though it did have a simple majority.
1937 , the MCC passed the alteration to the law and batsmen could now be given out even if the ball was pitching outside off stump.
1980 the lbw law was amended to say that batsmen could be given out if the ball hit the pad outside off stump but was going on to hit the stumps, provided the batsman was not offering a shot.
So the World Test Championship Final is coming up between NZ and India in a few weeks. Can someone explain why it will be just one match? Considering that the “tournament” is years-long, it seems to me that it should be a series (especially when considering that the qualification was based on performances in series). I expected that both sides would get in some test matches in advance of the match, but it looks like only NZ will have played 2 actual tests in England before the Final. Does this put India at a disadvantage? Also, what happens in the case of a draw? Do they split the championship?
This concept has been floated for decades and only just got a start.
So baby steps. Yes a three game series would be better either at neutral venue or one home game each and the final on neutral. But the Test schedule doesn’t allow it and the WTC doesn’t have the prestige (yet) to get the players and time away from the IPL.
The two best teams are in the final and fully deserve to be.
Australia would have made the final if they hadn’t pulled out of the South African tour. The Safffers are crap.
But India monstered Australia on our own decks with some serously credentially players missing and the Kiwis are a thoroughly good team and with a bit more luck might have made history as the WCC and WTC champions.
In theory the UK wickets are closest to what the Kiwis home decks in behavior and the Indians would have been be coming in off playing T20s on roads in the (now postponed) IPL.
Not sure what the players will do now or even whether the the Indian team will be allowed into the UK if COVID-19 is still rampaging in their country.
A nice first day for New Zealand and Devon Conway’s remarkable story continues.
The indefatigable Jarrod Kimber has put out a nice little video giving a bit more context on why Conway’s 136* on debut is so improbable.
Yes, New Zealand did well - a good start, a minor wobble and a good recovery. And everyone loves a century on debut story.
Off the pitch, another debut has gone… less well after Ollie Robinson had a good day on the pitch and then a bad day off it when some pretty unpleasant (i.e. racist, sexist) old tweets surfaced. You can see a handful of them here.
Robinson has released an apology, which is an apology but also stresses that he has changed and grown since then and, in the classic formulation, "This is not the man I am.:
“On the biggest day of my career so far I’m embarrassed about the racist and sexist tweets that I posted over eight years ago,” Robinson said in a statement. “I want to make it clear that I’m not racist and I’m not sexist.
“I deeply regret my actions and I’m ashamed of making such remarks. I was thoughtless and irresponsible and regardless of my state of mind at the time my actions were inexcusable.
“Since that period I’ve matured as a person and fully regret the tweets. Today should be about my efforts on the field and my pride at making my Test debut, but my thoughtless behaviour in the past has tarnished this. In the last few years I’ve worked hard to turn my life around. I’ve considerably matured as an adult. I would like to unreservedly apologise to anyone I’ve offended, my teammates and the game as a whole.”
There’s also some indication that he was generally acknowledged to have been a bit of a dick back then:
Robinson, who has thrived since joining Sussex in 2015, has previously acknowledged that some of his conduct during the period in which he sent the tweets was unacceptable. He had been released by Kent in 2012 and two years later was also released by Yorkshire for what his coach, Jason Gillespie, called “consistently displaying behaviour that isn’t professional”.
I know it’s always possible that his apology and his claims of transformation are just public relations nonsense, but I think that this sort of change is completely believable. I know, because that could have been me.
If Twitter had been around when I was 20 years old, I could have, and probably would have, sent some tweets very similar to the ones that Robinson is in trouble for, or even worse. I was, in my high school years and just after, a pretty typical product of my almost all white, relatively socially conservative Australian high school. I made disparaging jokes about women, often suggesting that they were only good for sexual gratification; I was homophobic; and I was a purveyor of the low-level, causal racism that is common in the broad Australian middle class - complaints about Aboriginal people as lazy welfare recipients, asking why those Asian immigrants couldn’t learn English or go back where they came from, etc. etc. Almost all of my high school friends were the same.
By the time I was 25, all of that horrified me.
I think we need to be willing to forgive in cases like Robinson’s, because if you end up wearing the scarlet letter or being shunned by social progressives even after you’ve changed, and if it costs you your friends and your job and your place in polite society, it’s more likely to drive you back into the fold of the bigots and impolite society. If we really do want to encourage people to stop being racist, sexist, and homophobic, we have to accept that people can, in fact, stop being those things, and welcome the transformation.
I think it’s pretty likely that he has grown up and learnt a lot since he sent those tweets. It’s seems clear he had general attitude problems alongside his predilection for witless, laddish “jokes” and prejudice, and that he’s rethought his attitude to a few things. And I agree that if/when people do change and improve, that should be recognised and welcomed. It’s a shame that the apology sounded/read so much like it had been written by the ECB for him to read out rather than being his own words (it definitely had that PR-speak style to it).
As to forgiveness, I think it is fair to set a bar in terms of remorse, penitence, atonement before extending it . I’m not the best person to judge where that bar is, but I was struck by this comment from someone more affected by this kind of behaviour than me:
“On the subject of Robinson and his tweets, as an ethnic minority I am becoming tired of the meaningless apologies and the frankly insulting “I am not a racist” excuses,” writes Umran Sarwar. “It’s about the flippant mindset of treating people differently and as the other. The inside joke of the superior race and laughing at Jonny foreigner to make yourself feel better. The cookie cutter non-apology clearly not written by him - lifting a cut and paste ‘there is no place for this’ is just banal and insincere. He needs help yes but the pity should be extended to the ethnic minorities that he has insulted and not to him. He needs to get help, not be dragged kicking and screaming because he has been found out. Until he does so he is an embarrassment to the English shirt and it is not the ethnic minority players to educate him. He should be nowhere near the England team until he gets the help he obviously needs.”