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Post by flashblade on Mar 26, 2015 15:58:47 GMT
I confess that I have lost interest in this competition which drags on for an eternity. The 20/20 World cup is over in two weeks as is the derided by some Champions Trophy. Is it too much to ask that the next 50 over World Cup be concluded within four weeks? Never mind the boredom - think about the TV money - that's what's really important.
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Post by irishexile on Mar 27, 2015 15:46:04 GMT
Off the wall suggestion. In this year's 50 over competition, why not award bonus points on a sliding scale for final scores. Example - scoring between 300 and 349 (between 6 and 7 RpO) gets 1 bonus point, 350 to 399 (7 and 8) gets 2 bonus points, and 400+ (8+) gets 3 bonus points. Batting second, you would get bonus points if your RR falls into the same brackets, and same for rain-affected games too.
Would that help encourage players to play more attacking cricket, or introduce more problems than it solves?
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Post by flashblade on Mar 27, 2015 16:58:33 GMT
Off the wall suggestion. In this year's 50 over competition, why not award bonus points on a sliding scale for final scores. Example - scoring between 300 and 349 (between 6 and 7 RpO) gets 1 bonus point, 350 to 399 (7 and 8) gets 2 bonus points, and 400+ (8+) gets 3 bonus points. Batting second, you would get bonus points if your RR falls into the same brackets, and same for rain-affected games too. Would that help encourage players to play more attacking cricket, or introduce more problems than it solves? I'm not sure there's any lack of attacking cricket. I think it's tedious for 2 reasons: 1. It lasts 7 seemingly interminable weeks! 2. The rules are tilted too much in the batsman's favour - there's not an even contest between bat and ball. This is to make it exciting for non cricket lovers.
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Post by coverpoint on Mar 29, 2015 4:03:12 GMT
McCullum played like the million dollar man, showed Mitchell Starc absolutely no respect and paid a heavy price for it! Dosey cricket from Southee getting run out. Elliott, Anderson, Ronchi and Vettori blown away as if they weren't there. Apart from the Taylor and Elliott partnership it was pathetic from New Zealand. New Zealand made Starc, Faulkner and Johnson look unplayable. Men v boys! Are New Zealand South Africa in disguise? #worldcupchokers
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Post by invicta1977 on Mar 29, 2015 8:03:36 GMT
McCullum played like the million dollar man, showed Mitchell Starc absolutely no respect and paid a heavy price for it! Dosey cricket from Southee getting run out. Elliott, Anderson, Ronchi, Vettori and Elliott blown away as if they weren't there. Apart from the Taylor and Elliott partnership it was pathetic from New Zealand. New Zealand made Starc, Faulkner and Johnson look unplayable. Men v boys! Are New Zealand South Africa in disguise? #worldcupchokers Some effort from Elliott to score 83 despite twice being blown away.
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Post by Wicked Cricket on Mar 29, 2015 9:59:07 GMT
So typical that after such a scintillating World Cup where so many WC cricketing records fell, the final is such a limp lettuce. Even so, the official 93,013 attendance is another WC record and is also the all-time official record of any format as the alleged 100,000+ figures in Asia were all 'unofficial'. Below is a link showing cricketing attendance records over the years. It makes for fascinating reading. stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/content/records/283309.htmlAt least, this offers great hope for the future of cricket. The sport may be dying in England but thank god other parts of the world still embrace the game's magnificence. Great sympathy for New Zealand. They peaked too soon!
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Post by invicta1977 on Mar 29, 2015 10:22:17 GMT
So typical that after such a scintillating World Cup where so many WC cricketing records fell, the final is such a limp lettuce. Even so, the official 93,013 attendance is another WC record and is also the all-time unofficial record outside of Asia too as the alleged 100,000+ figures in Asia were all 'unofficial'. Below is a link showing cricketing attendance records over the years. It makes for fascinating reading. stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/content/records/283309.htmlAt least, this offers great hope for the future of cricket. The sport may be dying in England but thank god other parts of the world still embrace the game's magnificence. Great sympathy for New Zealand. They peaked too soon! I thought it a highly appropriate final for this tournament - predictable, one-sided, disappointing. And did we really need 7 weeks to conclude that Australia are the best team in the world, NZ pretty damn good, SA underachievers and England rubbish? Roll on April 12th.
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Post by Wicked Cricket on Mar 29, 2015 11:10:31 GMT
invicta,
Certainly, I don't feel as gloomy about the World Cup as you.
It's been a huge success in Australasia. Just so happened England were little more than a limp wallflower. The attendance figures, those who watched it on TV - perhaps, the most successful World Cup outside of Asia.
Of course, it went on too long. Of course, the idea that fewer cricketing countries should participate is wrong. The most exciting earlier matches were the so-called minnows. Ireland had another successful tournament. Bangladesh beat England! Some incredibly amazing games that came down to the last few balls.
There are a lot of positives to be taken away.
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Post by invicta1977 on Mar 29, 2015 11:27:33 GMT
invicta, Certainly, I don't feel as gloomy about the World Cup as you. It's been a huge success in Australasia. Just so happened England were little more than a limp wallflower. The attendance figures, those who watched it on TV - perhaps, the most successful World Cup outside of Asia. Of course, it went on too long. Of course, the idea that fewer cricketing countries should participate is wrong. The most exciting earlier matches were the so-called minnows. Ireland had another successful tournament. Bangladesh beat England! Some incredibly amazing games that came down to the last few balls. There are a lot of positives to be taken away. Yes, I think I'm probably just seeing it from the perspective of somebody on the other side of the world. Almost every time I switched on the TV in the morning, the featured game was at or just after its interval and it appeared pretty clear within the blink of an eye which side was going to win. Only one of the seven knockout matches could realistically be deemed a 'tight' game. That's nobody's fault, it's just the way it went...and i'm sure if I'd been in Australia or NZ at the time, i'd have been more absorbed in the tournament. From this distance, it just felt a bit empty (and that has nothing to do with England's lack of progress, which was arguably just as predictable as Aus winning).
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Post by Deleted on Mar 29, 2015 12:44:36 GMT
I understand where you are coming from, invicta, and having spent all my life as a red ball/long form enthusiast I'd like to be able to summon some excitement for the upcoming Test series betweeen England the West Indies and to regard it as a welcome return to 'proper' cricket after the last six weeks.
Except I can't summon any enthusiasm at all for a series betweeen two poor sides full of mediocre players who are so far behind the world's best whom we've been privileged to watch perform in the world cup.
I am looking forward to the Ashes and seeing Warner, Smith, Clarke, Watson, Haddin, Johnson, Starc, Ryan Harris etc and whether Maxwell and Faulkner can translate their phenomenal one day skills to test cricket. It is always a pleasure to watch a genuinely great team. But I don't expect the Ashes to be any sort of contest and not even the recall of Pietersen is likely to prevent another whitewash.
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Post by invicta1977 on Mar 29, 2015 15:43:25 GMT
I understand where you are coming from, invicta, and having spent all my life as a red ball/long form enthusiast I'd like to be able to summon some excitement for the upcoming Test series betweeen England the West Indies and to regard it as a welcome return to 'proper' cricket after the last six weeks. Except I can't summon any enthusiasm at all for a series betweeen two poor sides full of mediocre players who are so far behind the world's best whom we've been privileged to watch perform in the world cup. I am looking forward to the Ashes and seeing Warner, Smith, Clarke, Watson, Haddin, Johnson, Starc, Ryan Harris etc and whether Maxwell and Faulkner can translate their phenomenal one day skills to test cricket. It is always a pleasure to watch a genuinely great team. But I don't expect the Ashes to be any sort of contest and not even the recall of Pietersen is likely to prevent another whitewash. Although the white ball game is very much my 'lager' (I'll indulge if there's nowt better on offer), I was looking forward to the knockout stages of this World Cup....but the gripping matches just didn't happen, alas. At least with a seemingly one-sided Ashes Test, there's a hope that the struggling team can cling on for a draw. Assuming that viewers want a bit more than the ball constantly disappearing into the stands, the one-day game needs a decent proportion of close finishes to maintain interest. As for England's future activities, the County Championship starts shortly and I'll be far too engrossed in that to worry about what's happening in the Caribbean! But I do have four days of Ashes tickets and, however England do, I'll be rapt.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 29, 2015 17:18:15 GMT
As for England's future activities, the County Championship starts shortly and I'll be far too engrossed in that to worry about what's happening in the Caribbean! But I do have four days of Ashes tickets and, however England do, I'll be rapt. Yep, I agree with that. I'm looking forward to watching Ajmal Shahzad bowling at Daryl Mitchell and Chris Nash batting against Jack Shantry at Hove in three weeks time, and am sure I will enjoy that as much as Mitchell Starc bowling at Brendon McCullum or David Warner batting against Trent Boult, because I get as much pleasure from watching honest county pros as I do from watching the world's best. What bores me is the bit in the middle, where Chris Woakes bowls at Lendl Simmons or Gary Ballance bats against Sulieman Benn. Such players have ceased to be honest journeymen yet they will never be the world's best; they're in a kind of cricketing middle-management no-man's land, performers of above average but by no means exceptional ability, who've risen one tier above the ranks but with no prospect of going any further to become world-beaters. As Arlott said of that worthy Kiwi medium-pacer, Bob Cunis, neither one thing nor the other!!!
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Post by flashblade on Mar 31, 2015 16:02:27 GMT
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Post by invicta1977 on Apr 1, 2015 8:16:13 GMT
I'm in two minds. As an old red ball traditionalist who also grew up watching limited overs cricket in the 70s, of course I seek a balance between bat and ball, if not within an individual match then certainly over the course of a tournament/series/season. The article contains plenty of interesting suggestions from some very experienced sages as to how this might be achieved. But I'm not sure this World Cup, or indeed contemporary limited overs cricket across the board, is intended for old traditionalists (even 'limited overs traditionalists') or former international greats. A friend dismissively remarked a few weeks ago that the WC was 'cricket for people who don't like cricket'. Once I stopped smirking at the apparent snobbery of this statement, I thought. 'Hold on....that's exactly what limited overs was always meant to be'. The Gillette Cup wasn't introduced in 1963 for folks happy to watch Phil Sharpe negotiate 90 tricky minutes against Derek Shackleton before the wicket settled down, enabling a century to be reached by stumps. The John Player League was never intended for those keen on spending a 120 overs day at a ground. T20 wasn't born to satisfy those seeking an entire afternoon at a game. Each twist and turn of the perpetually evolving one-day game has happened in order to attract a new type of viewer. From the very start, regulations have been put in place to enhance the batting side of the game, never the bowling side - limited allocations of overs for bowlers, fielding restrictions, a stringent policy on wide balls, shorter boundaries, two white balls instead of one. Limited overs' supposed selling points were that (1) spectators could see the entire match in one day and (2) the prospect of a close and exciting finish. But I'm wondering if these have always been subconsciously secondary to a desire to see heaps of runs being scored. This WC seems to have been lauded as a huge success, even though the knockout stage was about as unthrilling as any I can remember, with only one out of seven games going down to the wire. But plentiful batting records were broken and celebrated. Martin Guptill's 237 will be remembered for a long time but I wonder how many people have already forgotten about Tim Southee's 7-33? The peripheral imagery of this WC was all bat-related, from the Sky graphics showing a neon batsman crunching the ball into the crowd, to the 'Number of Sixes' clickometer. Spectators at the grounds stood to earn money by catching a six...I can't think of any way a bowling achievement could be worked into a form of crowd interaction. It was remarked numerous times that this was the World Cup in which T20 made its presence felt. Well, we know that a major part of T20's success is the rapid run rate and so shouldn't be alarmed that fans of the longer one-day game now value this. Ian Chappell makes some valid suggestions as to how ODIs could be made more interesting by facilitating greater attacking prowess from the fielding side. But do the fans give a hoot, or rather is a sufficiently large majority happy to see the ball flying all over the place and/or their team win? This isn't just a cricket thing, I think - in terms of technical quality and strategy, English football pales beside that of some of its European neighbours, but the EPL continues to be by far the most popular footballing league around the globe. The downside to limited overs evolution is that some viewers will be lost on the way. I started to bail out around the time of coloured clothing, silly team names and music but have since returned to the fold. It's inevitable that some 'one-day traditionalists' will lose interest in a bat heavy scenario. But if - and the success of T20 seems to show this - a greater number of new people are ushered into stadia/TV subscriptions, then limited overs cricket is simply continuing to fulfil the role it was invented for - to provide cricket for people who otherwise aren't interested and, more importantly, take their money. My own fear is not that limited overs cricket will become more ridiculous but that it could be allowed to completely usurp the mother game that it was designed to support. So long as that relationship doesn't go bum-about-face, I think I'd possibly even tolerate ODI bowlers having to play in carpet slippers.
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Post by hhsussex on Apr 1, 2015 9:15:07 GMT
I'm in two minds. As an old red ball traditionalist who also grew up watching limited overs cricket in the 70s, of course I seek a balance between bat and ball, if not within an individual match then certainly over the course of a tournament/series/season. The article contains plenty of interesting suggestions from some very experienced sages as to how this might be achieved. But I'm not sure this World Cup, or indeed contemporary limited overs cricket across the board, is intended for old traditionalists (even 'limited overs traditionalists') or former international greats. A friend dismissively remarked a few weeks ago that the WC was 'cricket for people who don't like cricket'. Once I stopped smirking at the apparent snobbery of this statement, I thought. 'Hold on....that's exactly what limited overs was always meant to be'. The Gillette Cup wasn't introduced in 1963 for folks happy to watch Phil Sharpe negotiate 90 tricky minutes against Derek Shackleton before the wicket settled down, enabling a century to be reached by stumps. The John Player League was never intended for those keen on spending a 120 overs day at a ground. T20 wasn't born to satisfy those seeking an entire afternoon at a game. Each twist and turn of the perpetually evolving one-day game has happened in order to attract a new type of viewer. From the very start, regulations have been put in place to enhance the batting side of the game, never the bowling side - limited allocations of overs for bowlers, fielding restrictions, a stringent policy on wide balls, shorter boundaries, two white balls instead of one. Limited overs' supposed selling points were that (1) spectators could see the entire match in one day and (2) the prospect of a close and exciting finish. But I'm wondering if these have always been subconsciously secondary to a desire to see heaps of runs being scored. This WC seems to have been lauded as a huge success, even though the knockout stage was about as unthrilling as any I can remember, with only one out of seven games going down to the wire. But plentiful batting records were broken and celebrated. Martin Guptill's 237 will be remembered for a long time but I wonder how many people have already forgotten about Tim Southee's 7-33? The peripheral imagery of this WC was all bat-related, from the Sky graphics showing a neon batsman crunching the ball into the crowd, to the 'Number of Sixes' clickometer. Spectators at the grounds stood to earn money by catching a six...I can't think of any way a bowling achievement could be worked into a form of crowd interaction. It was remarked numerous times that this was the World Cup in which T20 made its presence felt. Well, we know that a major part of T20's success is the rapid run rate and so shouldn't be alarmed that fans of the longer one-day game now value this. Ian Chappell makes some valid suggestions as to how ODIs could be made more interesting by facilitating greater attacking prowess from the fielding side. But do the fans give a hoot, or rather is a sufficiently large majority happy to see the ball flying all over the place and/or their team win? This isn't just a cricket thing, I think - in terms of technical quality and strategy, English football pales beside that of some of its European neighbours, but the EPL continues to be by far the most popular footballing league around the globe. The downside to limited overs evolution is that some viewers will be lost on the way. I started to bail out around the time of coloured clothing, silly team names and music but have since returned to the fold. It's inevitable that some 'one-day traditionalists' will lose interest in a bat heavy scenario. But if - and the success of T20 seems to show this - a greater number of new people are ushered into stadia/TV subscriptions, then limited overs cricket is simply continuing to fulfil the role it was invented for - to provide cricket for people who otherwise aren't interested and, more importantly, take their money. My own fear is not that limited overs cricket will become more ridiculous but that it could be allowed to completely usurp the mother game that it was designed to support. So long as that relationship doesn't go bum-about-face, I think I'd possibly even tolerate ODI bowlers having to play in carpet slippers. Very good post, invicta1977 and some excellent points. I find myself thinking about "Spectators at the grounds stood to earn money by catching a six...I can't think of any way a bowling achievement could be worked into a form of crowd interaction" in particular. That is at the heart of the dialectic of cricket: balancing the enormous emotional involvement, the surge of interest, that is created by hitting, with the more rational, intellectual appeal of a bowler setting up a batsman to fall, perhaps over the course of several overs by luring him into thinking that a delivery will be of a certain pace and bounce,and pitching on a particular line, then subverting him by the slower ball, the away-swinger, the floater or whatever. I suppose the only times that I can recall crowd interaction as a result of bowling skills have been related not to one bowler's particular skills but to a team involvement : the West Indies pace attack of the 70s and the 80s - particularly in front of then-partisan crowds at The Oval - or the interactions of Vaughan's quartet of bowlers, changes effected like slipping through the gears. Just the one exception, of course, to this rule, Warne in 93 producing an emotional resonance all the stronger for being experienced live on television to millions, knowing that in every living-room up and down the country someone would be turning to a friend or relative and saying "Did you see that? I can't believe it happened".
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