More cricket questions

The Game Room
1

Been saving these up. Since I played baseball my entire youth and grew up a baseball fan, I’m discovering so many interesting similarities and contrasts between the two sports. But that’s for another thread.

  1. Edges are such a big part of the game, and sometimes huge wild cards in game outcomes. Do batsmen intentionally use the edges of their bats, or are they mostly accidental?

  2. Why don’t I see more dynamic fielding? I would think that the batsman has a mental picture of the field to know where to aim. Why not shift fielders while the bowler is running up? Is it not allowed? By the way, this is the part that always impresses me the most. The catches and throwing accuracy are spectacular when compared to baseball, especially when you might have to wait an hour or 2 between legitimate chances.

  3. I love the technology used in the game, but its use seems to vary. Do all of the federations basically agree on the types used? The LBW tracker is particularly interesting as I could see some debate on how the unknown remaining path of the ball is calculated. Does it account for all the various possible spins affecting the ball?

  4. When the bowler is running up, sometimes the batsman on the bowler’s end takes a lead, i.e. takes step or two away from his stumps to get a head start. Could the bowler swipe the stumps instead of tossing the ball and make him out?

  5. Does anyone think that the DL method is a fair way to decide a game? I think it’s ridiculous.

  6. England just toured Australia and New Zealand for 4 months. Are their players expected to stay for the whole tour, or do some shuffle back and forth? Do their families accompany them?

More to come

2

Forgot one:

  1. Final score. I get that the chasing team will win “by X wickets”, since the run amount would be meaningless. However, for limited over cricket, wouldn’t it be better described to “win by X balls”? That would give a better picture of what actually happened. What’s interesting is that if the chasing team wins on its final ball, the score then is described as winning “by X runs”. That makes no sense to me, and would be confusing to someone who had no other knowledge of the game.
3

Let’s see how many of these I can answer, although it has been a while since I followed cricket regularly:

  1. There used to be a law saying, “Any significant movement by any fielder after the ball comes into play, and before the ball reaches the striker, is unfair. In the event of such unfair movement, either umpire shall call and signal Dead ball”; however, it was revised a few years ago. There was a notorious incident during a test match between England and India in 1987.

  2. Yes, the bowler can attempt to run out the non-striker.

  3. Say what you want about DL, but I have yet to find anyone with a better alternative. Straight runs per over didn’t work very well; that’s why they created DL in the first place.

  4. I have seen more and more scorecards from one-day matches say, “Team X won by Y wickets with Z balls remaining.” It is helpful to know both. I don’t think I’ve seen one where the side batting second winning on the last ball is listed as winning “by X runs,” especially as that is how it is reported if the side batting first wins.

4

I’ll try and fill in the gaps:

  1. Generally no - when the ball hits the edge the difference between a small deflection and a large one is less than anyone can control accurately. A batsman looking to deflect the ball will usually twist the bat so the face is near-parallel to the ball direction and then play off the face for better control. (Put another way, if batsmen could swing accurately enough to get the degree of edge they wanted, they’d just hit everything out of the middle).

  2. There’s no “official” set of technology (though the game is rapidly converging on a de-facto standard) - it’s agreed between the teams (or their national organizations) for each series. For example, India refused to use ball-tracking technology until quite recently.

  3. Historically yes, but with the rise of cheap intercontinental air travel and the practice of using separate squads for the different forms of the game it’s been relaxed a bit. (I think the England players who aren’t in the one-day squad went home between the Australia and New Zealand Test series). I believe families are allowed to join them for part of the tour.

  4. I’m with That Don Guy - I’ve never seen a scorecard where a chasing team was officially described as winning “by X runs”, even off the last ball.

  5. DL is notorious, but there’s no simple, fair way to determine a target score when a game has to be shortened part-way through. Read up about the infamous “lowest-scoring-overs” rule in the 1992 World Cup for a truly bad system.

5

  1. Not if they don’t want their coached to yell at them. Edges are notoriously unpredictable.

  2. Moving is…complicated. Going forward from your position is normal and unremarkable. Moving sideways is iffy and moving at all when you are outside the view of the batter in his normal standing postion will get you an earful.

  3. Its a matter of some dispute. But the trajectory calculators are pretty good.

  4. Knowing as Mankading, after the India player, Vinoo Mankad. Legal, but convention dictates that you warn him the first time.

  5. As long as it keeps South Africa down, its awesome.:smiley:

  6. Depends on the country and the tour. In England, as far as I know, many of the foreign players all tend to have at least some sort of personal accommodation already since so many play in England for counties. I believe England players when touring South Africa stay with their parents,;). In the sub-continent, the tourists tend to have a base camp and travel to match locations, while in Australia they tend to travel afresh.

Families presence are typically a big source of tension between the players and boards and these days its the subject of contract and negotiation. Probably won’t be there throughout. On the other hand, everyone seems to bring families to the Caribbean tours for some reason.

  1. Its the way its always been done and balls remaining are not very meaningful.
6

If you are David Gower and you are batting in the 1985 Ashes series, it’s your primary source of runs.

7

Based on the responses so far, it seems there are quite a few ‘unwritten’ rules. I can’t understand why “mankading” is even a thing. The batsman on the bowler’s side is obviously trying to gain a running advantage. The bowler should be able swipe the stumps without warning. Maybe award the batting side a run if he tries and fails.

I also found the responses to the shifting of fielders somewhat vague. Is it allowed or not? What does “will get you and earful” mean? I wouldn’t mind getting screamed at if I make a catch because I shifted.

New question: I feel like the criteria for a bowled ball to be considered a ‘wide’ is quite favorable to the bowler, especially for height. The ball seems to have to go well over the batsman’s head for it to be called. Yet, there seem to be many runs scored at the end of limited-over matches for chasing teams. Teams routinely score 20+ runs with just 2 overs remaining to achieve their chase totals. Why can’t bowlers just throw fast high balls at the end to eliminate or at least minimize the chance of a boundary? Is it difficult to do? Obviously I never played the game, so I may just not grasp the difficulty.

8

You’re not wrong - the fanbase is pretty split on this. Traditionally, mankading is ‘ungentlemanly’ - and Mankad was far from the first to do it. Personally, I think mankading is legal and a legitimate way of getting someone out, warning or not. The batsmen are stealing a march, after all, and there should be a risk to that.

Few things to bear in mind.

Firstly, the criteria for limited overs games are actually much tighter than they are for first class games, precisely to try and force bowlers to bowl balls that are at least reasonable hittable. Secondly, bouncers (short, fast balls) are limited to two an over, and they are called wide if they are too high (they often look higher than they are because the batsmen is ducking).
Thirdly, a fast high ball that isn’t well directed is actually relatively easy to smack to the boundary - it’s already got a lot of speed and height on it, so often all it needs is a bit of bat and it’ll go off for 6, especially in one-day game with shorter boundaries.

The current best ball to bowl at the death seems to be full and wide outside off stump, just inside the wide line, varying pace so the batsman isn’t sure exactly when it’ll arrive. Of course, if they are expecting that, the bowler might bowl something else to keep him on his toes.

9

The mankad falls under the ‘Spirit of the Game’, unwritten rules if you will steming from the deep past where we all pretend the players are all landed English gentry whiling away a pleasant Saturday afternoon just down from the Manor House. :stuck_out_tongue:

But in all seriousness it is considered bad sportsmanship, to run someone out in this fashion without first warning them. “I say old bean, you appear to be stepping quite a long way out of your crease prior to me delivering the ball to your fellow on strike. I unfortunately must insist you cease and desist henceforth, or you will leave me with no alternative but to break the bails on my next delivery and issue an appeal to the umpire” (Or in modern patalance, ”hoi prick, get back in your crease or I’ll run you out”)

You have to separate lateral movement from coming forward here. It is a basic of cricket training, that apart from a few static positions, a fielder should take a few steps in as the ball is delivered, hopefully being on the balls of your feet and preparing you to move if the ball comes your way. So moving directly towards the batsmen is encouraged.

However, lateral movement is a different kettle of fish. I was actually surprised, based on The Don Guys post, to discover that the law that used to prevent this has been removed. I’ve had a look (Google MCC Law 28.6), and its still there in some form, the (somewhat abridged by me) wording used is “Any movement by any fielder…is unfair except:
A) minor adjustments,
B) movement towards the striker which does not significantly alter their position,
C) anticipating of a likely stroke to be played.

The penalty for doing so is the umpires are entitled to call the delivery a dead ball. In any case if the batsmen sees a fielder moving laterally they are quite entitled to simply step away and not face the delivery, which would obviously remove any ‘surprise’ value the fielder was seeking to gain.

Just out of interest, the major change seem to have been the third exclusion, which was introduced to allow the fielding team to deal with some of the more unorthodox shots coming into play, like the reverse sweep, ramp shot, etc. Plus while rare the occasional batsman who has reversed his stance (switch hit) mid-delivery. I seem to recall it was Kevin Pieterson who first pulled the trick out of the bag.