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Underarm bowling incident of 1981

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Re: Underarm bowling incident of 1981

#71

Post by flymasterv »

kiddico wrote: post #7

Cricket will never make sense to me. That just seems like playing the game.

The problem here is that limited overs cricket has been modified from regular test cricket in a way that fundamentally alters the strategy and flow of the game to increase the action and decrease how long it takes to play.

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.

Re: Underarm bowling incident of 1981

#72

Post by dspillett »

kiddico wrote: post #7

Cricket will never make sense to me. That just seems like playing the game.

> Cricket will never make sense to me

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!).

Re: Underarm bowling incident of 1981

#73

Post by scott_w »

roryirvine wrote: post #65
esperent wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Americans Everyone not from one Uk, India... maybe Australia you mean?

Not even the whole of the UK - really only England and Wales (as a singular entity, rather than individually). 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 suspec…

> The rest of us know it only for its impenetrable jargon ("They've risked a woggle on the silly midden!")

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?)

Re: Underarm bowling incident of 1981

#74

Post by scott_w »

kiddico wrote: post #27
sejje wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a gentleman's game. Like in golf, there are expectations of behavior. 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…

I suppose my fundamental misunderstanding is that an underarm bowl just seems like the obvious defensive move, not unsportsmanlike. 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 gentleman…

It’s because overhand bowling was just the way you bowled, so nobody considered making a rule to tell you that was necessary until someone didn’t. Imagine playing football and someone picks up the ball and- oh right ;-)

Re: Underarm bowling incident of 1981

#75

Post by Someone »

kiddico wrote: post #27
sejje wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a gentleman's game. Like in golf, there are expectations of behavior. 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…

I suppose my fundamental misunderstanding is that an underarm bowl just seems like the obvious defensive move, not unsportsmanlike. 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 gentleman…

This wasn’t only underarm, but also rolling the ball over the ground.

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?

Re: Underarm bowling incident of 1981

#76

Post by scott_w »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #63
kiddico wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose my fundamental misunderstanding is that an underarm bowl just seems like the obvious defensive move, not unsportsmanlike. 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 gentleman…

The issue is countless teams had opportunities to do this in the past - they all knew it was an option - but they chose not to. Then suddenly one team decided “well there’s no rule…” even though it was clearly established that everyone agreed not to do it. It’s not like they discovered something new, they just broke convention with no warning at a very consequential time after many teams undoubtedly could’ve done the…

I actually suspect they didn’t know. When a sport is played one way for 200 years, you don’t read the rule book to check, you just copy what everyone is doing!

Re: Underarm bowling incident of 1981

#77

Post by scott_w »

retsibsi wrote: post #51
ryandrake wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's definitely an argument for just exploiting edge cases in the rules as hard as you can, seeing how the game evolves from there, and relying on the governing body to fix it if needed. 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…

I'm reading a book at the moment ( https://academic.oup.com/book/32137 ) in which the author makes a point of the distinction between "the goals of a game and our purpose in playing a game". My purpose in playing games is never winning for winning's sake, let alone winning at the cost of violating basic decency. But sometimes the purpose is best served by pursuing the goals quite single-mindedly. Competition can be f…

There’s definitely a time and place for both. Even in sport, “playing to win” can defeat the point when you’re doing it for fun. 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!

Re: Underarm bowling incident of 1981

#78

Post by dspillett »

sejje wrote: post #16
kiddico wrote: post #7

Cricket will never make sense to me. That just seems like playing the game.

It's a gentleman's game. Like in golf, there are expectations of behavior. 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…

> It's a gentleman's game.

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.

Re: Underarm bowling incident of 1981

#79

Post by pdpi »

Eisenstein wrote: post #59
pdpi wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s surprisingly simple, actually. 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 pit…

So the batter runs towards the bowler? 102 runs? Can a run score more than one? What was the down by 6 thing? It's not really that simple?

Down by six is literally that — they were six runs (points) behind. Six is a "magic" number, because that's what you score for knocking the ball out of the park (so the cricket equivalent to hitting a home run).

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.

Re: Underarm bowling incident of 1981

#80

Post by zimpenfish »

Scarblac wrote: post #61
Eisenstein wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the batter runs towards the bowler? 102 runs? Can a run score more than one? What was the down by 6 thing? It's not really that simple?

There's a rope around the field, if the ball goes over it without hitting the ground (like a home run) it counts for 6. If if it did hit the ground it counts for 4. 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…

> There's a rope around the field, if the ball goes over it without hitting the ground (like a home run) it counts for 6.

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...

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