The Importance of Sport (NEW CONCEPTS)

[Wile E. Coyote]

I don't really get this batting stance thing. Tennis players jump up and down, making grunting noises on return, head position makes bugger all difference. Fawad Alam stance might be ugly to the purist eye but it works for him. The way to get him out is to understand why it works for him, not to criticise him for not looking like Barry Richards.

[Mick Harper]

When I saw Alam's average and the news he hadn't played for ten years I naturally assumed he'd been banned for ten years because of match-fixing. Not so, revealed Wiki, it was because he didn't look like Barry Richards. (I detected politics amid the verbiage.)

England's slip performance reminds me that nobody has yet answered the simple AE (they always are) question: why do slip fielders drop more catches than wicketkeepers (other than Jos Buttler)? And, no, it has nothing to do with gloves, deviation, practice, itchy bollocks or any of the other pathetic explanations you came up with last time. Other than Hatty, who said when I told her the actual reason last time, "Oh, yes, I knew that."

Even though she will have forgotten it again by now. It is this level of concentration that has reduced her to a Barry Richards lookalike cover point diving around like a good 'un. Wait till the ball comes in your direction, dearie. Next fixture: AEL XI versus the Chris Taverner's.

[Wile E. Coyote]

You lost me. Barry was always at slip when I saw him, mainly because he didn't like to run. This was exactly the same reason he didn't like singles, he concentrated on fours. Gordon Greenidge was at the other end so the run rate was not a problem. They didn't go with this keep the scorecard ticking over nonsense.

[Mick Harper]

You've mixed him up with Jonty Rhodes, which is topical as well as typical, because those Oxford statue-topplers made the same error. You're on sandwiches by the way.

[Chad]

[Chad]

New word:

[Mick Harper]

Chad must have been off on one of his Ray Davies fantasies when we did it before because he is unerring this time round. Compare and contrast the leaden-footed forward prods that were offered up by other, lesser minds on duty that day in the AEL.

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Is it to do with the wicket keeper wearing gloves?
Wicket keeping is a specialist function, like batting and bowling.
Many catches are dropped in the slips because there is confusion as to who is nearest/responsible.
Also, I wondered about the speed of the ball. Does a ball that's just been whacked travel faster than the one bowled?
Is it because the keeper has a more clearly defined and larger area to defend and precedence over the nearest slip?
Chatter and inattention in the slips.
Loss of focus during a long day, boredom even.

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The nearest to being correct was this confused account

[Mick Harper]

Cricket, looked at through AE eyes, is a two-handed game. Person A (the bowler) constantly delivers cricket balls, one bounce, to Person B (the wicketkeeper). Sometimes there is an obstruction (aka a batsman) but if we eliminate that, what is the expectation of success? It is such a simple exercise, and A and B are so well-versed in their parts, it will have something like a 98%, even a 100% success rate. The batsman will even spare you the chore a lot of the time. But occasionally he’ll do neither one nor the other i.e. he'll nick it and you’ll have to do the business yourself. That will reduce the success rate to maybe 95% because it’s not usually a big deal. If it is, you can catch it or not catch it without affecting your success rate.

Who's up for that? Everyone. Every professional cricketer, for example, can make a pretty good fist of it. (Not spinners for some reason.)

Now I want you try this one-player game. Between eleven and six o’clock, for two whole days, I want you to wander round minding your own business but being, you know, on the alert. During that time a bell will sound a thousand times (that’s 2 x 90 overs @ 6+ balls an over, since you asked). Nothing will ever happen and you can relax even further until the next bell. Except possibly, on one or two randomly selected occasions, within a few seconds of the bell sounding, a cricket ball travelling at approximately 80 mph will arrive in your vicinity and you have to catch it. You will be villainised by your country if you don't.

Hands up who wants to play? Once was enough for me.

[Ishmael]

It shouldn't be exciting.

But then, neither should be the final shoot-out at the end of Sergio Lenone's The God, The Bad, and The Ugly, for all the action it contains.

[Mick Harper]

[Chad]

[Chad]

Actually, I’ve changed my mind... it’s not a myth.

Kids at school who want to play cricket but aren’t athletic enough to bowl quick and don’t have the hand eye coordination to be a good batsman, try their hand at spin. (I put myself forward as an example.) They therefore lack the two most important attributes of a wicket keeper.

[Mick Harper]

You took the words out of my mouth just in time. Spinners are a breed apart. You're very confident in your assumptions about situations that almost never arise but you have not addressed the one that does: how do spinners fare batting against other spinners? I have not observed they are at any advantage.

Of course 'standing up' is what differentiates wicket-keepers from people standing in as wicket-keepers. But here's a new puzzle. When the batsman nicks a spinner, there is not the slightest possibility of the stood-up wicketkeeper consciously having the time to react to the deviation of the ball. That deviation will certainly be enough to take the ball away from the sweetspot of the gloves or to miss them entirely. Yet it counts as a missed chance if the wicketkeeper doesn't shift the gloves in time to catch the ball. Explain that, Mr "I was always picked last at school and it's left a permanent scar" Chad.

[Wile E. Coyote]

No captain is going to let a spinner take a stint behind the stumps, spinning fingers are way too important, to risk injury.

[Wile E. Coyote]

No you put your spinner at long leg. The problem is that on a big ground the batsman will always get three because your spinner won't have the arm to get it in quickly from the boundary. There is no perfect solution, if you want a fit spinner for the fourth day you have to put up with all sorts of nonsense, like them having a quick fag on the boundary. (ooh err)