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

To update you English folks, I finally got around to playing the computer cricket game. I captained your English team against Australia.

You lost.

The announcers at the end said, "Well, that was a real disappointment, we were expecting a competitive match." As an American coach once said after a particularly embarassing loss, "I sure coached good, but they sure played bad."

It sounds like the sim is pretty realistic!

You're in good company - Graham Gooch, Mike Atherton, Alec Stewart ...

Yup, I understand England's fortunes in cricket haven't been too good lately. The clerk in the London computer store early this summer had PLENTY of the computer games on hand, "Cricket World Cup '99", since the English team had bowed out early, I think. This is probably why we Americans pick something like basketball, where there is little doubt, although not zero doubt - some NBA players play for their home countries.

I remember watching the USA Olympic Basketball roster being announced years ago. I had missed the fact that pros had been allowed in. So they are announcing players like Larry Bird (now NBA Hall of Fame), etc. I thought, "This won't work, somebody is going to know these guys!"

I have a new source of info., the clerk at a nearby store is from Pakistan, he plays cricket regularly here in Houston. He explained, e.g., that a player holding the ball can kick the wicket and get a runner out (wrong phrase?). I thought the ball had to hit the wicket.

A question: Do first class cricket teams have non-playing coaches/managers who make most of the decisions? American sports teams have playing captains, but the game decisions are made mostly on the sidelines by "management".

Hi Steve,

First of all, your friend is completely wrong, I'm afraid - the batsman is out if "Any player completely removes with his hand or arm a bail from the top of the stumps, providing that the bail is held in that hand or in the hand of the arm so used" [Law 28.1 (b)]- but feet may not be used. If you ever have questions on the laws, you can always go to the horse's mouth at http://www.lords.org/mcc/laws/index.html.

Secondly, regarding the captains: cricket is almost unique (it seems to me) in modern-day professional sport, in that one man is required to be a player in the team and at the same time make the tactical decisions. Although teams have selectors, managers and coaches, it is still very much the case that the (playing) captain decides who bats when, who bowls when and where the fielders go, and when and if to declare. He also tends to carry the can for mistakes in this area.

Two examples of strange things arising from this:
(1) in this year's World Cup, the South African captain (Hansie Cronje) came out wearing an earpiece so that the team coach (Bob Woolmer) could "advise" him during the game, like a Head Coach calling plays to a quarterback. Although there is no rule about this - no-one had ever tried it before - the umpires politely asked him to remove it and he politely agreed (cricket is still very like that).

(2) There was a guy called Ray Illingworth who was England captain in the early '70s, famous as a very clever tactician. In the mid-80s he was manager of the Yorkshire team, and as an experiment he started to play in their one-day side almost purely for his strategic skill (he could still bowl a bit, but he was now 50 and, as you might expect, his batting and fielding were rather on the wane). That year Yorkshire won the one-day ("Sunday") league, and Illingworth was given much of the credit. Strangely, no other teams have tried to emulate this, so far as I know.

The good news on English cricket is that they've won their first two matches on the current tour to South Africa (news also available on the www.lords.org link), and their most influential player, Atherton, seems to have returned to form after a couple of years of struggling wit hback injuries. The first test starts next week - fingers crossed!

Gary

Feet in cricket. I believe if a batsmen hits the ball and it is deflected by a fielder's feet (or any part of the fielder's body)on to the wickets of either batsman when the batsman is out of his crease then the batsman is out.

Just to clarify, what my Pakistani clerk friend said was that if a fielder was HOLDING the ball, he could kick the wicket and get a runner out who was "out of his crease" (as they say?). This is common in American baseball, where a fielder who has the ball can simply step on the base and get a runner out must be on that base. Some of the best "Great Play" videos invlove second basemen and shortstops making unbelievable plays at second base, simply brushing the "bag" with ANY part of their bodies (holding the ball, or almost holding the ball) while the runner barrels in to the base, then typically making a miraculous throw to first base for a double play. I myself was a second baseman who made a few neat plays (and a few humiliating errors).

That's what I thought you meant, Steve - if it's the ball itself which breaks the wicket, it can have hit any part of a fielder first, but if he uses his body it must be the hand holding the ball, or the arm to which it's attached.

There are also interesting rules about catching - you can catch someone out in your cap or sunhat, or in a fold in your sweater, but if you are wearing a protective helmet with a grille and the ball lodges in the grille, the batsman is not out and the ball is dead (so no run can be scored). Also, a second fielder can make a fair catch when the ball bounces off a first - this happened in 1985 when Aussie wicketkeeper Wayne Phillips was controversially (but, replays showed, correctly) given out when the ball bounced up off Allan Lamb's boot to be caught be David Gower. However, the batsman can't be out if the ball strikes a protective helmet worn by the first fielder.

Sadly for the makers of highlight videos, when one batsman is given out in cricket, the ball is dead, so there is no opportunity to also run the other out in a "double play". Also, unlike in baseball, the batsman can't barge the fielder out of the way - that's "obstructing the field" and he may be given out.

The London Times on the Web today doesn't make it sound good for England. Under a headline about "Waking to a New Nightmare", the lead sentence is:

"AFTER five balls of the third over here yesterday England were two for four, with two men at the crease who had never faced a ball in Test-match cricket."

Sorry to hear that - hopefully it will end up better than the USA soccer (football, I know) fortunes. The good news is, with all the help here at H2G2, I can almost understand the sentence above. The part about having rookies playing is clear, not too sure what "two for four" means. If its two runs for four wickets, that sounds grim, alright.

Woops, that face at the end of the message above was supposed to be:



Sorry about that, I type on autopilot too much ...

It probably means 2 wickets for 4 runs. I say probably because I'm not sure what the English system is.

Sadly, it did mean that - and England went on to lose by an innings, which is very very bad.

In England, a score of eg "3 for 1" means that the batting side have scored 3 wickets and lost one run. In Australia, they do this the other way round.

When a bowler's figures are given as "3 for 1", that means he had taken 3 wickets for 1 run conceded. I'm not sure if that's the same in Oz or if they reverse it.

There's one other piece of terminological variation I can think of: runs which are not credited to a specific batsman (byes, leg byes, no balls and wides) are called "extras" almost everywhere in the world except in South Australia, where they call them "sundries".

I know this conversation's getting on a bit, but there is a recorded (albeit amateur) instance of a team scoring nothing at all, to be found in Stephen Pile's great "Book of Heroic Failures". The (adult) team Trophy Boys XI were playing the schoolboys of King's College School in Cambridge. Trophy Boys won the toss, batted first and were all out for 0. King's then came in to bat and Trophy Boys' first ball was a no ball, giving King's the score of 1 and victory without playing a single shot.

The Book is great reading, and also gives a fuller account of New Zealand's 26 all out.

Many thanks for the tip, I love books like that. Amazon shows it as out of print, but will look for a used copy - they have found used books for me in the past, so with luck ... if you happen to know of a supplier, I'd appreciate the info.

Amazon had four reader reviews, all five star.

Getting run out without facing a ball is
commonly called a "diamond duck".

In the event of a runout or batsmen being
bowled, the ball has to dislodge the bails
not just hit the stumps (wickets), but
dislodge one or both of the bails. If the
bails have been dislodged during a section
of play and the batsmen attempt another run
the fieldsman must, while holding the ball,
remove a stump from the ground.

In Australia wickets always preceed runs on
the scoreboard and elsewhere.

Steve, if you want to order that book and don't mind paying a bit of extra postage, it's in print in the UK so you could get it from there (eg http://www.amazon.co.uk).

If you're buying humorous cricket books I really have to recommend my favourite: "Rain Men" by Marcus Berkmann, the very best and truest account of village cricket ever published. It's also available from Amazon UK if you can't get it Stateside.

Great idea. I just ordered Rain Men, The Book of Heroic Failures, and also Bluffer's Guide to Cricket from Amazon UK. The shipping wasn't too bad, about the same cost as the books

Someone way back there suggested Collected Tales from a Long Room, by Peter Tinniswood, Amazon US has been looking for several months, no luck. Amazon UK doesn't show it either (with 850 total books on cricket!) Ah, well, I doubt that I'll be able to translate the three above in this lifetime.

Good to hear. The link doesn't work of course - Jim, get the parser sorted! - but you obviously got my drift .

Not sure about the "Bluffer's Guide" - I've seen a couple in the series and they're .. well .. thin. Still, enjoy your reading!

There's also "The Art of Coarse Cricket" by Michael Green (I think), which I love and which is also long out of print. Possibly not so funny for non coarse-cricketers.

Oops. Should read "the batting side have scored three runs and lost one wicket".
I'm sure I didn't type that

OK, I'm lost again (but getting used to it). "Coarse Cricket"?