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The New and Improved Cricket Thread© - Now Roadblock Free!

I

ItAintEasyBeinCheesy

it's 4th of July in my asshole
crazy monkey said:
Tendulkar already has his cup. Next world cup is in Australia so I will count india out by group stages. Australia and SA will be in final. SA will win.
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England will go pretty well.

Seems like there is going to be a bouncy fast pitch at the WACA, should be fun. If Stark goes in for Lyon and swings it like he was in the 20/20...... shit looked amazing.
 
B

beast786

Member
I have been losing intrest in cricket. It seems the biggest factors in winning is type of the pitch and who wins the toss.

Seeing how sub continents look like world beaters in dead wickets and the same teams look like college team and loose with inning defeats.

what kind of sport has it turned into?

Where the biggest game changer is the type of wicket and toss winning.
 
F

Fredescu

Member
The pitch has always been a big factor. Even bigger in the past before they used to cover them when it rained.

I don't think winning the toss is that big a factor at all for test cricket at least. India won the toss in the test just gone and lost by an innings.
 
L

legend166

Member
beast786 said:
I have been losing intrest in cricket. It seems the biggest factors in winning is type of the pitch and who wins the toss.

Seeing how sub continents look like world beaters in dead wickets and the same teams look like college team and loose with inning defeats.

what kind of sport has it turned into?

Where the biggest game changer is the type of wicket and toss winning.
Click to expand...

The type of pitch has always been important. Being able to win on all pitches is what separates the great teams (Australia under Taylor/Waugh/Ponting, 80s West Indies) from the pretenders.
 
A

artist

Banned
beast786 said:
I have been losing intrest in cricket. It seems the biggest factors in winning is type of the pitch and who wins the toss.

Seeing how sub continents look like world beaters in dead wickets and the same teams look like college team and loose with inning defeats.

what kind of sport has it turned into?

Where the biggest game changer is the type of wicket and toss winning.
Click to expand...
You forgot match fixing.
 
C

crazy monkey

Banned
legend166 said:
The type of pitch has always been important. Being able to win on all pitches is what separates the great teams (Australia under Taylor/Waugh/Ponting, 80s West Indies) from the pretenders.
Click to expand...

Truth. Unless fixing is going on there is no excuse. Your team should be able to handle all.
 
B

beast786

Member
legend166 said:
The type of pitch has always been important. Being able to win on all pitches is what separates the great teams (Australia under Taylor/Waugh/Ponting, 80s West Indies) from the pretenders.
Click to expand...


Well in about 30 years of cricket you named just 2 teams. if exception to the rule in 30 years was the only legit teams then we have a problem.

I love cricket, watch every game on willow tv here in US. But the huge influence of external factor has made me a little down.

Even if we white wash England here in Dubai, I feel like that says absolutely nothing about the teams, because a month latter if we play in England and lose every test match, no one will be surprise.
 
B

beast786

Member
Fredescu said:
The pitch has always been a big factor. Even bigger in the past before they used to cover them when it rained.

I don't think winning the toss is that big a factor at all for test cricket at least. India won the toss in the test just gone and lost by an innings.
Click to expand...


toss winning is absolutely huge in one day, especially with due and grass on the pitch. As pitch change a lot toward the 2nd inning.

maybe ICC needs to have pitches standardize with little bit of variation allowed.
 
F

Fredescu

Member
beast786 said:
Well in about 30 years of cricket you named just 2 teams. if exception to the rule in 30 years was the only legit teams then we have a problem.
Click to expand...
Only two teams recently have been able to beat all other teams all the time. That doesn't make them any more or less legit than other teams. Beating a competent international team on their home turf is hard. The degree to which the pitch plays a role in cricket is one of the more interesting parts of the game.

beast786 said:
toss winning is absolutely huge in one day
Click to expand...
Yeah, I agree with that which is why I specified "test cricket". ODIs are rubbish so they don't count. Maybe they should do a rotation system in ODI series, but I'd just as soon they cancel ODIs altogether.
 
I

ItAintEasyBeinCheesy

it's 4th of July in my asshole
Eh, the variables\chance\luck etc make the game. The skill of the team "should" increases these things.

I wonder if they practice coin tossing..........
 
B

beast786

Member
ItAintEasyBeinCheesy said:
Eh, the variables\chance\luck etc make the game. The skill of the team "should" increases these things.

I wonder if they practice coin tossing..........
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I don't mind a little home cooking. Support of your fans, weather etc. But the game should not be effected. ICC need to standardize pitches with little variations. or just set the tournaments like tennis, where we know which major is played in certain type of court ie grass ,clay etc.
 
D

Dead Man

Member
beast786 said:
I don't mind a little home cooking. Support of your fans, weather etc. But the game should not be effected. ICC need to standardize pitches with little variations. or just set the tournaments like tennis, where we know which major is played in certain type of court ie grass ,clay etc.
Click to expand...

No thanks. Save that for the 20/20 rubbish. May as well make it indoor cricket if you are going to do that.
 
I

ItAintEasyBeinCheesy

it's 4th of July in my asshole
Dead Man said:
Holy shit. That's it, everyone else can pack it up. Greatest catch ever.
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I think Dougie did something similar, popped it up before he went over the boundary and caught it when he had jumped back in.

I'm waiting for the AFL mark catch before it goes over the boundary for 6...... the markee? wouldn't like it so much if they had their spikes on.
 
G

Grug

Member
Haddin is such a tool.

He is the last person who should be calling the opposition "fragile" right now.

You should only talk the talk when you can walk the walk, and Haddin can't even crawl right now without shitting his pants.
 
C

crazy monkey

Banned
Series prediction time. 3-0 Australia. One test will be draw or washed out or something. There is good chance of 4-0 too. India is not winning though unless there is a miracle.
 
A

artist

Banned
Srilanka is 24/7 .. hopefully new records are created today.

And new record. Pakistanis rejoice as Srilanka have joined tied them for the lowest score by a full member test nation. <3
 
D

Dynedom

Member
Just fucking atrocious. I thought we'd lose this match either way given SA's batting performance but 43 all out is inexcusable.
 
C

crazy monkey

Banned
irfan said:
Best thing was Kallis got no wickets. I'm happy. *happy dance*
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vwu0e.jpg


Next time. He would have gotten century today too if it wasn't for silly run out.
 
B

beast786

Member
Wow, I just gazed at the score some time ago and thought it was 43 for none in 20 overs. Then few minutes ago went back to check and when I saw it was still43, my first impression was it was delayed.

Wow. I know it's away. but DAMN
 
T

tri_willy

Member
wow sri lanka got torn a new asshole by the saffers, total domination.

that is presently the 4th worst score in an odi, with the honours going to zimbabwe x2 and canada for being above.

surprised bangladesh havnt made that list
 
D

Dead Man

Member
Good article on the Big Bash from ABC:
http://abc.com.au/news/2012-01-09/hutchison-big-bash-a-ball-no-care/3764062
It may not surprise you that a man approaching 50; with an expanding girth and hair growing out his ears is not necessarily the target audience for the Big Bash.

I probably won't go to the cricket wearing a KFC bucket on my head or daubed in the war paint of a team to whom I have now pledged my loyalty - even though they were invented only a few weeks ago.

That is for the young and hopeful.

I am not the new fan Cricket Australia is looking for; but at the MCG the other night, I did want to find out just who that fan might be.

So off I went to see "your" Melbourne Stars take on the visiting Perth Scorchers.

Now the first thing I noticed was that there was really only one star - Warnie. And it was to him the smallish, but noisy crowd in the Great Southern Stand bowed.

He really doesn't have to do much these days. He strolls in off a few paces, rolls the arm over and doesn't even get a bat.

His job is to wave at the worshippers occasionally and be seen "out in the middle again" to remind us not only how great he was, but how great Jenny Craig is if you want to lose weight - and also how great KFC is, if you don't want to lose weight.

At the Big Bash anything goes. Everything is great. The crowd even munches Red Rooster chicken.

There are other names you know; the other Hussey of course and the odd sight of the Tasmanian George Bailey and WA's Adam Voges playing for a Victorian franchise instead of their home teams.

The Perth Scorchers, similarly schizophrenically not only fielded a team with former NSW captain Simon Katich in its lineup, but Herschelle "you just dropped the World Cup" Gibbs and Paul Collingwood - until quite recently England's T20 captain.

To Gibbs' credit, he still has a good eye and he blazed a quick 50; the innings to prove the only genuine highlight of the match. But as I looked around me, I realised it didn't really matter anyway.

The cricket was secondary to everything else.

The very familiar crowd games of beach balls being bumped and popped; security guards being booed for bursting the fun; Mexican waves that rolled for a while and then faded, not just because the toffs in the members refused to play, but because there were vast, empty stands and no crowds to sustain the momentum.

And the Big Bash needs momentum. It needs noise.

There are pre recorded jungle drums when the tempo is lost - usually when an incoming batsman plays the first ball quietly back to the bowler. It is like canned laughter in sitcoms, reminding an audience what is expected of it. Laugh, get excited, respond!

There are ground announcers, who breathlessly declare everything is incredible, when heaven forbid in the last couple of overs it's actually been quite dull watching an out-of-form Cameron White scratching about at the crease.

There is music. And there is a lot of it.

I was, I have to admit, relieved to know nearly every song they played - Counting the Beat, Blister in the Sun, Start Me Up - absolute standards of course, but what struck me was the fact a few bars of this or a recognisable riff of that was injected not just between overs, but between balls - no, between empty seconds - to fill the silence.

Because at the Big Bash, silence is death. Silence might have you asking "What are we actually doing here?"

What we were doing here was having a comparatively cheap and cheerful night out. And yes a new fan was sitting just near me.

She was 10 years old and dancing in her seat and drinking Coke and whooping it up as she watched every boundary being greeted by fiery pyrotechnics away to her left.

Her dad was with her, but unlike previous trips to the cricket, she didn't have to endure his dry observations about the game or understand why it matters that "Clint McKay has a pretty well disguised slower ball." There were other things to look at.

For me though, some of those things were just crap.

Take for instance, this moment, late in the Stars run chase - as a genuine tension was building as to whether they could reach their modest victory target. Insert the ground announcer again, this time encouraging us to take our eyes off the game and stare at the big screen.

"Why not text the number on the screen and you could be in with the chance of winning a Jenny Craig snack to enjoy after the game."

A Jenny Craig snack? Where does that sit in the pantheon of yum?

I'm not being the curmudgeon here - I understand professional sport as entertainment - but good judgment and genuine innovation will be needed in the ongoing sell of the product. Let its promoters remember how tired NBL basketball became when its gimmickry began to bore us.

And to be honest, late in the evening, what I really wanted to see was shiny Shane Warne or the cyborg which has consumed him, crack open under that hot glare of crowd and light to reveal the inner truth - a larva flow of baked beans and fag ash.

Real Shane at the real cricket.

As the crowd wandered off into the night, no-one seemed to care that the Scorchers snuck home by eight runs and that "your" Melbourne Stars had now lost three of its four opening Big Bash games.

Everyone had fun, but no-one cared. And will that matter?
Click to expand...
 
S

Salazar

Member
Good article. Sounds like a distillation of the things that are shit about going to watch sport. Especially the terror of silence - the blaring of music for its own sake.
 
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