BS: Bury the Ashes?

Subject: BS: Bury the Ashes?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 11 Jul 13 - 07:39 AM

Re the ‪‎Ashes‬, my argument as to why test ‪cricket‬ (unlike limited-over cricket) is one of the worst sports in the world: an airswing is worse than an edge but, in test cricket, only the latter may be punished; or, in verse, my poem "Dot-Ball" - http://walkaboutsverse.blogspot.co.uk/2010/10/walkaboutsverse-165-of-230.html

Subject: RE: BS: Bury the Ashes?
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 11 Jul 13 - 07:56 AM

Philistine.

Subject: RE: BS: Bury the Ashes?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 11 Jul 13 - 08:02 AM

...if an airswing was punished with dismissal, it would certainly speed things up...strike-one and your out..?

Subject: RE: BS: Bury the Ashes?
From: dbranno
Date: 11 Jul 13 - 08:38 AM

There was an ancient cricketer
He stoppeth one of three
The others go through to the 'keeper
Or strike him on the knee

Under the influence of bash-and-crash short forms, the longer game of Test Cricket may be doomed.
The current crop of sportstars and sportsfiends have not the required concentration methinks.
A twagedy old boy, what? The game of empire...

Subject: RE: BS: Bury the Ashes?
From: GUEST,Ralphie
Date: 11 Jul 13 - 08:38 AM

WAV.....What on earth are you talking about? Air Swing? What on earth is that? (Must be an Australian reference....Oh I forgot)

Subject: RE: BS: Bury the Ashes?
From: catspaw49
Date: 11 Jul 13 - 08:48 AM

Dunno' Ralphie, but I'm hoping this doesn't trigger another rash of posting the delusional and repetitive crap from the King of Bad Poetry and Bigoted Bullshit.......***sigh***............


Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Bury the Ashes?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 11 Jul 13 - 08:53 AM

...an airswing, a swing-and-a-miss, where those in the slips may, sarcastically, say "well left, sir"...not sure what they'd say to Spaw..?

Subject: RE: BS: Bury the Ashes?
From: Rapparee
Date: 11 Jul 13 - 09:55 AM

I thought this was about a cremation.

Subject: RE: BS: Bury the Ashes?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 11 Jul 13 - 10:05 AM

It is, Rapparee -

The series is named after a satirical obituary published in The Sporting Times in 1882 following the match at The Oval, in which Australia beat England in England for the first time. The obituary stated that English cricket had died, and the body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia.

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: BS: Bury the Ashes?
From: Bill D
Date: 11 Jul 13 - 10:42 AM

"...the body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia"

What good is transportation if you can't get any work out of 'em afterwards?

Subject: RE: BS: Bury the Ashes?
From: catspaw49
Date: 11 Jul 13 - 12:06 PM

I thought the ashes were cremated Cricket fans. How the hell anyone even remotely alive and breathing can stare for weeks on end (it seems) at a Cricket game is more than I can comprehend. I think they die and no none notices........

Boring and incomprehensible at the absolute best and a possible cause murder by boredom at the worst is the only to describe Cricket..............also Wavy's alleged poetry.


Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Bury the Ashes?
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 11 Jul 13 - 01:25 PM

And that bullshit comes from a native of a country whose national game consists of someone hurling a ball at someone else, who swipes at it with a cudgel and almost always misses, gets two swipes and tries to run in a circle, usually failing miserably. It's boring crap. No wonder the spectators spend most of the game fetching beer and plates of food - it's more exciting than what's going on ( or more likely not going on) on the field.

Baseball - the game where nothing happens for hours on end. In the UK, it's called 'rounders' and its played by schoolgirls.

Subject: RE: BS: Bury the Ashes?
From: GUEST,Musket between courses
Date: 11 Jul 13 - 01:38 PM

Eyup Backwoodsman, they don't like it up em you know. .. Years ago Channel 5, having got a contract to show American baseball (dropped it when viewing figures were piss poor) ran billboard adverts of a baseball player with the caption The Future of Cricket. Nice to see them with egg on their face.

Had the day off today and been at Trent Bridge.

Can't get over excited about limited over stuff. That is a better comparison to baseball. Come out and whack the bloody ball. No opportunity to get line and length, no judicious use of the night watch man. .... Mind you, still better than rounders.

Long ish drive back to The Isle, worth it though.

Subject: RE: BS: Bury the Ashes?
From: catspaw49
Date: 11 Jul 13 - 02:51 PM

LMAO....I love it.......But I agree with Robin Williams. Cricket is baseball on Valium.


Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Bury the Ashes?
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 11 Jul 13 - 03:45 PM

He got it wrong. Cricket is baseball with a brain.

Subject: RE: BS: Bury the Ashes?
From: catspaw49
Date: 11 Jul 13 - 04:07 PM

It just isn't used in Cricket though and has been atrophied by games that never end. One game is as long as the entire MLB season.

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Bury the Ashes?
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 11 Jul 13 - 04:35 PM

Spaw, you're showing your complete ignorance of the game, and you're starting to make yourself look stupid. I'd suggest you button it up before you make a complete cock of yourself.

You don't - perhaps can't - understand cricket because it's a far more complex game than the comparatively simple baseball, its not just swipe and hope and, by your own admission, you have a short attention span. Your loss, but FFS stop attacking cricket just because you're not mentally equipped to understand or appreciate it.

Subject: RE: BS: Bury the Ashes?
From: GUEST,Jack Sprocket
Date: 11 Jul 13 - 04:48 PM

Words All Vacuous has probably never watched a game of cricket. Penalise "air shots"? How? Why? The purpose of the bowler is to knock the bails off, or trap the batsman into HITTING the ball into the air for a catch, or defending his wicket illegally with his legs, or being out of his ground when the bails are removed. The purpose of the batsman is to make runs, either by running between the wickets or by making the ball reaching the boundary. Hitting the ball is incidental to this; he does it (if necessary) to prevent the ball hitting the wicket, or to get the ball either to the boundary or far enough from a fielder that he (and his partner) can run between the wickets before it is returned.

The art of the bowler is to force the batsman to hit the ball where he doesn't want to, or to fool him into thinking it will miss his wicket when it's on target; the art of the batsman is to anticipate the bowler's guile and to use it to get runs (which incidentally is why Boycott... oh, never mind).

Subject: RE: BS: Bury the Ashes?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 11 Jul 13 - 06:43 PM

...as I go onto say in the above (limited gobbledegook) poem, limited-over cricket is a far better game, because the bowler does get rewarded for beating the bat altogether, in that one of the batting side's limited deliveries has been used up, without any addition to their tally - provided the wicket keeper is on the ball, i.e.

Subject: RE: BS: Bury the Ashes?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 11 Jul 13 - 09:21 PM

JK Rowland has Quidditch as being relatively unpopular among American wizards, as being too complicated and lasting too long. She has them preferring a modified game called Quodpot involving an exploding Quaffle...

Subject: RE: BS: Bury the Ashes?
From: GUEST,Frank
Date: 12 Jul 13 - 03:28 AM

Cricket is a game of two sides, one side is in, and the other side is out.
The side that is out, tries to get the side that is in out. When the side that was out is now in, the side that was in but now out, tries to get the side that was out but is now in out. Understood?

BTW, what a great knock from 19 year old Ashton Agar on debut. 98.

Musket between courses - looked for you in the crowd on telly, but must have missed you.!

Subject: RE: BS: Bury the Ashes?
From: GUEST,Musket waving
Date: 12 Jul 13 - 03:46 AM

The stand to the right (left looking at the telly I suppose) of Trent Bridge Inn. 3/4 of the way up, in the middle.

Could only get the one day, up to me nuts with meetings today.

Subject: RE: BS: Bury the Ashes?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 12 Jul 13 - 05:46 PM

I see the grand old English tradition of cheating when playing Australia has been revived in the current match. Michael Clarke's choice to take advantage of an umpire's mistake when he knew he'd been caught out isn't quite in the same league as the introduction of bodyline bowling back in 1932, since it didn't involve risking killing anyone, but in the old expression, it defintely wasn't cricket.

I rather assume it will backfire badly.

Subject: RE: BS: Bury the Ashes?
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 13 Jul 13 - 03:07 AM

You're right of course, Kevin, but it's not limited to England cricket - at times, they all take whatever advantage they can, and you can be certain that, given the opportunity, the Aussies would do the same.

It's not cricket, but it is human nature!

Subject: RE: BS: Bury the Ashes?
From: GUEST,Musket being patriotic
Date: 13 Jul 13 - 09:25 AM

Australia tried their own version of the body line back in the early 80s. Beefy swatted them to the boundary and Boycott asked for more as they were easy to deflect.

It used to be that a batsman walked but that was before 3rd umpire and cameras. Playing to the officials is what is expected in any sport. Technically, you are in till the umpires agree you are out. Ages since I dusted off an old Wisden......

Subject: RE: BS: Bury the Ashes?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 13 Jul 13 - 10:38 AM

Cheated gets copied, and in time becomes universal. There was a time when defending a penalty in football was seen as pretty dodgy. Football commentators will regularly talk about someone winning a free kick when a foul by the opponent is seen as having being cleverly provoked.

But I think the line should always be drawn against intentionally dangerous acts, and against actions like Clarke's. Failing to penalise it retrospctively is a way of ensuring that others do it.

Subject: RE: BS: Bury the Ashes?
From: Pete Jennings
Date: 13 Jul 13 - 10:40 AM

Michael Clarke? I thought it was Stuart Broad...unless there were two of them who didn't walk?

Subject: RE: BS: Bury the Ashes?
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 13 Jul 13 - 11:29 AM

McGrath,

Broad did NOT cheat. He acted entirely within the the laws of cricket. Nearly all of the recent players, both English and Australian, that I have heard comment on the event agree that he did the right thing.

The outrage is pretty much a media invention. Now whether he acted within the 'spirit' of the game is a different question.

Subject: RE: BS: Bury the Ashes?
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 13 Jul 13 - 11:46 AM

Which is pretty much what I was saying.
I don't like it, but unless and until the Laws are amended, it will continue to happen, and ALL sides will do it.

Subject: RE: BS: Bury the Ashes?
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 13 Jul 13 - 11:49 AM

I suspect Kevin knows this, of course, but was allowing himself to indulge in a little Oirish mischief in singling out England. :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Bury the Ashes?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 13 Jul 13 - 03:05 PM

It's the claim to be above that kind of that thing. As with the stuff about Maradona and the Hand of God.

Slip of the tongue there about Mchael Clarke. Though I can quite imagine he'd likely be up for it too...

Subject: RE: BS: Bury the Ashes?
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 13 Jul 13 - 03:14 PM

But Maradona WAS cheating. Broad wasn't. Rather a big difference, I think.

Subject: RE: BS: Bury the Ashes?
From: GUEST,Raggytash
Date: 13 Jul 13 - 03:16 PM

I think the last four days of cricket has been spellbinding, the match hovering between the two sides frequently. England appear to have the upper hand at the close of play today, but I thought that on Thursday lunchtime before Ashton Agar came to the crease. What a debut, even I was willing him to get his 50, before the bugger went on to get 98. Brilliant cricket.

Subject: RE: BS: Bury the Ashes?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 13 Jul 13 - 06:09 PM

...as I say, I'm not a fan of test-cricket and I'd rather listen to the chants, drums and flauting of Amerindians/First Nations/Native Americans, but I'm enough of a realist to agree that (rather than dying a death from limited over cricket) it has become "the new rock 'n' roll". Via the news, I see that it's not just the Ashes that pack the grounds these days.

Subject: RE: BS: Bury the Ashes?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 13 Jul 13 - 06:29 PM

Having been persuaded by my nephew to visit last year, some pics of Bowral, where Don Bradman learnt to bat - https://plus.google.com/photos/106493534240943918991/albums/5890139692999290609

Subject: RE: BS: Bury the Ashes?
From: GUEST,Raggytash
Date: 14 Jul 13 - 10:33 AM

What a fantastic match, it could have so easily gone to Australia but fortunately for England the final wicket was taken with them just 14 runs short. It has been one of the great test matches. Credit to both sides for a brilliant sporting spectacle.

Subject: RE: BS: Bury the Ashes?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 14 Jul 13 - 10:54 AM

Yes; but what a disappointing end, dependent on that rather inexpressive technology, while we all had to wait to see whether the third umpire had seen or heard anything. Would have been far more interesting if the batsman had been dismissed by a brilliant diving catch; or, alternatively, if the 14 runs needed had been gained by 2 4s and a 6 in a single over.

Much to be said for all this goal-line, Hawkeye, DRS hot-spot caper. But has robbed rather a lot of the human element.

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Bury the Ashes?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 14 Jul 13 - 01:51 PM

Just saw it on the news and, as I said atop, if Haddin had made a WORSE effort and missed it completely, the match would not have been over; all sports have their strengths and weaknesses but test-cricket has this huge weakness.

Subject: RE: BS: Bury the Ashes?
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 14 Jul 13 - 03:46 PM

Do you understand anything at all about the art and game of cricket? Based on the above post, I'd say the answer to that question would be "Fuck all".

Subject: RE: BS: Bury the Ashes?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 14 Jul 13 - 05:53 PM

Missing the ball completely IS a worse effort than managing (as Haddin, e.g., just did) to get an edge, Blackwoodsman. (I played junior cricket, in a low grade, for just 2 seasons - managing to carry my bat on one occasion, and spin both ways.)

Subject: RE: BS: Bury the Ashes?
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 15 Jul 13 - 02:12 AM

And, presumably, in the strange place that is WAV-World, the efforts and skills of the bowler have no influence on the outcome? Does it not strike you that the batsman may make a good attempt at a shot, which is beaten by an even better ball from the bowler?

Cricket is a very complex, multi-faceted endeavour, and to try to express it as a simple 'hit = good, miss = bad' kind of game is to do it the greatest of disservices, and reduce it to the banality and gracelessness of, e.g. Baseball.

Subject: RE: BS: Bury the Ashes?
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 15 Jul 13 - 02:13 AM

"Which is beaten by an even better effort from the bowler?

Subject: RE: BS: Bury the Ashes?
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 15 Jul 13 - 06:15 AM

Missing the ball completely IS a worse effort than managing (as Haddin, e.g., just did) to get an edge

I'll try but will probably get pulled up on a few things...

OK, a batsman may be lucky in playing and missing completely but the last thing a batsman wants to do is get an edge - it could go anywhere - often to slips or the wicket keeper. He may get away with it, even score runs from it but he's not in control.

The batsman wants to either play a controlled shot (including just defending his stumps) or leave the ball when a) it's safe to do so and b) he doesn't believe he is going to gain anything by hitting it and he would be taking an unnecessary risk in trying to do so (in the limited overs forms, a batsman is more likely to try to score runs from every ball. In test cricket one can get very annoyed when a batsman takes a wild slash at a ball he had no need to play and gets himself out - it's giving his wicket away).

A bowler doesn't just try to hit the stumps. He tries to "trick" the batsman into making the wrong decisions or play poorly judged shots.

Subject: RE: BS: Bury the Ashes?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 15 Jul 13 - 07:29 AM

If the rule is changed such that an air-swing is out, then umpires would merely have to decide if the batsman aimed to hit the ball or not..?

Subject: RE: BS: Bury the Ashes?
From: GUEST
Date: 15 Jul 13 - 07:37 AM

If the rule is changed such that an air-swing is out

...then you'd be playing baseball.

Subject: RE: BS: Bury the Ashes?
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 15 Jul 13 - 07:38 AM

I can only imagine such a rule killing the game.

In test cricket, it is enough that that particular delivery was a moral victory to the bowler.

Subject: RE: BS: Bury the Ashes?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 15 Jul 13 - 07:50 AM

Guest - I seem to recall that in baseball it's THREE strikes and you are out.

Subject: RE: BS: Bury the Ashes?
From: GUEST
Date: 15 Jul 13 - 08:01 AM

You're right.

OK, so in your new 'improved' test cricket, every miss is given out?

It's not going to be a particularly long game is it?

Plus, as one of the many consequences, bowlers would intentionally bowl as wide as legally possible. Not very interesting to watch...

Subject: RE: BS: Bury the Ashes?
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 15 Jul 13 - 08:22 AM

"Plus, as one of the many consequences, bowlers would intentionally bowl as wide as legally possible. Not very interesting to watch..."

Yup, just like Baseball. Boring crap.

Subject: RE: BS: Bury the Ashes?
From: GUEST,Raggytash
Date: 15 Jul 13 - 09:06 AM

WAV from which nation do you hail, do you have cricket there as a spectator sport. If so risk boring yourself one afternoon and go and watch a game. It can be fascinating. Adversely are you being deliberately naïve?

This last test match has been fantastic, not much done in our house over the five days, far too enthralled with the cricket.

To try and make a simile, cricket is like chess with men and ball, moving the players around to your best advantage.

I suppose you could make a comparison with Baseball ........... and draughts.