Cricket will never make sense to me. That just seems like playing the game.
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't do that"[10] in an instinctive reaction to the incident, and he remained critical in a later newspaper article on the incident.[11]
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 gentlemanly ways lol
The sporting thing to do is to give the batsman a chance to score but to defeat him using skill. There is no skill in bowling and underarm ball, the batsmen is not being defeated by skill.
That said, never did I imagine that cricket would interest the HN audience.
I remember most of it involving standing around waiting for a solid ball to fly through the air at you.
It is of little interest to me. I live in Scotland where it is played but barely played. I have played it as a child and detested it. I also remember games on TV going on for days on end and running late so that other programmes got cancelled.
Not one of England's greater contributions to the sporting world.
(Think there's also a general prejudice against underarm play in professional sport as it's for kids who can't throw properly and feels like mockery. Underarm serves in tennis are frowned upon, even though an alert opponent has plenty of chance of scoring a point from them)
The equivalent would be bowling a ball rather than a strike in a baseball variant where each innings ended after a fixed number of balls regardless of the number of outs (which is effectively what One Day variants of cricket are). Specifically, walking the batsman when they needed to score a home run or at least a double. I think fans would get upset!
We all saw this on the school yard as a kid and none of us appreciated it. It’s annoying to have to enshrine literally every situation into the rules. Just play the game as intended. This is part of what has made American football become less fun to watch (besides learning about CTE’s…). Soooo many rules, constantly stopping play to assess every little mm of the play. It’s boring as hell for all involved. It’s why you often hear “just let them play!”
At the highest levels of the sport, they know the rulebook like the back of their hand.
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?
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.
Now that I think of it telling a baseball pitcher that he could throw a pitch, but not too difficult of one at certain times is hilarious.
(I'm of course not suggesting this was the Chappells' direct motive, or even that this incident realistically could have uncovered hidden depths in the game of cricket. But as a general philosophy I think 'playing to win' has some merit, even from a perspective that ultimately cares about the health of the game and not just about winning as a terminal goal.)
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 annoying little brother who waves his hand a millimeter from your face saying “I’m not touching you! I’m not touching you!”
The fact that everything has to be written down or some people will exploit and take advantage is a human failing, not a feature.
> 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!
I think this is actually a good example of setting up the game appropriately (in this case the teams as well as the rules) and then playing to win within those constraints. The end result is more fun and better training than you would get by departing from the 'playing to win' philosophy by, for example, having a tacit agreement that the faster swimmers will take it easy so as not to embarrass the others.
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.
This is like taking oddjob in the final match.
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!).
I don't even watch cricket, but even I find the scoring to be as simple as every other sport - 1 pt for each run a player does (batters two at a time).
When the score says "102 runs", that's exactly what it means.
Some current scores picked arbitrarily by a quick Google search:
Test 3 of 3, end of day three:
NZ 438 & 120/3
Eng 354
Test 1 of 2, end of day three:
Sri Lanka 308 & 51/1
West Indies 626/9d
Central Europe Cup (T20 4 of 6)
Serbia 162/7 (20)
Luxembourg 163/2 (13.1)
End of day three: NZ 558 - Eng 354
I can't remember where I read it, but I recall a distinction being made between "open" games and "patterned" games. "Open" games, like football, have very few repetitive elements: action is continuous, and every possession is entirely different (eg, ball and players at different starting positions) than the next. Cricket has discontinuous action, and each passage of play begins in the same manner. "Open" games are difficult to notate, and not much about the game itself can be inferred from the scoreline alone; for instance, in your example, the Mariners might have dominated possession, had multiple shots turned away, and felt unlucky in defeat - or else the complete opposite! "Patterned" games are easier to notate, and more about them can be efficiently communicated, because there's much more shared state. Chess, the ultimate patterned game, can be written down in a more-or-less complete form for later study!
[Edit: Please take this thread into the MC weeds! Lol. I want to see HN heads explode.)
But, on reflection, you're right. A score involves overs, bowls (6 per over), runs and possibly wickets taken. I expect that I sort of know all this because I grew up playing cricket (and soccer). Commonwealth country, and all that.