Twenty 20 is surely going to become a top 5 w/wide sport in the next couple of years so we might as well give this a go.

Big news today, of course, is

Tendulkar breaks Lara Test record
Mohali, 17-21 October 2008


India's Sachin Tendulkar has set a new record for the most runs scored by a batsman in Test cricket, overtaking the mark set by West Indies' Brian Lara.
Tendulkar, 35, scored the 15 extra runs he needed to overtake Lara's aggregate of 11,953 on day one of the second Test against Australia in Mohali.
Already the holder of a record 39 centuries in 152 Tests, Tendulkar hit the landmark runs off Peter Siddle. A rapturous but sparse crowd in the Punjabi city stood to applaud him. He spent the tea interval on 13 not out, just one run away from Lara's record. But after the 20-minute break he hit his first ball for three down to third man and the Australian fielders shook his hand. Fireworks were set off around the ground.

It was fitting that Tendulkar established the new mark against Australia, the overwhelmingly dominant team of his era - and a side against whom he has achieved distinguished success. A prodigy as a youth, his century as a 19-year old on an ultra-fast wicket in Perth is often regarded one of the best innings ever to have been played in Australia. He was only 16 when he made his Test debut, in 1989 and scored his first Test hundred, a match-saving one against England at Old Trafford, a year later. Tendulkar was regarded by the late Sir Don Bradman as the one batsman of the modern era who most reminded him of himself. A tremendous performer in the one-day arena, Tendulkar is also the highest scorer and century-maker in that format.

LEADING TEST RUN-SCORERS
SR Tendulkar (India): 11,955
BC Lara (ICC/W Indies): 11,953
AR Border (Aus): 11,174
SR Waugh (Aus): 10,927
R Dravid (ICC/India): 10,302
RT Ponting (Aus): 10,239
SM Gavaskar (India): 10,122

lol

I like this thread and will be adding to it as soon as circumstances allow.

This is some next level shit, man.

I read your intro post, Mitchell, and it read like another language. So I Wikipedia'd "Cricket" and thought, hey! this sounds like baseball except really boring and pointless, entirely devoid of the stuff that makes baseball great. Wanted to make sure I wasn't being too ethnocentric - I mean, even baseball would probably sound lame in print (although "you get a point for the herculean task of muscling a ball over a fence four hundred feet away" is badass both in print and flesh, so make of that what you will) - so I youtube'd some cricket vids. Your sport sucks. Your tea is great, I love your bangers and mash, and you guys have good music, but your sport is boring as shit. Get out your flamethrowers, you limey fucks.

Well, for starters and on behalf of myself and Mitch... fuck you!



Not knocking baseball, but Cricket is a fuckin' masterful sport and was being played decades before your boys decided to simplify the game for your much shorter attention spans.

Can't handle the idea of a match that lasts five days with the possibility of there being no result? Too bad.

The unprejudiced and sophisticated few will sit back and laugh at those who refuse to 'get it'.

As for "entirely devoid of the stuff that makes baseball great", surely you refer to the lack of steroids, no over-inflated salaries, intense loyalty to one's team, the lack of violence - then you must be right.

I was there that day and it's still the best innings I've seen played. Unreal, especially considering Sachin's age at the time.

I was once about 15 feet away from him, when he was fielding at deep midwicket at the Oval in 2002, the closest I've ever been to genuine celebrity.
I was probably on 500,000,000 TV sets that afternoon.

Can't believe they're including that ICC filth in the averages, ugh

YEAH! That's the stuff I'm after: huge men knocking small balls over fences. YES!


Seriously, though, and as you probably surmised, my whole post was a sham. I just don't understand the sport, but I'd very much like to at some point. Seems very tactical, which I dig. My main problem is that - and I'm going to use baseball terms here, because I have no idea what the cricket lingo is - the focus of the sport seems to be placed almost entirely on the batter. I'm into pitching, tbh. There seems to be an elevation of the batter and devaluation of the pitcher in cricket. Unless I'm missing something. (And, yes, I'm missing a lot, I know.)

It's fairly even, it sometimes waxes and wanes between the two depending which ones the most famous players are at any time. I guess Baseball is the same. Bowlers get their dues; be it for bowling at 90mph, swinging it or spinning it.

What do you understand of the game so far, I managed to explain the game to some Texan's in a bar last year in around an hour.

Akhtar and Asif test positive
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2006/oct/1...ionstrophy20062


Stanford Super Stars to face England in the Stanford 20/20 for US$20 million
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EI...11/ai_n25495305


Ahem, ICL?


Wisden fears outbreak of on-field violence
http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/cricket...nce-806856.html


Baseball and cricket are exactly the same?

That whole Standford thing is lol

I should have mentioned all the cheating and match fixing that goes on as well!


Seriously though, all that intrigue aside:

Cricket > Baseball

It's not the same though - these aren't the guys who go out an break the most hallowed of records. Sure Warne had his year-ban, but the thing that got him to 700 wickets first wasn't his love of juice, but baked beans.



The ICL's a joke and is full of people who retired years ago, or should've retired years ago. The IPL is a different story and is nothing more than a vanity exercise by the BCCI to flex their muscle and money.



Yeah, but you don't see Steve Harmison hit Matt Hayden in the head with a bounder and then see Hayden charge at him, fists swinging wildly (actually, that I would like to see).

As an aside, Aussies getting pumped in India ATM. Our bowling lineup, Stuart Clark excepted, is a massive joke. Cameron White as a spinner? Gimme a fuckin' break. Bloke couldn't get a yo-yo to spin even if he tried.

When I was student-teaching in Dunedin my host mum tried to explain cricket to me. We sat and watched for quite a while (maybe an hour?) and I wanted to understand - I still do - but dear God, I don't get it. Now, rugby I could really get into - but that was the year the All Blacks blew it at the World Cup when they were favorites, and everyone went around in a state of depression for ages.

Bowlers (as we term them) haven't had the greatest of decades (save for a few exceptions). The focus of the game has slightly switched to that of the batter, as they provide a better spectacle (apparently).

Having said that, there's still some awesome bowling that goes on by both the fast bowlers (who, funnily enough, bowl very fast);



and by some spinners (who bowl slower and try to confound batters by spinning the ball both in the air and off the pitch)



Also, some great catches;



Excuse the awful music in each clip!

True, this is about the closest to a brawl that cricket gets.

This is what cricket is all about.

Well there was this.



Good tackle.

Now that's certainly something I can understand.

I enjoyed the clip with the fast bowlers. That's pretty rare when a bowler can knock down all the wickets at once, right? (I have a feeling I just asked the dumbest cricket question one could ever ask, didn't I?)

I suppose to Americans, looking at this photo makes them ask who the lucky bloke shaking hands with Babe Ruth is.

To others, they want to know the name of the fat man is that's lucky enough to shake hands with the greatest sportsmen that ever walked the Earth.

Sir Donald Bradman was so good, that looking at his career stats and researching them to detail will make you think there's something wrong.

Only, the thing is that there's nothing wrong with what you're seeing - the man well and truly was the best there's ever been... and not by a small margin. This man towers over our sport that the term Bradman-esque refers to levels that are unattainable.

Trying to put it into some perspective;

Don Bradman's batting average in international matches was 99.94 (his average in all cricket was still an unthinkable 95.17). In International cricket,m the next best is an average of 67 by current Australian batsman Michael Hussey. Of players whose careers are over, the next best is just over 60. If Bradman had made only four runs in his final innings, he would have ended his career with an average of 100.00.

Ty Cobb finished his MLB career with a lifetime average of .367. Imagine now that he wasn't close to the greatest average of all time, that there was one man who went out to bat in his final game and needed only one hit to have a lifetime .400 average (but ultimately missed it). That's how far ahead of the field Bradman was.

I thought this was about "crickets" as in "Girls"

You know, I really like soccer, starting to get into Rugby (sorta, the soccer pub I go shows it and I watch between games), I'm a pretty big anglo-phile and I'm not some knee-jerk patriotic American sorta guy (I mean..I was born in Mexico so I'm just not that guy). But all that said...I totally don't get cricket.

I mean, It's not like I haven't tried and I can even remember several times in my childhood humoring my Pakistani friend and his brothers in the school playground. We played with a tennis ball wrapped in electrical tape. But I still never got it. Although I was definitely better at cricket than baseball but then we played with a tennis ball wrapped with electrical tape.

So I'm definitely a baseball guy.
Plus I grew up less than a kilometer from my baseball teams stadium and went there a lot. So yeah...baseball got me young. All sports I like did. Cricket wasn't accesible on TV as a sport...neither was hockey..which is why I don't care about hockey.

Krejza 43.5-1-215-8

What an extraordinary debut.

Now lets see what Harbhajan can do in these conditions. Should be fun.

....join the 300 club - thats what.

Ponting must hate the sight of him.

I wonder if Botham would like to retract his words from yesterday, quickly.

Worth mentioning that Sachin became the first player to 40 test centuries in the first innings. He doesn't seem to have been at his best for a long time now but he's still tearing up the record books on the back of what he did in the 90s I guess.

*edit - misinformed, as you were - Jack Hobbs got 41

India romp home to take series 2-0, Punter fined for slow over rate, AB livid.
Might be worth backing the Saffers to win in Aus this summer, er, winter

Your initial instincts were correct. Hobbs scored 199 First-Class centuries, but only 15 in Test cricket. His last test century came when he was 46 years old and is still the oldest man to score one.

http://content-aus.cricinfo.com/england/co...ayer/14225.html

Inaugural T20 Champions League, scheduled to start next week in Mumbai, postponed until next year for, er, obvious reasons

http://content-www.cricinfo.com/t20champio...ory/379909.html

I just mentioned that in said thread. Sad face.

Beggars the question, if the India tour doesn't have any test, who and where will England play before Australia?

A BCCI rep just appeared on Sky Sports News insisting that the test series will go ahead with the Mumbai test rescheduled at an alternative venue.

I think the BCCI's default position on *everything* is 'you don't tell us what will happen - we tell you what will happen'
Difficult sell on this occasion tho.



Not really clear on why it was Sri Lanka's turn to come over anyway, they were here as recently as 2006. The Banglas opened the last Ashes series here and they haven't been back since. Not much appeal to the ECB but that isn't reason enough not to have them back. Maybe the Zimbabwe thing has fucked all the schedules.

^ WIndies filling the gap left by Sri Lanka

In other news, Chris Lewis charged with attempted drug smuggling after £200,000 of cocaine seized at Gatwick airport. Saw him play for Surrey a few times last season, not up to much, maybe his mind was on other things.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/0...s-cocaine-drugs

I didn't see him when I saw Surrey last season, bizarre story.

think they only used him un the pro40 games, fairly inept but at least he wasn't obese like Shoaib Akhtar

I only saw the Pro40 game in September.

From this week's Spin

A while back this column asked readers to goggle at the bowling
analysis of Scotland's Ian Stanger during a Cheltenham & Gloucester
Trophy match against Lancashire in 2006. But if Stanger's figures of
1-1-6-0 shouldn't tax the anoraks among you too much, what are we to
make of the recent efforts of Pakistani fast bowler Zaid Mir? Bowling
in the Shaheed Benazir Bhutto Twenty20 memorial tournament for Port
Qasim, Mir gave 110% for the boys but ended up not exactly over the
moon after a crack squad of Nobel-prize-winning mathematicians
finally agreed that his figures should read 0-0-31-0 and returned
with a sigh of relief to Fermat's Last Theorem.

Yes, folks, if there's one thing more annoying for a fielding captain
in this era of free hits than a bowler sending down a no-ball, it's a
bowler sending down another no-ball immediately afterwards.
Undeterred by this cricketing orthodoxy, Mir repeated the crime 10
times in succession before conveniently pleading a leg strain -
presumably of the kind that results from your front leg mysteriously
slipping every time it lands on the popping crease.

The Spin especially enjoyed the following summation by one of the
scorers, who is thought to be undergoing therapy after running out of
space. "Given the strange situation," he gibbered from the confines
of a straitjacket, "umpire Saleem Badr allowed Zaid to be taken out
of the firing line after he officially said he had suffered a leg
strain and couldn't bowl." Would it be rude to suggest Mir didn't
need to collect an injury to confirm the truism of that final clause?

Lewis's stats suggest i can only actually have seen him once last season - but that he played badly enough for it to have seemed like two games. Ah well.

that warnie compilation is amazing
he is considered a fucking king here in australia and rightly so

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7771966.stm

^ Warne musical.

So glad I stayed at home until tea for Swann's antics. Another good burst of wickets just then as well.

Harold Pinter's last interview:

I think Pinter would have admired my attempts to watch two games at the same time early on boxing day after 15 hours of eating, drinking and farting.

I guess we're about to find out if the Saffers are still chokers.

Starting to look like we won't see Hayden here for the Ashes. Fans of foul-mouthed two-faced flat-track bullies will be disappointed.

Well, I'd agree with the foul-mouthed aspect but don't agree that it's a bad thing (there's too much tradition in cricket), but not the flat-track bully aspect.

This is a guy who's averaged over 50 playing as an opener his entire career. His greatness is that if this was so easy, why haven't so many others of his contemporaries (apart from Virender Sehwag) done the same?

More than a few times in his career he's proven your theory wrong (no offense);

1) His 119 against Pakistan in Sharjah in 2002. With temperatures on the pitch reaching the mid-50s Celsius, he outscored the entire Pakistani team for the whole match (who were bowled out for 53 & 59).

2) His 2001 tour of India. While everyone else was being pummelled by Harbhajan Singh, he scores 549 runs in the three-match series.

3) From the start of 2001 through to the end of 2005, he scored more than 1000 runs in each of the calendar years, averaging 62.97 for those five years. You don't get five straight years of flat-tracks.

Anyway, the team will miss him, but it's time to move on.

Australian capitulation signals turning of the tide for Test cricket's world order

At intervals during the second Test, the Melbourne Cricket Ground public address system carried a soothing message: "In the unlikely event of an emergency, the emergency management plan will swing into action." As South Africa cruised to an historic first series victory in Australia, home fans waited in vain for similar reassurance from their exalted cricket team.

Their expectation was pardonable. Since Test cricket's inception at this ground 131 years ago, Australia had lost home series only to England, New Zealand and, most recently in 1992-93, West Indies. Now they have been beaten out of sight in two Test matches they were capable of winning, just a month after their trouncing in India — enough to jeopardise their mantle as the world's No1, and to warm the upcoming Ashes just a tad.

Australia's defeats in Perth and Melbourne have been two of their gravest, as notable for their manner as their margins. The Australian team of two years ago comfortably would have won the Test at the Waca by 200 runs. But, playing the hosts' proficiency rather than reputation, South Africa cruised to the fourth-innings target of 414 at a smooth-sailing 3.5 an over.

At times in Melbourne, Ricky Ponting's men played as opponents used to play against them, with a kind of grim, orderly, persevering mediocrity. As JP Duminy, in his second Test, and Dale Steyn, with a single-figure Test average, added 180 on the third day, bowlers went through the motions to defensive fields, while catches were spilled, and overthrows and penalty runs were conceded almost without a care.

Australia's batting on the fourth day was then one spasm of misplaced aggression after another, with a hankering for the bravado of yesteryear, as though one booming drive through the covers would turn the clock back. Instead the clock passed its own judgment: the entire XI could not last as long as South Africa's last three pairs.

This defeat doesn't mark the end of an era. The era had already ended. And the 13-year green and golden age in international cricket has really been a sequence of overlapping phases, subtly different, distinguished by key retirements: Taylor and Healy in 1999; the Waughs in 2003; Warne and McGrath in 2007.

It is not so much that a generation in Australian cricket is over, as that a new one has failed to begin, and that the players assumed to tide the team over in transition have fallen from their high estate.

Michael Hussey's average has deflated like a sub-prime asset book, from 86 two years ago to less than 60. Wear and tear have taken the edge off Brett Lee's velocities, and cost the services of Stuart Clark and Shane Watson. Wicketkeeper Brad Haddin is not Adam Gilchrist, which wouldn't be a problem if he didn't think he is: compulsive shotmaking, cost him his innings twice in Melbourne.

Most diminished of all are the Queenslanders Andrew Symonds and Matthew Hayden, players who in their pomp personified Australian aggression, but deserted now even by their hometown Brisbane Courier-Mail. Symonds, who at his best bends the knee to no bowler, is at present having trouble bending the knee at all. In Melbourne he looked ready for a dreadlock holiday, bowling innocuously, flailing miserably at the crease and hobbling visibly in the field.

Hayden went into the Melbourne Test talking up how "awesome" it was to be under pressure personally and collectively, as if cast in a cliff-hanger of his own making. The plot was too convoluted. He looked as confused while batting as during the first four Tests of the Ashes of 2005, and suggested none of the deep-buried professional pride that stirred him to that hard-bitten hundred at The Oval. A month ago, a fourth Ashes tour seemed inevitable, but now more people are noticing that his Test average in England is 34.5.

While no beaten team can be wholly happy, there were also hints of unaccustomed buck-passing. Vice-captain Michael Clarke was twice asked about bowling choices at his press conference, and twice he admitted not understanding their rationale, referring the questions to "the skip".

For his own part, "the skip" hummed and hawed over questions about selection, and finally directed his interlocutors to the selectors themselves. Yet the selectors have made only forced changes for the Sydney Test beginning Saturday, where uncapped all-rounder Andrew McDonald and pace bowlers Ben Hilfenhaus and Doug Bollinger have been promoted on the basis of their Sheffield Shield form. Injuries defer harder choices.

The Australian malaise is deep enough for some to have envisioned the ultimate in-case-of-emergency-break-glass option: Shane Warne returning to assume the captaincy for the Ashes.

Guest commentator for Channel 9 in Melbourne, the Sinatra of spin was conspicuous by his charisma. When the national anthem was performed on Boxing Day by Eddie Perfect, spikey-blonde star of Shane Warne: The Musical, there seemed almost no limits to the great man's accomplishments.

For the moment, it is a notion more appealing than realistic. Ponting in his most recent tour diary professes not even to have pondered retirement, and it is doubtful he would accept the loss of caste involved in accepting a new leader. Yet the schedule Australia face over the next six months will sternly test his vulnerable back and wrist, while it will also reveal if anyone actually does have an emergency management plan.

It's funny, for years Aussie cricket fans have been hearing from fans of other countries that our time was soon to be up. More often than not we answered with some smart-ass comment such as "maybe, but we're still kicking your ass" (which was true), while deep-down knowing that of course, a time will arrive where we'll be beaten and made to look ordinary. Obviously this has actually happened over the past decade or so, but not to the extent that we're losing series' by serious margins.

However, now the time has come and people are gloating that we're not the best in the world anymore. Do they think we don't know that? Do they think we haven't been heeding their warnings that the fall was due? Well, we didn't. Not the majority of us anyway. We lose a series at home (the first since the summer of 1992/93) and all of a sudden it's the end of the world.

Australia's demise has to hasten a changing of not only the guard, but of the mentality. In our players, coaches and (above all), our selectors.

Think of Australia's greatest teams over the years... I'm partial to something along the lines of this;

Justin Langer
Matthew Hayden
Ricky Ponting
Michael Clarke (over Mark Waugh, who was never the test player he ought to have been)
Steve Waugh (as much as it pains me to say)
Michael Hussey
Adam Gilchrist
Shane Warne
Jason Gillespie
Stuart Clark (a far better bowler than Brett Lee ever was or will be)
Glenn McGrath

Apologies to Mark Waugh, Stuart MacGill, Brett Lee, Mark Taylor (the best Captain I've ever seen), Michael Slater and many others.

One scan of that list and with the exception of Adam Gilchrist and Michael Hussey (both players who had to wait far too long to earn a call-up), there's a recurring thread amongst every single one of those players. At one stage or another throughout their test career, they were dropped from the side and made to earn their way back. Even Shane Warne (surely the most intriguing cricketer ever - based on skill, charisma and results) was dropped from the Australian side and told to get better.

And not every one of those sackings was justified. Mark Waugh found out via his brother that he was making his debut and that the place he would take was his twin's. Ricky Ponting made a fantastic 88 vs the West Indies in the first test of the 1996-97 season, only to be dropped after the second test in that series, not to find his way back until the Ashes tour of 1997. Damien Martyn was dropped after he was perceived to have cost Australia a crucial match against South Africa in 1993-94 and was made to wait six years to earn his spot back. Justin Langer, Matt Hayden, even the golden child, Michael Clarke, were given their marching orders.

In the next few years as the re-build takes shape, the Australian selectors will be forced to ditch their once time-honoured tradition of not sacking entrenched veterans based on a few bad outings. As many youngsters as possible (such as the young NSW batsman Phillip Hughes, who at age 20 is carving up the bowlers around the country) need to be given their baggy green caps and given time in the test side, and then cast aside if form wanes even the slightest. The Australian selection table shouldn't be a place for sentimentality. Cut the kids adrift and see what becomes of them. If the great Aussie teams of the past are anything to go by, giving a youngster a taste of the big time and then taking it from them only hardens their resolve and makes them even better once they get in the team.

This isn't the end of the world. Far from it. It's the beginning of a new one and I for one am going to enjoy watching the cricket for a real contest again.

fags die

Yeah, fair point I know, and I can usually admire cricketers without the taint of prejudice that comes easily in football - but I just don't fucking like him.



Good post, enjoyed that, cheers. That's a team picked from the years you've been watching, right? Would have Taylor in front of Hayden obv but agree entirely on the Clarke/Lee thing. I can't believe Lee has been indulged to the extent he has been. His long run in the side was as much a sign that there was rust in the hull as any of the comings and goings imo.



Righto!