♫anna♫
Global Moderator
Aug 18 2017 - Always In Our Hearts
The Federal Reserve Act is the Betrayal of the American Revolution!
e x a l t | s m i t e
karma:
Posts: 11,769
|
Post by ♫anna♫ on Jun 22, 2009 4:10:58 GMT
The wicket-keeper wears gloves. I suppose the theory is that other players are far enough away not to be in direct line of fire. Probably caught out or run out are the commonest 'outs'. For what it's worth, England won the women's series but I think the West Indies won the men's. The style of bowling seems to be very very different. They were saying this morning how very slow the women's spin bowling is, but that is much harder to deal with than fast spin. Straight fast bowling is not much more than intimidation: you either get it or you don't, it either goes off the field or gets caught. Spin can go anywhere and bounce somewhere else and the slower the less predictable. Baseball also has a variety of pitches ( bowling techniques ) the curve ball, screw ball, knuckelball, slider and of course the fast ball, but the ball is never bounced on the ground before reaching the batter as in cricket. The cricket ball is probably a lot more bouncy. The gloves that a "Wicker Keeper" wears don't look very protective. In baseball the Wicker Keeper is called the Catcher and in addition to the heavily padded glove with a webbed area between the thumb and index finger the professional players often wear a second protective hand glove underneath.. Women usually play "Softball", which has the same rules as baseball, but the ball is much larger and softer and can't be hit as hard, which makes softball safer.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 22, 2009 8:55:50 GMT
I hope it wasn' t this that turned you grey overnight, Mindy. This thread is - I sincerly hope - a bit of fun, no more. I'm quite happy to be selected on the basis on a baseball game, just so long as I don't have to watch it.
|
|
|
Post by Liberator on Jun 22, 2009 10:17:01 GMT
Cricket balls aren't very bouncy but they do have a raised seam running round them that can catch the air to do clever shots with and they roughen up or polish again easily so each half can be different. I don't know what they're made of but used to feel like solid leather.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 22, 2009 12:35:05 GMT
Cricket balls aren't very bouncy but they do have a raised seam running round them that can catch the air to do clever shots with and they roughen up or polish again easily so each half can be different. I don't know what they're made of but used to feel like solid leather. Do you know, I never knew that! I did once watch a baseball game - my flatmate was going out with an American airman based over here and we saw his home team in action. It was very entertaining. These guys came on with Kevlar body armour and Hannibal Lecter masks and proceeded to play rounders.
|
|
|
Post by Liberator on Jun 22, 2009 12:49:02 GMT
That description of cricket made it sound almost exciting. Rounders is an ancient game. I suppose it's obvious to try and swipe something with a stick. I recall somebody saying a while ago that all the games we like involve hitting things or throwing things (though I'm not sure what else we could do with them) and it's all good stuff for hunting. If you really want a mad game, try hurling, overhead hockey too fast to follow the ball if you follow the players or to follow the players if you follow the ball.
|
|
|
Post by Big Lin on Jun 22, 2009 13:25:12 GMT
Cricket IS an exciting game. I've played it when I was younger (and I still play it a bit with my kids) and of course I watch it regularly.
A couple of weeks ago I was watching a game in my village between the local team and another side from the same league. It was very close and the game ended up a narrow win for the home side when their bowler ripped off-stump out of the ground with a fizzing yorker when the other side needed three runs to win with the last pair at the crease.
On a technical point, slow spin is usually more difficult to deal with than faster spin but that's not always the case. Shane Warne, for instance, always bowled his topspinner faster than his other deliveries and it got him a LOT of wickets.
There's a bit more to fast bowling than sheer intimidation, too. There's changes of pace, outswingers, inswingers, yorkers, and disguise.
My Dad reckons that the FASTEST bowler he ever saw was Frank Tyson back in the 1950s but Tyson only really had ONE good series, in Australia, when he ran through the Aussie batsmen like a dose of salts. The rest of the time he was much less successful.
Malcolm Marshall became a BETTER bowler when he got older and dropped his pace to fast-medium.
Kapil Dev, Ian Botham and Glen McGrath were never much above fast-medium but all three were pretty successful at taking wickets.
Of course Murali and Harbajan Singh are two of the most successful spinners of all time and they both have completely different styles.
(Maybe we should start moving this thread to the 'sports' section!
|
|
|
Post by Liberator on Jun 22, 2009 13:32:28 GMT
It's interesting that the little I caught of it, they were comparing the women's game as putting more emphasis on slow spinners and clever shots. That would be like the way tennis has gone I suppose, with the men's being gradually taken over with muscle power so that in the end you get those matches where a return shot is about as close to a rally as it ever gets. I think cricket is much more of a game to watch live than even on TV, but not great to just report on. There'd be a lot of subtlety that just doesn't come over in a commentary. I'm prejudiced because I had to play it and watch it at school and that's enough to put anybody off.
|
|
|
Post by Big Lin on Jun 22, 2009 13:55:23 GMT
Well, the quickest bowlers in the women's game can't get much above medium-fast (which, if you get hit with a cricket ball, still hurts!) and it's widely recognised that women batters tend to play spin BETTER than the men.
Maybe it's the macho posturing of the likes of Pietersen and Chris Gayle who can be terrific stroke players but all too often gets out with stupid shots when a measured approach would have worked just as well.
I played cricket at school and I loved it. I used to bowl medium-fast and as a batter I was a slogger who'd come in at around 8 or 9 to try to score some quick runs. I also bowled slow-left arm spin by way of a change.
|
|
|
Post by Liberator on Jun 22, 2009 14:08:13 GMT
That's one thing I dislike about baseball, it does encourage the cannon-ball approach since there's no clever bounce shots off the ground. In the end, harder and faster gets boring and that is what has happened to men's tennis. It's much the same if cricket turns into just body-line intimidation. In fact I think they should introduce a vertical bye rule against bowling 'significantly' high over the wicket. You're supposed to be bowling at the wicket after all, not the player.
Thing I liked at school was our version of fives, sort of mix of Eton and Rugby rules in a three-sided court. Think squash, golf ball, gloves instead of racket.
|
|
♫anna♫
Global Moderator
Aug 18 2017 - Always In Our Hearts
The Federal Reserve Act is the Betrayal of the American Revolution!
e x a l t | s m i t e
karma:
Posts: 11,769
|
Post by ♫anna♫ on Jun 22, 2009 15:55:34 GMT
That's one thing I dislike about baseball, it does encourage the cannon-ball approach since there's no clever bounce shots off the ground. In the end, harder and faster gets boring and that is what has happened to men's tennis. It's much the same if cricket turns into just body-line intimidation. In fact I think they should introduce a vertical bye rule against bowling 'significantly' high over the wicket. You're supposed to be bowling at the wicket after all, not the player. Thing I liked at school was our version of fives, sort of mix of Eton and Rugby rules in a three-sided court. Think squash, golf ball, gloves instead of racket. I do like Cricket, but if you want to import it to the US or the European continent you'd have to equipe the players on the field with protective gloves to catch the ball. Rugby also seems too dangerous for most non-English! I enjoy watching and playing baseball and i'm sure cricket would be fun too. It's like a chess game on the field and there's a lot of strategy and psychology.. Most other sports just seem like a mass of players moving back and forth on the field and too fast for the subtle finesses and psychology that baseball and cricket provide. Some baseball pitchers/bowlers have an overpowering fastball, but often the slow pitches are harder to hit like the notorious knuckelball, which is thrown off the knuckles so the it doesn't spin in the air.. This causes the ball to flutter unpredictably! The catcher/wicker keeper often wears an oversized glove to catch it because in baseball unlike cricket you have situations with a man (or men) on base and he, she/they will advance if the catcher/wicker keeper fails to catch the ball.
|
|
|
Post by Liberator on Jun 22, 2009 22:44:54 GMT
I reckon the invention of 20-20 cricket with only 20 overs each that purists deplore, and maybe has only 5 batsmen instead of 11 has made it a more exciting game. It means that with a limit, there is much more impetus to score runs than the habit with games that go on for days, to sit it out and hope the next side will screw up or be bowled out. Something else that could buck it up is a points scoring system instead of if neither side is all out, necessarily a draw. Gaelic football and hurling don't suffer from having double score that lists points that matter with goals that for winning don't. Maybe a simple multiplication do: 700 runs all out beats 900 runs for 6 (run out of time) because 7700 > 4200
|
|