Surly Cricket Thread

[APMP 688]

Been a while since we had a cheating scandal in cricket. It even made deadspin. And of course it was Australia.

 

https://deadspin.com/why-crickets-ball-tampering-scandal-is-such-a-big-deal-1824154548

 

One year bans for Smith and Warner, 9 months for the knucklehead who tried to hide the sandpaper in his pants after being caught scuffing the ball. Smith is going enough and good enough to come back from this, but I'm thinking he'll never be captain again.

 

I expect that India will pull away in terms of being the dominant team over the next year, with South Africa comfortably in second.

[SKJ 1317]

What the fuck?

I mean, cricket?

Who even knows what the fuck those dodos are doing out there

[satyanash 15355]

Knuckleheads, the lot of 'em. Steve Smith is the best Test batsman in the world, there was no need to try this nonsense.

[satyanash 15355]

Australia's head coach just resigned

 

[Bort 9]

The punishments handed out were way over the top. Other players, such as the current captain of South Africa, have copped a 1 game ban and a fine, yet these guys get a full year suspension. 

[APMP 688]

The punishments handed out were way over the top. Other players, such as the current captain of South Africa, have copped a 1 game ban and a fine, yet these guys get a full year suspension. 

Cricket Australia trying to say cheating is not our standard (just chickenshit underarm bowling is)

[Bort 9]

5 hours ago, APMP said:

12 hours ago, Bort said:

The punishments handed out were way over the top. Other players, such as the current captain of South Africa, have copped a 1 game ban and a fine, yet these guys get a full year suspension. 

Cricket Australia trying to say cheating is not our standard (just chickenshit underarm bowling is)

Underarm bowling was poor sportsmanship. Not cheating. 

[APMP 688]

Underarm bowling was poor sportsmanship. Not cheating. 

Right, cheating is not their standard, just shitty sportsmanship is

[satyanash 15355]

12 hours ago, Bort said:

The punishments handed out were way over the top. Other players, such as the current captain of South Africa, have copped a 1 game ban and a fine, yet these guys get a full year suspension. 

A lot of Indian players are tweeting out support for the banned Aussie players. They seem to agree.

 

[Bort 9]

5 minutes ago, APMP said:

Right, cheating is not their standard, just shitty sportsmanship is

Pretty much, although in fairness that particular incident was like 40 years ago

[wood 11747]

Idk a lot about cricket, but I enjoy watching it from time to time on Willow. Figgered out quite a bit just doing that. Fun game to watch imho, & I love the passion of the fans. Good stuff.

tl;dr: IN.

[satyanash 15355]

Chennai in a winning position against Hyderabad in the IPL Championship Final.

Shane Watson producing a match-winning knock.

[APMP 688]

Monstrous innings

[satyanash 15355]

Turning point of the IPL Final: Shane Watson goes berzerk

Edited May 28, 2018 by satyanash

[UDontKnow 10557]

On 3/29/2018 at 4:39 AM, SKJ said:

What the fuck?

I mean, cricket?

Who even knows what the fuck those dodos are doing out there

[ImissWallyPryor 9046]

We are at an Indian (dot) restaurant last night, and they had some cricket game (match?) on the tv. They kept showing a trophy that presumably went to the winner, so it must have been important, right?. All I could think about was how flawed these guys’ swings and fielding skills were, and that none of them would stand a chance if they tried playing NAIA baseball. 

That’s all I got out of it. 

[Bort 9]

I doubt a MLB player would stand a chance if they tried playing low-level cricket either. 

[Cheeseweasel 26439]

7 hours ago, ImissWallyPryor said:

We are at an Indian (dot) restaurant last night, and they had some cricket game (match?) on the tv. They kept showing a trophy that presumably went to the winner, so it must have been important, right?. All I could think about was how flawed these guys’ swings and fielding skills were, and that none of them would stand a chance if they tried playing NAIA baseball. 

That’s all I got out of it. 

Apples vs. hand grenades. 

You swing a baseball bat to advance a ball within a 90 degree area. Cricket is 360 degrees and you are protecting the wickets. A baseball curves in the air. Now imagine if pitchers could throw it in the dirt and still get strikes. Games would end up 0-0 in 9 innings. 

Fielding is completely different. No gloves (except for wicket keepers) and the ball is HARD AS FUCK. 

[ImissWallyPryor 9046]

I know elite athletes when I see them. I didn’t. 

[UDontKnow 10557]

18 hours ago, Bort said:

I doubt a MLB player would stand a chance if they tried playing low-level cricket either. 

This is the absolute truth. Cricket requires an unappreciated level of fitness - unless of course you are Inzi the Aloo. But that fat fuck, despite setting the records for most wickets via run out, could maneuver well enough to hit for 6s.

2 hours ago, ImissWallyPryor said:

I know elite athletes when I see them. I didn’t. 

Lulz, he says he knows. Ignorant post is ignorant. 

 

[satyanash 15355]

7 hours ago, ImissWallyPryor said:

I know elite athletes when I see them.

We're talking about MLB baseball. You probably don't, unless Pablo Sandoval became Bo Jackson overnight and I somehow missed it.

Let me know when their outfielders ditch the giant-ass gloves they apparently need to catch routine balls.

Edited June 1, 2018 by satyanash

[ImissWallyPryor 9046]

I don't know what trophy they were playing for.  The sound was off on the tv, but it was still big enough to be on television.  Athletically, they appeared to be one step above men's slow pitch softball. Maybe the blindfolded guy was injured.  And regarding the oversized gloves worn by MLB outfielders, the guys I was watching weren't athletic enough to get there, so it don't make a shit. 

[ImissWallyPryor 9046]

On ‎5‎/‎31‎/‎2018 at 9:10 AM, Cheeseweasel said:

Apples vs. hand grenades. 

You swing a baseball bat to advance a ball within a 90 degree area. Cricket is 360 degrees and you are protecting the wickets. A baseball curves in the air. Now imagine if pitchers could throw it in the dirt and still get strikes. Games would end up 0-0 in 9 innings. 

Fielding is completely different. No gloves (except for wicket keepers) and the ball is HARD AS FUCK. 

There are certain fundamentals of swinging a bat, club, axe, whatever that are universal.  I saw some of the same flaws I commented on watching Class A HS baseball playoff highlights earlier this week.  Like when I told my wife that a deep fly ball would have been a HR if the kid didn't open up so much on his swing (she was impressed with my analysis).  I saw the same shit in this high level cricket match. 

Sorry to offend all the cricket fans.  Both your sport and athletes are fucking awesome!

[APMP 688]

 

 

 

 

There are certain fundamentals of swinging a bat, club, axe, whatever that are universal.

 

Umm, no. Unless you mean fundamentals like don't drop the bat. Having played both sports competitively in school, I can tell you that many fundamentals of a good baseball hitting and good cricket batting are OPPOSITES of each other. Here's a quick sampling.

 

1. In baseball you're trying to hit pitches that are in the strike zone and are conditioned to leave pitches outside the strike zone. In cricket, you often don't try to hit hard the balls that are going to clatter into the wicket if you miss, but you will swing freely at balls that will miss the wicket. In short, baseball players swing at strikes and leave balls, whereas cricket players swing at balls but will be far more cautious swinging at strikes. In baseball terms, imagine that you're out if you swing and miss at a ball in the strike zone but you can defensively knock it aside (e.g., bunt it) without penalty, and you only get to bat once, so if you're out that's it for the whole game.

 

2. Baseball hitters try to put the ball in play, into a quarter circle (it's a 90 degree span between the baselines). Anything else is useless, and a foul ball. Conversely, because you can hit the ball in any direction to score in cricket, most runs are scored at angles that are foul balls in baseball. So, while cricket players are certainly capable of hitting the ball into places a baseball player would, they are often trying to hit "foul balls."

 

3. A good baseball swing usually has little foot movement and a clean swing plane through the zone with a mostly horizontal bat. Because you don't move the feet much at all, the angle of the bat and extension in the arms are varied to get to pitches at the corners. A good cricket batsman will act very differently. He'll move his feet (yes, even his back foot) quite a bit before and during the swing. The swing arc also varies a lot more. Arc, not plane, since the bat is largely vertical in cricket when contact is made. The batsman will also open or close his wrists to aim the ball off the bat, as well as aim the ball by intentionally swinging early or late. This last part is the only overlap I found between baseball and cricket. Having played cricket, it was a lot easier for me to hit a baseball to the opposite field.

 

 

 

[satyanash 15355]

The variety/strategy in cricket, both in bowling and batting, absolutely dwarfs that in baseball.

On the batting side, it's all about timing, footwork, and shot selection. A batter's repertoire will include everything from straight and square drives, to leg flicks and pull/hook shots, to slog and paddle sweeps - played off both the front and back foot. The goal is to preserve your wicket, hit into the fielding gaps, and punish bad deliveries. You can't be content with just getting the ball into play. You have to build a partnership and accelerate as needed. You also have to contend with deliveries coming right at you, as batsmen aren't protected from getting hit like batters in cricket.

On the bowling side, there are spin bowlers, fast bowlers, medium pacers, and everything in between. Fast bowlers will use in/outswing and seam movement off the track to go after the opening batsmen with the new ball, hitting speeds well above 90+ mph in the process. As the pitch begins to crack and the ball gets older, spin bowlers will bowl off or leg-spin + the occasional googly or doosra. When the ball has gotten old, fast bowlers are brought back to try and get reverse swing. The fact that the ball bounces off the deck means there's much more movement and variety for a batsman to contend with. You can bowl yorkers at a batsman to try and clamp down on the run-scoring. You can bowl the occasional short ball to trouble a batsman, and you're free to bowl right at their bodies without consequence. Or you can lure them forward to try and beat the edge and induce a stumping. You can mix in slower deliveries to disrupt a batsman's timing. There are countless strategies.

 

Edited June 2, 2018 by satyanash

[futureman 22664]

On 6/1/2018 at 12:04 AM, ImissWallyPryor said:

I know elite athletes when I see them. I didn’t. 

[wood 11747]

On 5/27/2018 at 11:37 AM, satyanash said:

Chennai in a winning position against Hyderabad in the IPL Championship Final.

Shane Watson producing a match-winning knock.

Is that the one where he went for like 120 runs without getting out? (pardon my probably wrong terminology).

That was incredible. At least I think it was in my limited experience watching cricket. Dude is a fucking hoss.

[wood 11747]

I know baseball pretty well, and it's endlessly complex as well. From what I can tell from Cricket, it is, too. I see no value in trying to place one above the other in that regard. They're both profoundly multi-faceted, nuanced, and intricate.

[wood 11747]

On 6/1/2018 at 7:16 AM, satyanash said:

We're talking about MLB baseball. You probably don't, unless Pablo Sandoval became Bo Jackson overnight and I somehow missed it.

I learned a long time ago not to judge athletes by their appearance. Some of those "fat" guys are unbelievable athletes .. in lots of sports, not just baseball, and I saw a fatty last night when watching a few cricket highlights. He was pretty damn athletic, too.

Edited June 5, 2018 by wood

[satyanash 15355]

13 minutes ago, wood said:

Is that the one where he went for like 120 runs without getting out? (pardon my probably wrong terminology).

That was incredible. At least I think it was in my limited experience watching cricket. Dude is a fucking hoss.

117 not out. Made a pretty decent target of 178 look like peanuts.

[AeroHorn 793]

On 6/1/2018 at 9:51 PM, satyanash said:

On the bowling side, there are spin bowlers, fast bowlers, medium pacers, and everything in between.

I haven't watched/played Cricket since I was a kid growing up in late 70s/80s. The speed of the ball for fast pace bowlers is similar to baseball, about, 100mph.  The distance is 67 feet between the stumps (the white sticks in the image below), which is slightly longer than the mound to home plate distance in baseball (60.5 feet).

But in cricket, the ball pitches on the ground before reaching the batsman. This creates a lot of variability and control in how the bowler presents the ball to the batsman. Besides the obvious bouncing on the ground difference, other major differences are the age of the ball (same ball is used in cricket until 300-450 "pitches"), the nature of the physical ground (the non-grass area in the picture above) whether it is hard and fast, soft and breaking, patchy, etc., the distance from the batsman the bowler targets to bounce the ball at ranging from a large distance with rising ball to the shoulders/face level to almost bouncing at the feet of the batsman (think of tennis overspin kicker where you have to rise to your toes and a slice where you have to dig the ball out), the type of spin from mid-air swing on fast balls (similar to slider in baseball) to in or out cutter spin balls after bouncing on the ground, etc. Here are couple of videos showing slow spin bowling and fast swing bowling.

Regarding fast bowling, when I was growing up, the West Indies team had a devastating set of fast bowlers (Marshall, Holding, Garner, etc.). This video shows the classic strategy and field setup to defend. The batsman has to be ready for a yorker (ball bouncing at his feet) to a bouncer (ball rising to his face). The pace is so fast that with a slight swing, the batman usually edges the ball, hence the array of fielders behind the batsman to catch him out.

 

For spin bowling, the pace is much slower and the aim is to play with flight of the ball to keep the batsman guessing and hence make him play on his back foot. This allows for the bowler to bounce the ball closer to the batsman and hence give him almost no time to react to the spin.

Regarding batting, I don't think I can summarize it since there are a variety of shots across near 360-degree placement. Also, with the advent of one day and 20-over matches, it is fundamentally evolved into something quite different from the classic form (straight bat, bat and pad close together, head down, etc.)

[ImissWallyPryor 9046]

2 hours ago, futureman said:

Not what I had in mind.

[satyanash 15355]

Just arrived in London for the India-England test match at Lords.

First day was rained out, second day saw India all out for 107. So that's great.

[satyanash 15355]

Welp. That was brutal.

 

[Cheeseweasel 26439]

On 8/11/2018 at 6:03 AM, satyanash said:

Just arrived in London for the India-England test match at Lords.

First day was rained out, second day saw India all out for 107. So that's great.

Damn. Watched the replay. Brutal.

[satyanash 15355]

India just pulled off their first-ever test series win in Oz.

 

[satyanash 15355]

Incredible runout by Ravi Jadeja during India's win over Australia in the 2nd ODI.

[satyanash 15355]

[Cheeseweasel 26439]

In 77 successful efforts in the second innings, Kohli has amassed a mind-boggling 4,853 runs at an average of 99.04 with a 21 centuries and 19 fifties.

 

Damn.

[APMP 688]

Australia won that toss and decided to let India chase. I know it worked out in the first game but you playing with fire Finchy.

[APMP 688]

Still all this nonsense about "Dhonis role" in the ODI side. It's called "winner."

[satyanash 15355]

1 hour ago, APMP said:

Still all this nonsense about "Dhonis role" in the ODI side. It's called "winner."

[UDontKnow 10557]

11 hours ago, APMP said:

Still all this nonsense about "Dhonis role" in the ODI side. It's called "winner."

List A cricket suits him. I wouldn't bat him in T20.

EDIT: I would bat him 6th-7th in T20 and of course keep him behind the stumps. Rohit Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan, Virat Kohli, Ambati Rayudu, Kedar Jadhav, Dinesh Karthik..then Dhoni

Edited January 19, 2019 by UDontKnow
Clarification

[satyanash 15355]

Easy win for India in the first ODI against New Zealand

 

[APMP 688]

At this point it's looking like anything other than England v. India in the final this summer would be a huge upset.

[satyanash 15355]

Australia just chased down India's target of 359 in 47.5 overs at Mohali.

So much for India's "new and improved" bowling attack

[Fudge Nuggets 19407]

I haven't kept up with cricket the last few years but got into it pretty good back in the early to mid 2000's.  The 2003 World Cup was probably my first real exposure and I had a blast following it.  Looking forward to this year's edition.

My SF picks (really going out on a limb here):  India, England, Australia, South Africa.

 

[Fudge Nuggets 19407]

On 1/31/2019 at 12:21 AM, APMP said:

At this point it's looking like anything other than England v. India in the final this summer would be a huge upset.

Australia will knock one of them out just to piss me off.

[satyanash 15355]

India losing at home to Australia gives me pause. I have a feeling they won't make it past the Super Six, especially with their lineup so ill-suited to English pitches.

[APMP 688]

India losing at home to Australia gives me pause. I have a feeling they won't make it past the Super Six, especially with their lineup so ill-suited to English pitches.

I still think they're virtually a lock for the semi finals. Main thing is to wash the T20 IPL thought processes out of their system before the tourney starts.