Older. Wiser?
Sunday, 17. June 2007, 17:46:00
I had a birthday recently...
Posts tagged with "cricket"
Racing to the end...
Sunday, 18. February 2007, 06:40:57
Listening to the final part of a tense cricket game, I realise some of the things I like about this game.
Dizzy with success
Friday, 21. April 2006, 03:16:15
This is about cricket. Those of you who have read all of the little bits of my site here (which may of course add up to just me 
) may have noticed that my favourite sports team is "The Australian Cricket Team".
Partly this is because I am not a fanatical follower of sports. And cricket is ideal for such people. The game takes (in its proper form) 5 days. A lot of being a cricket follower is about statistics, and achievements that take hours, days, or even years.
I am often grateful to the folks at cricinfo for providing me with all kinds of information, from live, simple, text-based coverage of matches to an amazing library of statistics.
This week, one Jason N Gillespie (amazingly enough, the only test player of aboriginal descent in donkey's years) reached a score of 200 runs. That means that either he ran up and down a 22-yard patch of grass 200 times, having managed not to let a little leather ball hit the three sticks behind him, or that he hit the same ball to the edge of a big oval-shaped piece of grass 50 times, or hit it over the grass and outside a rope defining the oval 34 times, or some combination of these.
This is a big achievement in cricket. Don Bradman, the batsman whose name goes with the sport in a way that very very few people's names do in any field, (Hippocrates and medicine is the only parallel that stacks up in a 2-minute racking of my brain) averaged a score of 99.94 runs each time he went out to bat. The next best is around 60.
As well as making his own score, mr Gillespie was obliged to spend a lot of time watching other batsmen hitting the ball, and run when they said so. Over the course of three days, he saw several partners come and go. What he performed was a feat of physical and mental concentration.
His score, his highest ever recorded in any game of cricket by more than 100 runs, is higher than the best achieved by many acknowledged greats of the game. David Boon is famous as a batsman, but his highest score is 200, while Gillespie's is 201 not out - that is, if the Australian team had not decided to give Bangladesh a go at beating their overall score, he would have been entitled to keep batting. There are very few milestones he could still have reached between 201* and 334 not out - the legendary highest score made by an Australian. It was reached twice, once by the "the Don" (as the late Sir Donald Bradman is known), and once by Mark Taylor, at the time captain of the team. (He reached it at the end of a day's play, and having slept on it, he too decided to give his opponents of the day some time to try and chase it down.
What makes it amazing is that Gillespie has scored more than 50 twice in test matches - the international 5-day games that are the highest form of the game. And that if he hadn't, nobody would have been either surprised or disappointed (except perhaps himself). He is not in the side to make runs, he is there to bowl the little leather ball at his opponents, and hit the stumps behind them, so they don't make many. A specialist bowler who makes 100 runs once is a rare thing. Shane Warne, perhaps the greatest ever bowler, has a highest score of 99 - and is well-regarded for making so many runs once. A bowler who passes 100 at least most years is regarded as an all-rounder, and is usually given less of the bowling work to allow him to concentrate on making more of those precious runs.
A specialist batsman who makes 200 once is generally regarded as a great batsman indeed. The man known as Dizzy is in illustrious company. Not bad for a bloke who was looking like he might have lost what it takes to be a member of the top team in the world, and was dropped from the team - many thought not soon enough.
Oh, and he is bowling pretty well at the moment too. Nice to have him back. I guess he's feeling pretty pleased. So he should.
) may have noticed that my favourite sports team is "The Australian Cricket Team".Partly this is because I am not a fanatical follower of sports. And cricket is ideal for such people. The game takes (in its proper form) 5 days. A lot of being a cricket follower is about statistics, and achievements that take hours, days, or even years.
I am often grateful to the folks at cricinfo for providing me with all kinds of information, from live, simple, text-based coverage of matches to an amazing library of statistics.
This week, one Jason N Gillespie (amazingly enough, the only test player of aboriginal descent in donkey's years) reached a score of 200 runs. That means that either he ran up and down a 22-yard patch of grass 200 times, having managed not to let a little leather ball hit the three sticks behind him, or that he hit the same ball to the edge of a big oval-shaped piece of grass 50 times, or hit it over the grass and outside a rope defining the oval 34 times, or some combination of these.
This is a big achievement in cricket. Don Bradman, the batsman whose name goes with the sport in a way that very very few people's names do in any field, (Hippocrates and medicine is the only parallel that stacks up in a 2-minute racking of my brain) averaged a score of 99.94 runs each time he went out to bat. The next best is around 60.
As well as making his own score, mr Gillespie was obliged to spend a lot of time watching other batsmen hitting the ball, and run when they said so. Over the course of three days, he saw several partners come and go. What he performed was a feat of physical and mental concentration.
His score, his highest ever recorded in any game of cricket by more than 100 runs, is higher than the best achieved by many acknowledged greats of the game. David Boon is famous as a batsman, but his highest score is 200, while Gillespie's is 201 not out - that is, if the Australian team had not decided to give Bangladesh a go at beating their overall score, he would have been entitled to keep batting. There are very few milestones he could still have reached between 201* and 334 not out - the legendary highest score made by an Australian. It was reached twice, once by the "the Don" (as the late Sir Donald Bradman is known), and once by Mark Taylor, at the time captain of the team. (He reached it at the end of a day's play, and having slept on it, he too decided to give his opponents of the day some time to try and chase it down.
What makes it amazing is that Gillespie has scored more than 50 twice in test matches - the international 5-day games that are the highest form of the game. And that if he hadn't, nobody would have been either surprised or disappointed (except perhaps himself). He is not in the side to make runs, he is there to bowl the little leather ball at his opponents, and hit the stumps behind them, so they don't make many. A specialist bowler who makes 100 runs once is a rare thing. Shane Warne, perhaps the greatest ever bowler, has a highest score of 99 - and is well-regarded for making so many runs once. A bowler who passes 100 at least most years is regarded as an all-rounder, and is usually given less of the bowling work to allow him to concentrate on making more of those precious runs.
A specialist batsman who makes 200 once is generally regarded as a great batsman indeed. The man known as Dizzy is in illustrious company. Not bad for a bloke who was looking like he might have lost what it takes to be a member of the top team in the world, and was dropped from the team - many thought not soon enough.
Oh, and he is bowling pretty well at the moment too. Nice to have him back. I guess he's feeling pretty pleased. So he should.
Charles McCathieNevile
er ikke i Oslo
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