The Cricket thread

Good job it didn't really matter, although seeing England lose is never pleasant. Feckin quitters !!!

Rabada looks to be a very good find for SA-wish he was English.Pace,accuracy and movement,improvement throughout the series,looks like a budding Malcolm Marshall.

England chase down 230 to beat the Saffers in the world 20/20 cup,second highest chase in history.Young Root is the real deal,no doubt about it,possibly the best England have produced since people like Len Hutton [Root bears a remarkable resemblance in style to him,seen some footage of Len on Youtube] and Denis Compton.

Greenskin wrote:

England chase down 230 to beat the Saffers in the world 20/20 cup,second highest chase in history.Young Root is the real deal,no doubt about it,possibly the best England have produced since people like Len Hutton [Root bears a remarkable resemblance in style to him,seen some footage of Len on Youtube] and Denis Compton.

FFS, the day after I become an official Saffer England decide they can do the business. Maybe Argyle will respond in a similar fashion after I've abandoned them!

What was amazing was they did it in spite of a 5 over spell where they were going at just a run a ball, and not one boundary hit.

That said, needing one run from seven balls to win,  they very nearly conspired to fook it up at the end!

Great viewing.

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One of my sons sent me this. He was at Loughborough with footballer Robbie Simpson lol

England reach the final to meet either the West Indies or India. Devastating batting from Roy and Buttler today after some good bowling, excellent all round display in fact against a very much in form New Zealand. Not sure who would be better in the final, India have home advantage but that can work against them-they are probably the stronger all round team but the Windies can be very dangerous on any given day. We'll see but well done to England anyway.

Amazing, isn't it!

After years of promise, the odd good display and no consistency in any white ball cricket whatsoever we go over to the World Cup bowl awfully and bat wonderfully, then do the reverse, scrape a win against mighty Afghanistan and before we know it we're in the final.

I'm wondering if there is any kind of skill involved at all in T20 cricket. The batters just go out swinging and keep swinging as long as they can and the games are so short almost anything can turn out to be a pivotal moment. It doesn't much matter who you are or who you are playing: if luck is with you win.

I suppose we're into Gary Player territory with "the more I practice the luckier I get" coming into play and nobody is ever consistently lucky so eventually class will triumph but it all seems so random... Even if it isn't.

Well done to England anyway. They have massively out-performed my expectations and it'd be great if we were World Champs at something!

I haven't watched any of it.

It's just not cricket imo.

Sir Francis Drake wrote:

Amazing, isn't it!

After years of promise, the odd good display and no consistency in any white ball cricket whatsoever we go over to the World Cup bowl awfully and bat wonderfully, then do the reverse, scrape a win against mighty Afghanistan and before we know it we're in the final.

I'm wondering if there is any kind of skill involved at all in T20 cricket. The batters just go out swinging and keep swinging as long as they can and the games are so short almost anything can turn out to be a pivotal moment. It doesn't much matter who you are or who you are playing: if luck is with you win.

I suppose we're into Gary Player territory with "the more I practice the luckier I get" coming into play and nobody is ever consistently lucky so eventually class will triumph but it all seems so random... Even if it isn't.

Well done to England anyway. They have massively out-performed my expectations and it'd be great if we were World Champs at something!

Possibly an injustice to refer to Afghanistan in that way. They beat the West Indies [admittedly in a dead rubber but it was a match that Windies wouldn't have wanted to lose] and could have beaten Sri Lanka if their fielding had been a bit better. For a nation where no meaningful cricket was played until the mid nineties-apparently the game grew with the return to Afghanistan of war fleeing refugees who had picked cricket up in Pakistan-they have done astonishingly well, sort of mini Pakistan in that they seem to be able to uncover extremely talented players from virtually nothing. Wouldn't surprise me if they push for test status in the next few decades as long as their infrastructure grows and security issues allow and that could only be good for the game. Not sure that the rather greedy and self serving people who run the game would see it that way though, more's the pity.

Agreed. They seem to be hell bent on securing places for the Usual Suspects and locking others out. It's a crazy way of growing the game beyond its traditional strongholds.

To be fair to the Chris Gayles, Brendan Mcs, AdVs etc of this world the ability to go out there and pulverise new ball bowling from the off is remarkable (even if they do ride their luck). I can't help but wonder how they'd do at baseball. How much harder can it be to hit a pitcher's 100mph fast ball from 60ft away than it is to hit a bowler's bouncing delivery at 90 mph from 22 ft?

This must have been put to the test at some stage. I wonder how it went?

Thinking on that some more...

A baseball pitch goes more or less in a straight line (although point of release to plate will probably have a slight downward trajectory) so the 60 ft represents almost how far a baseball pitch travels. The only thing to slow it down is air resistance.

A cricket delivery will pitch, say, 2/3 of the way down and so travel further than 22 yds. It will also be slowed by air resistance but will lose considerable energy (and thus slow some more) by bouncing.

Should I do some sums or hit Google, I wonder?

(BTW if you want to know about why a cricket ball swings then I'm yer man - I looked into the physics of that in some detail many years ago.)

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Best I could do was 0.21 seconds (base hit).

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0.4 seconds for a fastball to travel from pitcher to hitter.

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About 0.6 seconds for a cricket ball to travel from bowler to batsman.

... and then a baseball is bigger than a cricket ball but a cricket bat is wider than a baseball bat!

I guess you could also extend that scenario to tennis,140 mph serves over how ever long a tennis court is. I faced some fairly lively fast bowlers in local cricket who were probably bowling at around 75 mph [possibly a little quicker in some cases] and believe me, you didn't have much time to react, God knows what it must be like to face someone like Steyn or Holding.Seem to remember that a boffin once worked it out that the speed of the very fastest bowlers made it mathematically and physically impossible in theory for the batsman to react. As you say,one big difference between cricket and baseball is the fact that the ball pitches in cricket and slows appreciably in comparison to the fast full toss,which is why you see such consternation at beamers.Piers Morgan fancied his chances against Brett Lee though.What a twat.

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I don't think the ball size matters much - although a bigger ball will slow down more quickly. Both would need to be walloped in the centre to really ping off the bat so the relative narrowness of a baseball bat would be the biggest factor here.

Interesting article and BTL comments (which is unusual!) here: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

FFS

To be fair to Piers Morgan Brett Lee was only bowling from about 18 yards!

The only "proper" cricket I have ever been to was a Plymouth CC match against Somerset back in the Botham/Richards/Garner days. Botham and Richards put in a brief appearance but didn't play; Garner did. Garner opened the batting and biffed a quick 100 and opened the bowling with off-spin just to have a go. It was too dangerous for him to run in properly.

Colin Dredge ran in fairly hard though and was the quickest bowler I have ever seen. It just whooshed through. The daft thing is that Dredge was a plodder and decidedly millitary medium in the great scheme of things. I suspect 75 mph would have been beyond him! Which just goes to show how quick they real quicks are. Later in his career the WK would stand up for Dredge but in those days he was back with the slips.

The other big memories of that day were what top gent Garner was. All the time in the world for everybody but watching him fold/unfold himself into and out of an deckchair was quite a laugh. Another was Hallam Moseley's fielding - the way he flicked his wrist and sort of underarmed a throw in with pace and unerring accuracy was incredible. Finally a lad from our school bagged a 5 for bowling for PCC. We were all dead chuffed that he'd got real cricketers out!

Can't recall the year exactly but might have been 1980ish?

I loved those days at Taunton, my Mum would knit all day and me and my Dad would have our cider watching 3 serious top legends at play.

Three absolute legends. Watched them once in a one dayer at Bath during the festival.
I once had the honour of playing at Stapleton Towers Plymouth CC, and bowling 2 overs at the mighty Gary Sobers. I was one of two school kids given the honour in a charity match against a Pasty Harris team I think. God knows how I wangled that, I was 16 or 17. I think it was Hylton Jones' recommendation who played for Tavistock.

I never got The Master Blasters autograph, but what was well ace that a few years ago one of my local pubs got took over by a couple. Anyway, it turned out the landlords missus had had a rather damn fine time with Sir Vivian.

Windies it is then. India didn't help themselves by getting Simmons out on two no balls and being smashed off the free hits. Wouldn't like to call the final, two very dangerous sides who bat deep, hopefully with a good pitch it should be a cracker.

Lord Biro wrote:

Three absolute legends. Watched them once in a one dayer at Bath during the festival.
I once had the honour of playing at Stapleton Towers Plymouth CC, and bowling 2 overs at the mighty Gary Sobers. I was one of two school kids given the honour in a charity match against a Pasty Harris team I think. God knows how I wangled that, I was 16 or 17. I think it was Hylton Jones' recommendation who played for Tavistock.

Hylton Jones............ Remember him.Teacher i/c 1st team cricket at Sutton. Decent chap I seem to remember. Used to bosh it a bit too.

My club Tring Park CC have this guy playing Premier League cricket in 2016.

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The Club is very pleased to announce that Australian, NSW and Sydney Sixers all-rounder Sean Abbott will be joining us this 2016 cricket season as our overseas player.

We are very excited by this signing, as Sean is one of the most exciting young talents in Australian cricket. The club also sees great virtue in having someone of Sean’s standing to coach and mentor some of our younger cricketers.

Simon Shearman, Chairman of the Club, says “this is fabulous news for Tring Park Cricket Club and the local community. Sean is a terrific young cricketer and we very much look forward to working with him. Tring punches way above its weight in sport, particularly Cricket & Rugby; this is just another example of that and I have no doubt that Sean will be embraced by the Town and his stay with us will be an enjoyable one. A big thank you to all those who have made this possible, in particular Berkhamsted School and Tape Specialities Ltd”

And this one.........

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We are pleased to announce that Northamptonshire cricketer Saif Zaib has joined the Club. Still only 17 years old, Saif became the youngest player ever to appear for Northants 1st XI two years ago and he played two first class games for the County last season. He is a left handed bat and slow left arm bowler, and scored 108 and took four wickets for 35 runs for Northants 2nd XI against Durham in 2015.
Welcome to TPCC Saif!