h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Thanks for the comments Opti .

Closed the brackets.

Changed an oldest to 'most venerable' for a bit of variety.

Removed the rogue 'to' in the bowling sentence.

Not sure what I can do about the Entry jumping about. I presume you're talking about my little introduction to the game, followed by 'The Urn and the Don', then 'Leg Theory'. But it would make no sense to introduce leg theory before explaining why it necessary .

I think I mean to place Nottinghamshire there...as in 'Nottinghamshire captain Arthur Carr'?

Date changes made.

A Test match is always capitalised .


>>I wonder whether you could put more enthusiasm into telling the game as if it were happening now like another Entry has done<<
This is tricky because of space constraints. I'll give it a go. I presume you're after fewer numbers and more descriptive stuff on what was happenning?

Here's one for Keith (mainly on the 'out of interest' level, really).

In this year's Wisden (http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/wisdenalmanack/content/story/344613.html) it is claimed the Symonds-Harbajhan business - 'Bollyline' - was as serious as Bodyline. Do you agree?

>Another flashpoint came at Sydney in the New Year, when the Second Test between Australia and India was so filled with umpiring mistakes, player misbehaviour and hatred (most overtly between Andrew Symonds and Harbhajan Singh) that the game stared briefly into the abyss. For a week or two - while India threatened to call off the tour if Harbhajan was not acquitted of racism, in a complete violation of the judicial process, and while the world's most experienced Test umpire Steve Bucknor was forced to stand down from the Perth Test and the authority of umpires was eroded - "Bollyline" was as serious as Bodyline. <<

Glad I can help

With regards to the storytelling/enthusiastic bit I wonder whether it could read like this A37746219 except on cricket

This is excellent writing well done

<> I fail to understand that comment, Opti. You're entitled to your opinion, but how can you say this Entry isn't enthusiastic?

getting all tongue tied and tripping over words. I just thought you could say it as if it were a commentary and the reader were watching the action unfold.

It's laconian you owe the apology to, Opti. You cannot and should not compare two authors, nor tell one to write like another, it's just rude. Please think about what you post in future.

Entry: Bodyline - Just Not Cricket? - A36622712
Author: laconian - U1477064

No worries . I did wonder when I put this in PR that the accounts of the matches were occasionally a little dry, and perhaps only of interest to the cricket fan. I reckon I've improved on that slightly now. I'm afraid I can't really get real-time info for these matches. Nowadays you can get over-by-over and even ball-by-ball text commentaries on most internationals, but this wasn't done back then. So it's hard to give a 'real time' account.

I've given the title some thought. I found 'How Cricket Split an Empire' not only slightly self-indulgent and melodramatic, but a tad inaccurate (the effects were mainly bilateral, and Australia was a Dominion, not a colony in the Empire). So what do you think to the new one?

That real-time info as you call it would have definitely helped to write an Entry in a commentary type way, but the Entry is still great and your passion for the subject certainly shines through. It's nice to have things written in a variety of different ways too, it would be boring if all Entries were written in the same fashion.

I've made three attempts at this and never got more than halfway through - not because of your writing style, but because I entirely fail to comprehend cricket It's just baffling.

Anything particular I can help you with?

It's possibly a girl-thing, Laconian, we love the men in shorts running about a tennis court

I just can't do it, sorry I have to stop and look up terminology constantly and then I don't understand *that*. You've just made the books I'm *meant* to be reading for my term paper that much more appealing.

I think what I'm trying to say is you don't have to try too hard to make it comprehensible for the layman - it won't be, so we won't read it

Damn, I still haven't read the changes yet and in answer to your question Laconian about the Symonds/Harbijhan imbroglio...No.
Not even in the same league as Bodyline and the effect it had on the consciousness of the Australian public, storm in a teacup by comparison.

***
January 14 More than 50,000 crammed into the Oval on what is the first genuinely ugly day of the series. It starts badly when Paynter is charged from behind on his way into the ground and sent flying, but with Verity he adds 79 in the morning. He falls for 77 shortly after the resumption and then the rest of the innings subsides as Tim Wall polishes things off with 3 for 15 in the afternoon. Larwood and Allen open the attack with conventional fields. Allen removes Fingleton third ball, and in the next over Woodfull is struck over the heart by Larwood, which triggers an angry reaction from the crowd. Jardine loudly calls out "Well bowled, Harold", as much to unsettle Bradman, the non striker. Woodfull eventually resumes and England switch to a Bodyline field, again sparking a furious reaction from the stands, an act described by an Australian selector as "the most unsportsmanlike act ever witnessed on an Australian cricket field". Bradman and Stan McCabe are soon out, and Ponsford, protected by extra padding, takes blow after blow on the body in a three-and-a-half hour stay, quite deliberately - it is his way of coping with Bodyline. When Woodfull departs, Australia are 51 for 4 but Vic Richardson and Ponsford bravely guide Australia through to the close. Perhaps the most infamous moment takes place off the field when Plum Warner, the MCC manager, enters the Australians' dressing room to check Woodfull is alright. Woodfull turns to him and says: "I don't want to see you Mr Warner. There are two sides out there. One is trying to play cricket, the other is not." It is later reported he adds: "The game is too good to be spoilt. It's time some people got out of it."
Australia 109 for 4 trail England 341 (Leyland 83, Wyatt 78, Paynter 77) by 232 runs Scorecard

January 15 The rest day. Jardine and Allen spend the day with friends. The Australian board meets to consider lodging a formal complaint about Bodyline with the MCC.

January 16 News of Warner's conversation with Woodfull is splashed across the press. Warner, convinced Fingleton is to blame for leaking it, offers Larwood £1 if he takes his wicket. More than 32,000 turn up to watch the third day. Ponsford and Oldfield carry on their sixth-wicket stand into the afternoon before Ponsford is finally bowled round his legs for 85 and he is soon followed by Grimmett. England take the new ball - still with a conventional field - and almost immediately Oldfield, caught in two minds, edges a Larwood thunderbolt into his head ... he reels away and collapses to his knees. Larwood immediately apologises and Oldfield replies: "It wasn't your fault, Harold." Woodfull, in a suit, emerges from the pavilion and helps the stricken Oldfield off. The crowd grow angry and police encircle the boundary with more mounted police on standby outside. Reinforcements are summoned. Jardine deliberately moves himself to the boundary edge to field but returns after being pelted with orange peel. Australia's last three wickets add no runs. Jardine opens with Sutcliffe and is still there at the close. Some spectators wait around to boo the England players as they leave the ground.
England 341 and 85 for 1 lead Australia 222 (Ponsford 85) by 204 runs.

***

Newsreel footage of this usually contains the soundtrack of the crowd...ugly indeed.

You've probably read this in your research and this is a most dry and unemotional account. I remember one of my uncles who was there when Bert Oldfield was hit,(I was quite young at the time ) telling me about the atmosphere inside the ground and outside afterwards, he said he'd never seen or felt the like of it before and he never looked on the 'Poms' in the same light again. Ponsford was a hero of his from that moment onwards, such was the pounding he took.

Symonds v Harbijahn is a non event really

I guess the whole Harbhajan incident was a just a little childish. It caused problems, yes, but I think a lot of people saw it as relatively frivolous (not condoning the alleged racism here, though).

Sorry to hear you find it hard going, Mala . I think you're right in saying there's only so much one can do to make it comprehensible.

Perhaps I should add a bit at the start advising a non-cricketing person to skip over the incomprehensible bits and read through it anyway. You can get the gist of some bits even without knowing exactly what's going on. I would consider it an important event and people shouldn't be put off just because it involves cricket .

If I didn't say it before, I found this a really entertaining entry - the style is very clear, and you shouldn't make wholesale changes to it. I think it stands well as a view of Bodyline from a current UK perspective, and it's probably the view of most outside Australia. For Australians, this episode invokes different passions, as Keith has described. For that reason, I think that the scope of the entry is fine here, but I'd really like to read an Australian viewpoint in a separate entry.

<>

I don't recall it being played on a tennis court. I think someone is watching too much Wimbledon

Personally I'd rather be playing the game instead of watching.

>>Perhaps I should add a bit at the start advising a non-cricketing person to skip over the incomprehensible bits and read through it anyway. You can get the gist of some bits even without knowing exactly what's going on. I would consider it an important event and people shouldn't be put off just because it involves cricket.<<

That's actually why I'm posting here after failing to read it - not just to make trouble I haven't the faintest clue what's going on in the game descriptions. I've never seen a game of cricket in my life. If my parents hadn't had an English and an Indian colleague, I'd never have *heard* of cricket until I joined this site.

So if it's about "How Cricket Split An Empire" maybe do a section on the splitting of empires rather than the minutiae of gameplay?

As far as I can gather it's "England did something or other that was within the rules but rather unsportsmanlike. The Australians didn't like it." - but this is embedded in, well, gibberish.

<>

I meant girls prefer watching men *play tennis* (in shorts) to watching them play cricket, Opti.

Mala, you could watch the Aviators clip on cricketing terminology. That should help.

I enjoyed this, laconian, thanks.

"Australian pace bowler Harry 'Bull' Alexander did strike Jardine a painful blow the hip." That needs a 'on', 'above', 'below' or whatever.

You refer to someone leaking a locker room incident, but unless I missed it, didn't explain what the incident was.

Also, did you say what Wisden is?