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The Importance of Sport (NEW CONCEPTS)
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Mick Harper
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Justice Cocklecarrot wrote:
I demand that World Cup offside reviews must be conducted by creating a 3D map of the goalscoring action, using a combination of 12 cameras and a hi-tech ball fitted with a sensor that sends out location data 500 times per second, which will be matched against player positions on camera, with synchronised devices tracking 29 points on players’ bodies and relaying information 50 times per second.

FIFA: Oh, all right then.
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Mick Harper
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My fulminations about test match cricket balls was borne out again in this weird replayed match against India. Indian top order collapse, then a million-run middle order revival. Then England top order collapse. Just to make my point, the cricket ball was still bananaring about last evening when the ball is thirty overs old. But still we can look forward to Stokes and Bairstow beating the Grace brothers Edgbaston record for the sixth wicket tomorrow.

In what sport does the most important item in the sport get to be chosen by the home side? Answer: cricket, but only if you are England. Let's all go over to the Kookaburra and have some decent boring test matches again.
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Grant



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The BBC were once again promoting women’s football on Sunday night. Alex Scott started the programme at Barcelona where 90,000 were watching a women’s match - a new world record she breathlessly told us.
I smelt BS here because I wondered how many there were tourists taking a look at the stadium in return for very low ticket prices. Even Alex admitted that some of the tickets had been given away.
Two minutes on the Interweb and I established that actually most of the tickets were given away free to the 150,000 Barcelona FC members!
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Mick Harper
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Good bullshit-spot though only half marks because persuading 90,000 people to come along for free is a bit of a feather. But commentatory over-hype is definitely getting out of hand. Also underhype. I am often being tempted into reading/watching some sporting event only to find it's for women which they have carefully failed to mention. When it's, say, cycling it can take quite a few minutes before you realise they're women. They haven't got crossbars on the bikes.

As it happens there is no difference between men's and women's cycling because, unlike football, they're all doing the same thing only faster or slower. But that's not the point. I want to decide for myself what sport I want to watch and women's cycling is not one of them.

Men's cycling is and we had a glorious piece of overhype yesterday, the second day of the Tour de France. It was obvious to old hands this would be a boring sprinters' day. Oh no it won't be, shrieked the panel. One of them actually said, "On a scale of ten, I rate today's stage an eleven." For why? Well, the day's route crossed the third longest suspension bridge in the world (in Denmark, in case you were wondering).

Denmark is in France, for Tour de France purposes, in case you were wondering, and the panel said fortissimo e donna concertante grosso, "The Tour could be won and lost here because the cross wind blowing in from the Sund will tear the peleton to shreds." "No, it won't, you jizzocks, they'll all be guarding carefully against it," predicted the man on the Clapham omnibus correctly. (I've got one in my flat in case you were wondering.)
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Ishmael


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Ishmael wrote:
Can someone tell me the differences between British Criket and Indian Criket?


The reason I asked this question is as follows.

The British controlled India from 1757 to 1947. Presumably some version of cricket made its way to India, to some extent, as soon as the British landed.

The British controlled the USA from, say, 1620 to 1776. Presumably some version of cricket made its way to the USA, to some extent, as soon as the Pilgrims landed.

Yet. Today. Indians play a version of cricket that is identical in every way to the game played in the UK. Americans, on the other hand, play a version of cricket that is barely recognizable as sharing a common ancestor: Baseball.

Now my next question:

How quickly do sports rules change?
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Wile E. Coyote


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Cricket is (up to recent times) a man's game.
Baseball is a variant of a family game that involves women and children. This game the English refer to commonly as Rounders.
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Grant



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Wile is right. And apparently baseball is mentioned in Jane Austen.
You Americans were too busy fighting injuns to play a game lasting five days
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Ishmael


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Wile E. Coyote wrote:
Cricket is (up to recent times) a man's game.
Baseball is a variant of a family game that involves women and children. This game the English refer to commonly as Rounders.


One of these games, Cricket or Rounders, is clearly ancestral to the other. But fair enough.

British Rounders and American Baseball are similar but different. British and Indian Cricket are identical.

Canadian and American "football" are almost identical, yet even here there are one or two rule differences.

If we took Indian Cricket as exemplary of the principle, we would conclude that Baseball and Rounders are very ancient and must have been evolving separately for some time to become so distinct.

But Indian Cricket is just one example. And relatively late. Can we see other games where the rules change and thus work out an average rate of change?

My original thought is that the rules of Baseball might suggest America was far older than is believed.
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Mick Harper
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Why or why can't sportsmen (and especially British sportsmen) learn not be scientifically illiterate. I am currently watching Geraint Thomas throwing away the Tour de France by riding the whole way up the Galibier on the shoulders of Yellow Jersey Pogacer. What's wrong with that? Well, if you ride directly behind Yellow Jersey Pogacer, you'll save about 30% of energy expended on overcoming atmospheric resistance. If you ride on his shoulders you not only won't get the 30% benefit but you'll get a bit more resistance from the air displaced by Pogacer.

Why doesn't G know this? Because you can't feel atmospheric resistance. "What you can't feel, can't hurt you," is the British mantra. What you can feel is the completely different wind resistance. Then it probably is a good idea to be echeloned from the bloke in front. And of course it is also a good idea to ride on someone's shoulders because you can see where you're going. So it's case closed as Geraint Thomas rides all the way to Paris and a place on the podium, but not at the top of the podium.

And all because he found himself unaccountably running out of puff at the top of the Galibier.
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Mick Harper
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It's the Queen stage. The boy wonder has ridden away from a field of grizzled Tour de France veterans. A whole mountain side holds its breath while screaming itself hoarse. Can a debutant really win the stage? Can he be the youngest person ever to win the fabled assault on the Alpe d'Huez? Yes he can! But is there any chance he will be British?

No, Yorkshire, but that's close enough. Geraint and one of the Bury Brothers took my advice, tucked themselves in and joined our man in the top ten. And on Bastille Day. Up yours, Delors.
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Mick Harper
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Who remembers Jokari?

It was a ball on the end of elastic attached to a base which you and a partner (usually a cousin on the beach with whom you were in an intense competitive relationship) took turns in hitting. Who would have guessed they'd diversify into the sex aid market?

Your Amazon.co.uk order of
"Jokari Fizz-Keeper Pump Cap" has been dispatched
Sold by Tidy Home Products £7.75

Après-sex, its secondary purpose of keeping the bubbles in carbonated water you prepared earlier in your Sodastream comes in handy.
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Mick Harper
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Who is on the edge of their seats now the Lionesses are in the final of the Euros? Me too, the remote wasn't working, I couldn't change channels fast enough.
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Grant



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Thirty years ago I spent ages chatting up a woman I used to see on my morning bus. Never got anywhere and didn’t understand why (those were the days I deluded myself into thinking that girls found me attractive). The penny dropped when she told me she was playing in a women’s football team. She still might be straight, I thought. Just because she played football didn’t mean she was gay. Then I saw her with a woman in a trench coat who was smoking a cigar.

And that’s the reason it will never be more than a minor sport
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Mick Harper
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There is the built-in gender problem that despite the expression 'she's fit', the fitter women are the less attractive they are to men. [Gymnastics and ice-skating, aside.] Whereas the fitter men are, the more attractive they are to women. Lesbianism squares this particular circle.

On general principles, I am all in favour of women in sport, the more the merrier. I also accept the necessity of the temporary nuisance that, as a part of the liberal agenda, we have to put up with more media attention being paid to what are minority sports than per capita demand requires. Though as usual there will eventually have to be a price paid in terms of backlash.
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Wile E. Coyote


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Mick Harper wrote:
There is the built-in gender problem that despite the expression 'she's fit', the fitter women are the less attractive they are to men.


Football players of both sexes are getting taller, leaner, leggier, less muscular.

Good news for straight men watching women's football.
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