Oddest game you've seen in person

The Game Room
21

I was at the 2006 England v Pakistan Test Cricket Match at the Oval on Day 4 and saw the first game decided by forfeit in the history of the sport.

England were batting in the afternoon session and, after inspecting the ball, the umpires decided that Pakistan had been tampering with it illegally and awarded England 5 penalty runs. This was signalled by the umpires but not announced to the crowd. Many of us didn’t pick up what was happening immediately.

At the end of the tea interval, the Pakistan team refused to return to the pitch for an hour in protest against the ball tampering charge - but in the meantime, the umpires had asked them to return to the field and then decided that the game was over, with England winning by forfeit on the grounds that there was no team to play against. All of these were not clearly announced in the ground either - I had to phone my Dad, who was watching on the TV at home, to find out what was going on. Some 2 hours after the game had “ended” we were finally told on the PA system that we should go home as there would be no more cricket that day (at this point, there was still some argument about whether the decision would be reversed and the game would continue)

Subsequently, the game, after being awarded to England, was for a short period, declared a draw before reverting to an England win in the record books, after it was pointed out that the forfeit decision had been made in accordance with the laws of cricket, so there were no grounds for it to be called a draw. The head umpire was banned for the remainder of his contract and thrown out of international cricket thereafter.

So I saw the first and only time a Test match has been won by forfeit, a game that has had its result changed in the record books and then back again and an incident that ended the career of an international umpire.

22

I don’t understand why the umpire was banned. He and the rest of the umpires made the correct, legal decisions that day, didn’t they? Was he banned because lack of communication caused so much confusion?

By the way, I find it interesting that this was the first forfeit in the history of cricket. The sport has a very long history. Had it never happened before that a team failed to show up, or refused to take the field, or ran out of players due to injuries?

23

The “revert to the last inning” rule was abolished in 1978.

24

I went to a Lancaster Jethawks (minor league baseball) game to seasons ago.

We got there early so that my nephew could watch batting practice. Then they watered the infield. Then they watered the infield again. Then they came out and tried to spread stuff on the infield to soak up the water. Then they called off the game due to muddy conditions.

25

I was at an Indians-Tigers game in 1958. It was a back and forth battle that went into the tenth inning. Vic Power, who was fast but not a particularly adept base stealer, had stolen home in the eighth inning. In the bottom of the tenth, the score was 9-9, the bases were loaded and (I think) two were out with Cleveland’s clean-up hitter Rocky Colavito at the plate. He’d already hit two home runs that day and the crowd including a nine-year old boy sitting by third base were yelling for another one. Instead Power stole home a second time for the winning run. That was even greater.

26

I saw a game (match? I dunno even what it’s called) of curling once. Just … odd.

27

Kinda odd, but more controversial. Not really a game either, but since its sports related, I’m gonna tell you about it…

I was at the F1 in Indy when Schumacher led nearly the whole thing, slowing down on the last corner of the last lap for a Ferrari One-Two photo finish and Barrichello slipped by for the win. Shit hit the fans for the locals the next day, crying “Foul!” and “Fix!”. I remember some grumbling that F1 should be banned at the Brickyard for that. The local newspapers were certainly stirring the shit up.

28

It’s a fair question - one that the wiki article on this incident doesn’t really clear up. The insinuation is that the umpire in question, Darrell Hair, was racially discriminatory in his treatment of certain teams and this incident was a pretext to get rid of him, even though he was a highly ranked umpire and he officiated within the rules of the game. It’s interesting that the vote on whether to keep him on the board of umpires split neatly on racial lines - England, Australia and New Zealand were all for keeping him in (and have the fewest black or Asian players) and everyone else (including the whole subcontinent, South Africa and the West Indies) voted against him.

The whole incident wound up being very controversial - people had their own opinions on whether the ball had been tampered with, some for and some against, but the guy who counted (the match ref, who looks after all the overarching disciplinary issues that happen in a Test match) said that Hair was wrong and that the ball was fine - even though all the other ICC match officials testified at the later hearing that the markings were, in their opinions, evidence of tampering.

Hair was a controversial figure in many respects. He no-balled one of the best bowlers in the world for throwing (you have to bowl with a straight arm in cricket) and wasn’t afraid of making the big decisions. In some respects, I think that there were some in the game waiting to get him and this was the event that they used to do it. I still don’t know whether there was any cheating going on in that game - given that England, at the point at which the penalty runs were added, were hitting the ball around the park, if there was cheating going on, it wasn’t very effective.

I got it wrong when I said he never umpired again - he wound up doing two more matches after he served his ban and went on a re-education course, before he threw it in himself.

Wiki article is here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_tampering_controversy_in_August_2006

ETA: On your second question - at Test match level, no one has had to give a game up to the opposition before, so at top international level, this really was unique (I’d imagine the closest they’ll have come is England v South Africa in the late 30s - the Test in question was timeless, i.e. they’d play as many days as required to get a result, only it was the end of the tour and England needed to get the boat home, so the match had to be stopped; both sides agreed a draw though, rather than England award the match to SA by not turning up on the morning of their departure). I’ll bet it’s happened at lower levels of cricket, that one team didn’t turn up or come back out after an interval, or other events happened. I’d have to trawl through Wisden to find out, I think.

29

It had to be Villanova over Georgetown, 1985 NCAA Final Game. “The game is often cited among the greatest upsets in college basketball history. This Villanova team remains the lowest-seeded team to win the tournament.” - I watched the game on TV at Kelly’s Pub in Chicago. The patrons went bat-shit crazy. I walked in before the game because the owners of the bar had a poster in their window which read, “Villanova West”. I went to DePaul, up the street.

30

Was at game four of the Stanley Cup Finals in 1988. Edmonton at Boston. Game was cancelled in the second period due to a power failure, teams were tied at three. Series returned to Edmonton where the Oilers won the fifth game for a four game sweep.

31

I have played Fizzball:

32

Two at Busch Stadium in St. Louis (the new one).

July 19, 2006, the weather was clear and hot. No significant weather was predicted, we had tickets to the game, all seemed well. As we arrived at our seats, there was a big puff of dust (from the big pit behind the stadium where half the old stadium had resided) and people started running for shelter. At first I thought there was a fireworks accident or something. Then I looked northeast and saw the clouds. A freak storm system had developed in central Illinois, then moved southwest straight through St. Louis. The resulting storm has it’s own Wikipedia section: St. Louis derecho. Hurricane force winds, massive widespread power outages, driving rains that soaked everybody, even those under cover. The tarp over the infield kept blowing up. For a brief time they had groundskeepers out there trying to hold it down, then they gave up and let it blow away.

The weird thing about the game is that they actually played it.

The other weird one was a few years ago, Cardinals vs. Mets. 20 innings. The weirdest part about that one was that my wife actually agreed to stay for the entire thing. I offered to leave several times (concessions close after the 7th, and we were very hungry), but she kept saying “well, we’ve made it this far…”