The article on Understanding Cricket Commentaries is now done. As usual, feedback appreciated. Kevin seemed to find it helpful, which is hopefully a good sign.

With the coverage of the final of the Challenger Series from India being interrupted by rain, Sky had to find some means of filling the time. Eventually they went to repeats of previous action from the series, but before they got there Charles Colville and Mark Ramprakash spent a fair amount of time talking about the up-coming Champions Trophy series (which appears not to have an apostrophe at all, Deanna, if you are reading this). Ramps made a very interesting point about bat selecton for a tournament in India. Indian pitches, in general, have far less bounce than pitches in England and Australia. Consequently Indian batsmen spend a lot more time playing straight drives on the half-volley than playing cross-batted shots at waist-high balls. Because of this they prefer bats with the weight distribution biased more towards the toe of the bat, whereas batsmen in England and Australia prefer bats with the “middle” (ie the median weight point) higher up. I’m guessing that this isn’t an issue with baseball, and that all baseball bats have a standard weight distribution.

Talking of the Champions Trophy, I still have no idea what level of online coverage is going to be available, but it does occur to me that it is time I got on with writing the articles on “understanding cricket commentary” and “understanding cricket statistics”.

It is turning out to be one of those weeks for me agreeing with the strangest people. First Sepp Blatter, now Geoffrey Boycott. I guess that with the sad death of Fred Trueman Boycott is now the world’s most famous Yorkshireman, and here he is earning that epithet with his comments in The Telegraph on the Pakistan ball-tampering case.

“In the final conclusions of his 4,000-word report, the International Cricket Council’s chief referee emphasises the importance of “tactful diplomacy” — something I do not think Hair would recognise if it came up and smacked him on the nose.”

Not to mention

We don’t want umpires to be allowed to play God like this ever again.

I hereby promise not to yell “shut up, Geoffrey” at the television or radio commentary again (well, at least for a few days into the Champions’ Trophy).

So, the ICC has ruled on the Pakistan ball-tampering case and it has come up with a remarkably sensible result. Inzamam-ul-Haq has been found guilty of bringing the game into disrepute for staging a sit-in protest against an umpiring decision, which is quite right because he did do those things. He has been found not guilty of ball tampering for the very simple reason that there was no compelling evidence that the ball had been tampered with.

There will doubtless be a lot of nonsense talked about this. The Guardian has already weighed in on the side of Pakistan-baiters (this is their sports pages, remember, not their political writers) by claiming that the ruling makes Law 42.3 unworkable. For those of you not familiar with the Laws of Cricket, the BBC explains what this law says. You’ll note that the law says that teams should be punished if they have tampered with the ball. It does not say that they should be punished if the umpire takes it into his head to accuse them of ball tampering without any evidence that they did so.

So, if an umpire catches a player gouging at a ball with a nail file, he punishes him for tampering with the ball. If he simply thinks that a ball may have been tampered with, but cannot prove that it has been, then he can’t take action on the field. Simple.

Now if only we had umpires with the same level of common sense as the ICC, rather than umpires who fancy themselves as judge, jury and executioner, we wouldn’t have got into this mess. Fortunately the vast majority of professional umpires are indeed very sensible. There’s only one who causes this level of fuss, and the sooner he is removed from the official umpiring panel the better.

Having put the cricket article online I thought it might be useful to let people know what major tournaments are coming up in the next year, so here’s a brief post.

From Oct. 7 to Nov. 5 the major cricket-playing nations will contest the Champions’ Trophy in India. This will be a series of one-day matches. I’m not sure as yet who will be covering this with Internet audio, but the BBC and ABC in Australia are good bets.

Although the Champions’ Trophy involves all of the major cricket-playing nations, it is seen as only a warm-up for the big event next year: the Cricket World Cup. This one-day game tournament will be played in the West Indies in March, and as well as the big boys it includes up and coming sides such as The Netherlands, Canada, Kenya, Scotland and Ireland. (The US team failed to qualify.) Again the BBC and ABC are good bets for coverage.

All of this, however, pales into insignificance compared to the goings on over the Australian summer (you know, Christmas and stuff). From November through January England will be touring Australia. They will play a five-match series of five-day games (proper cricket, none of this hasty stuff). This is war. It is a rivalry that has been going on since 1877, and which makes Yankees v Red Sox looks like a bunch of kids squabbling over a candy bar. National pride is at stake. Prime Ministers feel the need to get involved and support their sides. The contest is known as The Ashes (see here for an explantion and some history). England are the current holders, and you can expect almost the entire Australian nation to be out screaming for revenge when the matches start. I’ll be tuned into the ABC commentary. Hopefully some of you will too. (And if you think that US sports radio has some irritating comentators, let me introduce you to this chap called Kerry O’Keefe…)

OK, I’ve got the cricket article up. Enjoy. I think it probably needs a few companion pieces, especially one on understanding cricket commentary because there’s hardly any cricket available on TV in the States so you need to be able to follow what the commentators are saying on Internet radio broadcasts. Something on deciphering the scores and statistics would help too. Like baseball and NFL, cricket fans are absolutely obsessed with statistics, and you can follow an entire game simply by reading the scorebook. (Indeed, some web sites broadcast “live” cricket largely by putting up the scorebook details as they happen.)

You’ll note that I’ve also solved some of the formatting issues with this theme, but I’ll wait until I properly understand why what I did worked before I post about that.