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

Good morning everyone,

Thanks, Loony, a very thoughtful and informative contribution, but then again, what else have we come to expect from you? Certainly a book for my Christmas stocking (hope the beloved gets to read this). But yes, statistically speaking, which is all we have to go on when comparing sportspeople over say the past century, Bradman is the bees' knees. The greatest sportsman of the twentieth century? Now there is a debate!! But how come I choke up whenever I see THE Greatest, Ali? He is THE man, probably better-known around the world than any other sports star of this, his own, or any other generation. And for my money, better-loved and better-respected than any other sportperson this century.

Walter

Interesting about Jordan and the others. For it to be noticeable is a bit much, though! In the same way it wasn't "part" of Javed Miandad's "game" to be out LBW when playing in Pakistan (and he wasn't, for about 10 years).

I'd certainly expect things were fairly clean in the Don's day - but 50 years before him, you had big money (and bigger wagers) riding on results, and things were corrupt back then too. There was the infamous occasion when WG Grace (the first "great") was given out, and proclaimed it a "trial ball" - though my memory tells me that the article here
http://www.suntimes.co.za/1998/07/19/lifestyle/life03.htm
is wrong: I thought he told the umpire "they've come to watch me bat, not to watch you umpire". But the point is made.

England seem to have beaten Pakistan in the twilight. Please enlighten me: are the fielding side not allowed to appeal against the light? If they are, why didn't they?

No, the rules say that the only way to come off for bad light is if the umpires and batting side agree that there is physical danger.

In any case, it was Pakistan's fault. They deliberately delayed (the first over bowled by off-spinner Saqlain Mushtaq took *8 minutes* to complete) in the hope that England would be denied some of the overs which the rules allowed them - so there was a delicious irony when the fielders found they couldn't see the ball, much less stop it

Interesting articel on W G Grace, his comment on good batting - "You put the bat against the ball" - reminds me of a similar baseball saying, "Hit 'em where they ain't." Casey Stengel, I think.

As I understand it, Pakistan DID appeal against the light even though, as GVI points out, under the laws of cricket, they couldn't win the appeal.

I wonder what sort of uproar there would have been if one of the fielders had been hurt because they couldn't, in the gathering gloom, see the ball heading straight for their head?

That happened once in a club game I played in - I loved Thorpe's comment, BTW: he was asked "have you ever played in worse light?", and answered "of course, I've played club cricket!"

Anyway, it was getting dark. We were batting, and I was umpiring at the bowler's end (in club cricket, currently inactive members of the batting side generally perform the umpiring duties).

The bowler landed the ball half way down the pitch, just outside off stump. Our captain stood tall, drew back his right foot and executed a copy-book square cut. Their captain was standing at a squarish gulley, knees bent, hands cupped, ready for action. I swear he never moved a muscle. The ball hit him square on the end of his nose. It was ugly, though thankfully no permanent damage was done. We called it a day by mutual consent.

The scorebook entry read: "Broken nose stopped play".

OK, I have to ask - is cricket not played under lights? As I mentioned a while back, I never got past the gate into Lord's (£100!), so I didn't notice if there were light poles.

A probably apocryphal baseball story about a game that ran late into the evening, with no lights available. The usual setup, bases loaded, the count is 3-2, bottom of the ninth inning, one last pitch to determine the game. The catcher has a mound discussion with his blazingly fast pitcher. The catcher returns to his position, the pitcher winds up and throws a fastball. The catcher slams his fist in his mitt right in the middle of the strike zone, the umpire yells "Strike 3", game over. The pitcher, as you have guessed, still has the ball.

It could have happened ... they say a good fastball takes less than half a second to reach the catcher, the hitter has to start his swing before the pitcher lets go of the ball. (Yeah, I'm doubtful, but that's what they say).

And it reminds me of a true story about Ali, who I agree is a great hero to sports fans. The comedian Richard Pryor (another hero, BTW) did an exhibition match where he "boxed" with Ali. You have to hear him tell it, I was rolling on the floor. The gist was that he never saw any of Ali's punches (they of course never landed, just feints) coming toward him. All he saw were Ali's gloves moving back into position. That is truly frightening.

Cricket has begun to be played under lights. I believe it started in Australia, in the "Packer Circus" games in the '70s (now there's a tale to tell), but has only become an accepted part of the game in maybe the last decade.

Games played under lights (aka "day/night" games) have completely different playing conditions: primarily, the ball is white for extra visibility, so the sightscreens are black and the fielders wear coloured clothing*.

Javed Miandad, the Pakistan coach, has actually said that they offered to turn the lights on to allow play to be extended - but that's another part of the political smokescreen. They are never used in tests, or with the traditional red ball. The change in light level when they come on would be a big disadvantage to the batsmen (for a normal day/night game they'd be first turned on whle the sky was still bright), and also at twilight in Pakistan there is a lot of dew which would make batting harder. They tried to cheat and failed, they should stop whingeing.

Lovely story about the fake, by the way!

GVI

*- when coloured clothing was first introduced to the World Cup, someone voiced the question of what would happen if two teams playing in the same colour (eg Pakistan & South Africa in green) were drawn against one another. Should they also have an "away strip"?

The answer of course was, "Well, we've never had a problem with them both wearing white..."

From my Cricket Heroes yarn

We've been playing one-day cricket since 1973, when we beat Pakistan by 22 runs at Lancaster Park, as it used to be known. It was a 40-over affair and Richard Hadlee took 0-37 off just five overs, but his brother Dayle proved the match-winner with 4-34 from eight overs. There was a rather farcical finish when, in near-darkness, Sarfraz Nawaz imitated a blind man with a walking stick as he faced the final overs.

Since we all seem bent on playing in the dark, we might as well get the proper equipment. This is from humorist Dave Barry's annual gift guide:

QUOTE

Flashlight Bat

($59.95 + S/H, Good Catalog Co., www.goodcatalog.com)

For far too long, the human race, when it hears a noise in the house at night, has been forced to carry a baseball bat in one hand and a flashlight in another. (Now we have) ... an amazing breakthrough concept: Put a flashlight inside a baseball bat! ...

But this item is not just a highly effective weapon against criminals with tiny brains, It can also provide a definite edge in a baseball game, where the batter can use the light to flash Morse Code signals to his teammates, or to temporarily blind members of the opposing team. ...

END QUOTE

OK, its only available in the baseball version now, but surely the cricket version will follow, maybe www.amazon.uk.com.

GVI - I wasn't putting Gilchrist in the Don's league for batting. Even he doesn't. (He placed himself seventh batsman for the third Test against the Windies) I was simply saying that he is a very good all-rounder.

Anyway, talking about the Test. This is the first Test in the series which will go to four innings or over three days. This is helped by the fact that Brett Lee and Steve Waugh are missing from our squad.

One Pura Cup match recently had Tasmania at 3 wickets for 1 run. Now that is BAD!!!!!!!

Also, with the cricinfo.com suggestion for birthdays I would need to know the names of the captains and vice-captains. I don't.

Hello everyone,

and the compliments of the Season to all of you, even those (perish the thought) who are not particularly interested in cricket. May the New Year bring you all good health and contentment.

And an especially good New Year to the Tasmanian Sheffield Shield team, who just got thrashed by Victoria, of all teams. Some Bloke etc correctly pointed out that in the first innings Tasmania was at one stage 1-3 (and 5-20). It wasn't a huge improvement in the second innings at 1-2. Incidentally, when was the last time both openers bagged a pair in a first class game? And good luck, or better luck to Rick Ponting, who yet again contrived to deprive himself of a well-deserved Test century.

Walter

New Zealand (184) beat Australia (180) in the Women's Cricket World Cup final.

Thanks girls. You did us proud

Now where did I put that bottle of champagne...?

Congratulations, Loony. It sounds like a close match, I'm tempted to guess a four run difference out of 180, but I realize cricket scores can be complex.

Out of curiousity, do the women use any different rules? Field size? Etc.? I'd be surprised in this day and age, but we don't have much women's baseball in the US, generally they play softball - but they pitch (bowl) just about as fast (underhanded), and from a lot closer, I think.

This is from the NY Times Review of Bill Bryson's book "In a Sunburned Country" about Australia:

QUOTE

But when the author expresses surprise to learn that a cricket match is being held in Adelaide, a bystander does say to him: "Well, either that or thirty thousand people have made one pretty amazing bloody mistake, wouldn't you say?"

END QUOTE

Steve, here's some comment - from CricInfo's newsletter - on the final. The women's game is played under identical rules (laws) to the men's game. The women are even called BATSMEN

WAS THIS THE GREATEST WORLD CUP FINAL EVER?

By Rick Eyre

There have been many one-day games won and lost in the final over and won and lost by four runs or less. But few had the importance, the occasion, the drama of today's final of the 2000 CricInfo Women's World Cup.

Today's game - won by New Zealand by four runs with five balls remaining - was filled to the brim with drama and tension. For me, it surpasses the encounter at Lord's in 1975 between the West Indies and Australia as the greatest World Cup Final, men's or women's, of all time. It may even surpass the 1999 semi-final at Edgbaston, the tied match between Australia and South Africa, as the greatest World Cup match of all.

It was a game with almost everything. A match which, on form, Australia should have won comfortably - and looked like they would when New Zealand crumbled to be all out for 184.

But New Zealand quickly took the ascendancy with the early removal of the two outstanding batsmen of the tournament, Lisa Keightley and Karen Rolton. Belinda Clark, whose World Cup with the bat started shakily but gathered momentum as the tournament progressed, played an elegant and controlled innings. She dominated the Australian fightback, scoring roughly threequarters of her team's runs while she was at the crease.

Belinda Clark was playing the innings of her life and steering Australia to its fifth Women's World Cup... until she was on 91. She attempted a sweep to a ball that many less talented players would have chosen to drive on the on-side - and was bowled around her legs. It was a masterpiece of an innings, yet in the end so tantalisingly futile.

And with the wickets tumbling and Australia's required run-rate hovering around the run-a-ball mark, there was the most sensational of events at the start of the 49th over when Cathryn Fitzpatrick's leg bail fell to ground some time after the ball has passed through to the keeper. Had the ball brushed the stump or did the wind blow? The third umpire, after a long, long look, gave Fitzpatrick out bowled.

With the first ball of the fiftieth over, the seventh World Cup reached its climax, as Charmaine Mason got a faint nick to a ball from Clare Nicholson which was taken by Rebecca Rolls. New Zealand, the host team, the underdogs of this final, had come from behind to win the most important title in the nation's cricketing history.

A four-run victory to New Zealand, and it is just as well that the stray plastic cup inside the boundary rope this morning, shaving two runs off a certain Kiwi boundary, didn't make a difference.

In a World Cup tournament which has been very predictable in its overall results (though never, I hasten to add, dull), the joyous unpredictability of the sport came home to roost on the final day. The form side of the tournament, and indeed one of the great national teams in the history of Australian women's sport, had been held to second-best on the day when it really mattered.

"Cricket has Laws, not rules" I will write this on the board 100 times

OK, I'm a little confused (again).

From "Cricket's Strangest Matches", this article is titled "Following-On at Headingly", Leeds, July 1981. My attempt at summary: At the end of the third day's play, Australia is thumping England in a test match, Ladbroke's (?) is offering 500-1 for an England victory, some of the England players had checked out of their hotels, etc. Ian Botham and Graham Dilley decide to "... give it some humpty." In the end, "... England had won an unbelievable victory by 18 runs. It was only the second time in history that a test had been won by a team following-on."

Does "following-on" mean more than just "coming from behind"? Surely come from behind victories are not all that rare. My dictionary is no help, just mentions "follow-on" service after a contract, etc.

Steve, at http://home.sprynet.com/~hotoff/crickgl.htm CricketUSA® "Helping to bring cricket to the USA." you will find

The Devil's Dictionary of Cricket
By Miss Frances Bush, Spinster
With assistance from her great-nephew, Ambrose Bush

We are enormously in debt to Miss Fanny Bush and her great nephew who have graciously consented to provide CricketUSA® with this entertaining and informative dictionary of cricket terms, spiced with just a pinch of the devil.

Included in the information provided is this:

Follow-on -- If, in a two-innings match, the side batting second falls short of the other side's first-innings score by 150 runs in a three or four-day match, or 200 runs in a five-day match, the captain of the leading team may ask them to bat again immediately. By exercising this option, he gives his bowlers the chance to bowl the other side out again and win by an innings. (See Winning margin)