Underarm bowling incident of 1981
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
Now Americans can finally know how Europeans feel when watching baseball
The chums are going to rib him rotten over the cucumber sandwiches and tea in the wains room at half-over time
Everyone not from one Uk, India... maybe Australia you mean?
The rest of us know it only for its impenetrable jargon ("They've risked a woggle on the silly midden!"), the grating public school chumminess of the commentators, and a rumour about a puerile "joke" which may or may not have been told on the radio coverage in the early 1980s.
Honestly, it's a sport I suspect I ought to like - full of stats and strategy - but it really does seem impossible to follow unless you've been inculcated since birth.
You’re thinking of the fielding position “silly point,” so named because the chances of getting knocked out by the ball to the face are so high you’d be silly to stand there.
By “midden” you might be thinking of “maiden,” which is a bowler competing a “maiden over” by completing their 6 balls without conceding a run. An over is just a block of play consisting of 6 balls before switching bowlers.
It’s not as impenetrable as it first sounds, it just needs a bit of time to watch. Most sports have some jargon (offside anyone?)
"Only" England & Wales ... which is ~90% of the UK population. It's a fair generalisation in a casual context like this.
We get it, cricket isn't wildly popular in Northern Ireland (nor Scotland). Why chastise the parent for suggesting it is?
But come on - don't shoehorn an indirect political point into a casual conversation.
And as if cricket was unique in having jargon? Hurling doesn't have jargon? Gaelic football? Football? Of course they do.
The rest of the jargon and strangeness was absorbed slowly over time until it because natural, like a language.
I still can’t explain how it works to my wife.
A better metric is the average % of likes from ALL countries.
You’re perhaps forgetting Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Zimbabwe, the Caribbean, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, and various countries in SE Asia apart from India (e.g. Bangladesh, Pakistan).
A cricket pitch is a long strip. Bowler bowls from one end, batter strikes the bowl from the other. Scoring is done by running from one end of that strip to the other (the unit of scoring is literally called a run). Six legal bowls make an over.
There are two batters in play at each point in time, one at each end of the pitch, and they both must run towards the other end of the pitch (therefore swapping places) to score.
Bruce Edgar had scored 102 runs, was not out (in the same sense as baseball — meaning he was still in play), but, because they either didn’t manage to score any runs, or scored twos, he spent the whole over on the non-striking side of the pitch.
I have tried it many times and failed.
Personally, playing a few games of cricket is the best way to learn the rules of the game.
As an example, in your explanation ( which is good to this lifelong cricket fan from India) your first sentence starts "A cricket pitch..." And when a baseball fan reads it he is probably asking "What is a cricket pitch?"
Instead of 9 innings there's one inning, at least in ODI or T20 formats (best to watch anyway).
Instead of 3 outs there's 10 outs (called wickets).
An out is having a ball caught after you hit it (same as baseball) or the ball hitting the wickets when at bat (kind of like strikeout) or a fielder knocking the wicket off with the ball before you reach the line, which is basically the same as being thrown out in baseball.
Scoring is similar, you score runs when you run the bases. When it gets hit out, it's basically the same as a homerun except if it goes out after bouncing it's only 4 points, straight out is 6.
If anything it's easier to understand than baseball. No strike/ball count, it's basically you hit it, miss it, or are bowled out. Running is easier to understand too, anytime you reach the other side it's a point.
Most of the complication is during test matches because of tactics/tradition. The basic rules are a lot like baseball.
Also, to get anyone into cricket, just show them a T20 match. More action than baseball.
goes on to use the same term for multiple game actions/objects.
Nah. I ain't buying it.
Signed,
A follower of neither.
> An out is having a ball caught after you hit it (same as baseball) or the ball hitting the wickets when at bat (kind of like strikeout)
I thought a wicket is what you call an out? Now it’s something else, too?
(This kind of thing is why being a baseball fan having cricket explained at you by a Brit feels exactly the same as listening to people play mornington crescent)
Behind the batter, between the batter and the catcher are 3 vertical sticks. This is called the wicket. The batter is protecting those sticks, the bowler is trying to hit them.
If the bowler succeeds he has "got a wicket" and the batter has "lost his wicket." These 2 terms are used though regardless of the actual manner of the out.
To make things more confusing, the strip of land between the bowler and the batter is also called "the wicket". (Its slso called the "pitch", but I digress.) And this is a really important part of the game..
In baseball the ball is thrown at the batter, but in the air, not touching the ground (ie not bouncing.)
In cricket the ball may bounce before it gets to the batter. Indeed it almost always does. (A ball that doesn't bounce is usually easier to dispatch.)
Since the ball bounces, what it bounces off becomes really important. The hardness, amount of grass, smoothness, cracks and so on all become elements of the game, and all are different at each game.
The "art" of cricket is the way the bowler can manipulate the ball to not just move through the air (like in baseball) but also move off the pitch (aka the wicket). This movement is the key. Without it the game is dull - it becomes too easy for the batter.
If the pitch moves the ball too easily, it can become too hard for the batter, and the game can end up being too short (and dull in a different way.)
A "good" pitch thus balances the skills of the bowler with the skills of the batter. Creating a good pitch is art, not science though.
Not confusing at all. :-)
You still with me ;-)
What’s the video game to play to understand cricket?
Hopefully someone here knows a good cricket video game.
Best.
A wicket has the same function as a catcher in baseball.
The jargon is annoying but it's a lot like baseball.
It's a metonym.
The actual wicket is the wooden things the bowler is trying to hit. Because hitting the wicket eliminates the batter, the word is also used colloquially to refer to an out.
They can run more than one (get to the other side, turn around, run back, etc) but the chance of the wicket you're running to being hit with the ball (so you're out) becomes larger so they usually manage 1, sometimes 2 or even 3. And both batters have to run the same amount.
If the number of runs is even, they end up on the same side as they started from.
On the larger grounds, it tends to be a decently-sized foam triangular prism (covered in advertising, obvs.) rather than a plain rope which leads to "if it hits the triangle" rather than "goes over the rope" (I believe "hits the rope" also counts but is much harder to judge for obvious scale reasons.)
Also, IIRC, the ball can go over the boundary without hitting the ground but a fielder can knock it back inside for a catch to be performed to get the player out[0].
Sorry, I'm just making this more complicated for the baseballers, aren't I?
[0] If they comply with the changes around that last year - https://www.cricinfo.com/story/mcc-changes-rule-to-make-boun...
Yup, batter runs towards the bowler (and the "inactive" batter runs the opposite direction).
In baseball terms, a cricket run is more or less equivalent to running a single base (the bowler is 22 yards away from the batter, which is more than the distance from the pitcher's mound to the home plate, but less than the distance from home to first base). Just like you can run multiple bases in baseball, you can do multiple runs in cricket. From a scoring point of view, you're effectively scoring how many bases you ran, so a baseball run is roughly equivalent to four cricket runs.
Scoring 100+ runs is called "a century", and it's pretty impressive, but, because you keep batting until the bowling team sends you out, you can just keep scoring all day long if you have the endurance for it. Baseball doesn't have a mechanism for a single batter to hit multiple back-to-back home runs.
The bariet takes a pull at the fumbler, and then one of two things happens: Either he misses, or hits it (towards the flange or along the foul line to the base). There are three spichies who can try to deflect the fumbler, either towards the simulcum or out to the field.
The simulcum is the more audacious play, giving an instant spiel if they succeed in darving the bariet. But it runs a serious risk of a spurn, so unless a spichie is particularly strong, the field is the safer play.
The foo walks into the bar and he qax. The bartender says, what can I do you for? The foo says, breed me daddy. The network bleeps that part out. The foo says, I'll have a beer of pint. The tomato exists. Existence is suffering. Existence is despair.
Basically, there's three grabbers, three taggers, five twig runners, and a player at Whackbat. Center tagger lights a pine cone and chucks it over the basket and the whack-batter tries to hit the cedar stick off the cross rock. Then the twig runners dash back and forth until the pine cone burns out and the umpire calls hotbox. Finally, you count up however many score-downs it adds up to and divide that by nine.
(Bruce Edgar), who was (on (102 not out)), was stuck at (the (non-striker's end)) the entire (over).
• An “over” consists of six opportunities to hit the ball and score “runs”. (A “run” is the basic unit of scoring.)
• "102 not out" indicates how many runs the player had personally contributed to the team's score. The number is large enough to suggest that this was the player who was playing particularly well in that match.
So the sentence is saying that the player who could be expected to make good use of whichever of those six opportunities he got, did not get any of them.
I think as with most cases of unfamiliar jargon, the sentence can be confusing not because of unusual words but because of everyday words being used with technical meanings ("not out", "end", "over").
By contrast, underhand free throw shooting is legal in the NBA and it is very effective. But it is seen as unmasculine rather than cheating. Players would apparently rather lose than be seen doing it.
Test Match Special was broadcast on the BBC's long wave frequency and for many people in Britain it was a quintessential summer listening experience: all day for up to 5 days per test match.
Such long time stretches of continuous broadcasting meant that the commentators were adept at talking, stories, banter and general chatter, occasional bollocks.
For me the Test Match Special broadcasts became like a pleasant ambient background noise to long summer days, with occasional excitement and humor - like the time Brian Johnston and Jonathan Agnew fell into uncontrollable laughter at a double entendre, a priceless piece of cricket history: https://youtu.be/KsVTpX7LdZQ
The story about the test match broadcast is really nice. Just goes to show how deep cultures can be locally ingrained. One could learn perfect English and never get to the point of getting this joke, without serious integration efforts. In this case, worthwhile efforts.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/aug/20/sport.andrewculf
[2] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/get-leg-...
Passing the ball around the backfield is a risky tactic in association football (which similarly banned the goalkeeper just picking up backpasses because it was too easy to waste time). 'Taking the ball to the corner' is a much lower risk option, but it is possible to win the ball back and quickly go up the other end and score with good play. Deliberate time wasting between plays is a yellow card offence (even though the referee could simply add the time on, it's disliked)
Plus cricket nominally has more of a sportmanship culture than most sports. "Mankading" (the practice of a bowler deciding to strike the wicket near to him instead of bowling because the runner from the other end has strayed too far[1]) is technically legal and would be considered smart play in many sports - especially since it's an action performed to stop opponents gaining a small advantage over you - but is regarded as shameful in cricket, at least not unless you've been gentlemanly enough to warn the runner at your end to stop straying forward each time the ball is bowled. Indeed it's so controversial Wikipedia maintains a 'list of incidents' page, starting with poor Vinoo Mankad who probably thought he was just being smart and didn't realise his surname would become synonymous with cheating https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mankading_incidents_in...
[1]baseball fans: roughly the equivalent of a pitcher deciding in mid-pitch to throw the ball to a base to stop someone stealing bases, except the base in question is right next to him.
(Though as a non-American, I am indeed mystified why the kneel is legal and not regarded as delay of game!)
They’re considered down when their knee touches the ground while in possession of the ball (“possession” having a specific meaning, with regard to the rules). Again, this is the same as if they had been tackled. The only difference is no one forced them to the ground.
Taking a knee is not something that would normally be considered a good thing since you lose yards and a down.
As for why it’s not a delay of game, that’s likely because it does not delay the game any more than any normal play would. It probably runs down less time on the clock than if they played normally, but of course playing normally is riskier which why they take a knee. The idea is to simply run down the clock as much as possible without risking a turnover and then leaving the other team with too little time to score.
If the rules could be changed to disincentivize taking a knee I think that would be more interesting, but I’m not sure how you do that. It’s also safer in an already dangerous sport.
Each team has 4 attempts to move the ball forward 10 yards, where if the ball moves >= 10 yards they get a fresh set of 4 attempts. These are called "downs".
If the team has any downs left when they kneel then they can maintain possession of the ball and can thus run out the clock. Most (all?) of the time the teams end the game even if there is time left on the clock.
Note that either team can call a timeout pre-snap which freezes the game clock. Certain plays also result in the game clock freezing between plays. There is also a 2-minute warning at the end of the 2nd/4th quarter that also freezes the game clock.
IMO clock management adds a very interesting strategic layer to NFL football.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Play_clock
There's also a full article about the kneel:
You might notice the law changes section in that article, that amongst other things you can't have loads of fielders behind square on leg side now.
I would also suggest it is not considered unsportsmanlike to bowl short and aim for the head any more, but rather something people look foster's forward to seeing.
For those who might not want to go through the article:
> ...designed to combat the extraordinary batting skill of Australia's leading batsman, Don Bradman... aimed at the body of the batsman in the expectation that when he defended himself with his bat, a resulting deflection could be caught by one of several fielders deliberately placed nearby on the leg side. At the time, no helmets or other upper-body protective gear was worn, and critics of the tactic considered it intimidating, and physically threatening in a game traditionally supposed to uphold conventions of sportsmanship.
The overarm standard has (claimed) origins around 1800 in a lady cricketer raising her arm when bowling to avoid her skirt getting in the way.
This is like taking oddjob in the final match.
Now that I think of it telling a baseball pitcher that he could throw a pitch, but not too difficult of one at certain times is hilarious.
(I'm of course not suggesting this was the Chappells' direct motive, or even that this incident realistically could have uncovered hidden depths in the game of cricket. But as a general philosophy I think 'playing to win' has some merit, even from a perspective that ultimately cares about the health of the game and not just about winning as a terminal goal.)
Sadly, a lot of people live their entire lives this way. Ignoring courtesy, norms, ethics, grace, walking right up to the very edge of the law and then smugly declaring “ha ha there is no rule saying I can’t do this!!” Like the annoying little brother who waves his hand a millimeter from your face saying “I’m not touching you! I’m not touching you!”
The fact that everything has to be written down or some people will exploit and take advantage is a human failing, not a feature.
> During swim training, if our coach wants to setup a relay race, he’ll deliberately mix swim ability (even changing teams between rounds) so that there’s a competitive element. Not much of a race if lane 1 is in the same team and beats everyone by 30 seconds!
I think this is actually a good example of setting up the game appropriately (in this case the teams as well as the rules) and then playing to win within those constraints. The end result is more fun and better training than you would get by departing from the 'playing to win' philosophy by, for example, having a tacit agreement that the faster swimmers will take it easy so as not to embarrass the others.
They didn't think they needed a rule.
This was what made me certain they were wrong--the commentary of their own older brother, who's hugely respected:
> As the ball was being bowled, Ian Chappell (elder brother of Greg and Trevor, and a former Australian captain), who was commentating on the match, was heard to call out "No, Greg, no, you can't do that"[10] in an instinctive reaction to the incident, and he remained critical in a later newspaper article on the incident.[11]
I said this in another comment and it seems relevant: "I know they're different, but in baseball the pitch is part of the game. Not being able to make good use of a pitch is a problem for the hitter, not the pitcher."
I think my baseballed mind simply cannot warp itself to your gentlemanly ways lol
The sporting thing to do is to give the batsman a chance to score but to defeat him using skill. There is no skill in bowling and underarm ball, the batsmen is not being defeated by skill.
That said, never did I imagine that cricket would interest the HN audience.
I remember most of it involving standing around waiting for a solid ball to fly through the air at you.
It is of little interest to me. I live in Scotland where it is played but barely played. I have played it as a child and detested it. I also remember games on TV going on for days on end and running late so that other programmes got cancelled.
Not one of England's greater contributions to the sporting world.
(Think there's also a general prejudice against underarm play in professional sport as it's for kids who can't throw properly and feels like mockery. Underarm serves in tennis are frowned upon, even though an alert opponent has plenty of chance of scoring a point from them)
The equivalent would be bowling a ball rather than a strike in a baseball variant where each innings ended after a fixed number of balls regardless of the number of outs (which is effectively what One Day variants of cricket are). Specifically, walking the batsman when they needed to score a home run or at least a double. I think fans would get upset!
We all saw this on the school yard as a kid and none of us appreciated it. It’s annoying to have to enshrine literally every situation into the rules. Just play the game as intended. This is part of what has made American football become less fun to watch (besides learning about CTE’s…). Soooo many rules, constantly stopping play to assess every little mm of the play. It’s boring as hell for all involved. It’s why you often hear “just let them play!”
At the highest levels of the sport, they know the rulebook like the back of their hand.
Imagine that, in baseball, rolling the ball over the plate were considered a strike. If so, wouldn’t pitchers go for it if, at some time, all they need to do is prevent an home run (yes, I know that doesn’t happen in baseball) and wouldn’t it, subsequently, be banned?
Cricket is a game that was designed for toffs to show off their free time, to each other and the plebs (including those making the G&Ts and cucumber sandwiches for the players and spectators) who couldn't take five days out of their lives for a match.
> Like golf
That too.
There is a reason why most other sports income 60/90/ish minute matches: people closer to normal had to squeeze their sports into what little free time they actually had, usually not much more than part of Sunday afternoons or maybe a bit of time some evenings.
> there are expectations of behavior.
While social contracts can be a good thing in terms of helping varied people people get along, cricket and golf are as important in that respect as knowing which of the four forks & three spoons on the table to use next. Etiquette in those forms is just artificial rules by which you show off how "civilised" you think you are, not sportsmanship or other genuine civility.
Because of those concessions to speed and entertainment, some rules that worked ok in test cricket break the game in limited overs. In this case, NZ was down to their “final over”, a concept that doesn’t exist in test cricket. Underarm bowling basically removes overs from the game and can guarantee a win for the bowlers, but in test cricket, would lead to a draw.
Cricket is my analogy for life: a lot of standing around, interspersed by bouts of running back & forth often with people shouting at you, and a scoring system that seems almost as deliberately obtuse as Mornington Crescent (the true gentleman's game!).
I don't even watch cricket, but even I find the scoring to be as simple as every other sport - 1 pt for each run a player does (batters two at a time).
When the score says "102 runs", that's exactly what it means.
Some current scores picked arbitrarily by a quick Google search:
Test 3 of 3, end of day three:
NZ 438 & 120/3
Eng 354
Test 1 of 2, end of day three:
Sri Lanka 308 & 51/1
West Indies 626/9d
Central Europe Cup (T20 4 of 6)
Serbia 162/7 (20)
Luxembourg 163/2 (13.1)
End of day three: NZ 558 - Eng 354
I can't remember where I read it, but I recall a distinction being made between "open" games and "patterned" games. "Open" games, like football, have very few repetitive elements: action is continuous, and every possession is entirely different (eg, ball and players at different starting positions) than the next. Cricket has discontinuous action, and each passage of play begins in the same manner. "Open" games are difficult to notate, and not much about the game itself can be inferred from the scoreline alone; for instance, in your example, the Mariners might have dominated possession, had multiple shots turned away, and felt unlucky in defeat - or else the complete opposite! "Patterned" games are easier to notate, and more about them can be efficiently communicated, because there's much more shared state. Chess, the ultimate patterned game, can be written down in a more-or-less complete form for later study!
[Edit: Please take this thread into the MC weeds! Lol. I want to see HN heads explode.)
But, on reflection, you're right. A score involves overs, bowls (6 per over), runs and possibly wickets taken. I expect that I sort of know all this because I grew up playing cricket (and soccer). Commonwealth country, and all that.
Underarm bowling was still allowed when this incident occurred and was therefore legal, just considered very unsportsmanlike and outside the spirit of the game.
(as an Aussie, sorry)
Honestly it should be on the citizenship test. If you answer favourably towards throwing underarm, your test is rescheduled the following week in Canberra.
Has probably been forgotten by Australia and everywhere else though.
Although to be fair, my wife is a saffa so I'm not allowed to forget sandpapergate.
[1]: https://www.cricinfo.com/story/no-more-boundary-countback-as...
This is a factually correct and informative comment.
This incident was an intentional pitch (bowl) to a avoid a "home run" and in cricket it is sacrilege.
https://www.eetimes.com/bill-bryson-on-cricket/
The book goes on to spoof radio commentary on cricket, which is even more hilarious:
https://sidewaysstation.com/2017/07/10/stovepipe-with-a-quic...
Not a cricket fan now, but was subjected to it as a kid.
NZ are generationally enraged. Australians have wilfully forgotten.