The Cricket Thread

Balladeer wrote:

BTB wrote:Watching the hundred

That's your problem right there.

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That was thoroughly entertaining.

more heat than light wrote:

Balladeer wrote:.

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Oh yes, absolutely. I still don't like T20!

That said, the best thing about The Hundred (apart from the women's game getting equal precedence) is that it annoys a lot of the people who you want to annoy. Old red-faced men, cricket journalists for The Spectator and the like. arewethebaddies.gif

Great ending! Not overly invested in it but as it's on every day I'm sure I'll catch a fair few games.

Was watching The Hundred tonight on BBC2 and I liked the energy of the crowd and more party atmosphere (including half time music performance), and all the kids seemed to be having a great time, but whoever created the on-screen graphics deserves a stern talking to. Overly garish, and I couldn’t understand the majority of it. It was practically NUMBERWANG. Commentators didn’t do a good job of explaining it to the uninitiated either (which I presume is the whole point of this, to appeal to casual and non fans).

KK wrote:Was watching The Hundred tonight on BBC2 and I liked the energy of the crowd and more party atmosphere (including half time music performance), and all the kids seemed to be having a great time, but whoever created the on-screen graphics deserves a stern talking to. Overly garish, and I couldn’t understand the majority of it. It was practically NUMBERWANG. Commentators didn’t do a good job of explaining it to the uninitiated either (which I presume is the whole point of this, to appeal to casual and non fans).

Agree with this. They really only need to show the current score, the number of balls remaining and the target score for the second innings. Everything else should be saved for occasional pop ups when zooming in on, say, a new bowler or whatever. The uninitiated viewer doesn't need constant reminding of the bowling stats.

I don't mind the bright colours though, it's definitely a distinctive aesthetic.

Another reason why Scotland is better than England is that we don't watch shitty boring sports. I'd rather pick flakes of skin off a tramps knob.

That's not true, Scots watch football all the time.

More to the point, that is some excellent 2 a.m. posting.

Kyle Coetzer and Calum McLeod are two of the best associate players going. The latter's 140* against England at The Grange a couple of years back was absolutely sublime.

I actually support Scotland whenever they play. Yes, over England. Can't beat a good underdog. (Well, you can, several times, that's why they're underdogs.)

Listened to some of the hundred last night on 5live. Was a decent match. Commentary tried to make some effort to educate those not familiar with cricket which was interesting. But my question still remains (and is more pertinent given they continually compared scores/bowling figures/strike rates to T20), why did it need to be a new format? It's one that won't gain traction at international level because it's too similar to T20 and the IPL will always be more dominant due to the vastly increased market. So it got me wondering whether the intention was to use a new format to break the counties hold on English cricket and then switch it back to a T20 competition in a year or so.

Its just a gimmick really, plus it really is easier to explain to a newcomer.

Right, so they get 20 overs.
What's an over?
An over is six bowls to the batsman.
What happens then?
They change the bowler, and then bowl to the other side.
Why do they do that?
That's just the rules.
Right, so they get 120 bowls?

.....


Right, so they get 100 bowls.

See. Its literally cricket at its most dumbed down, which is probably why Balladeer gets so wound up about it.

more heat than light wrote:Its just a gimmick really, plus it really is easier to explain to a newcomer.

Right, so they get 20 overs.
What's an over?
An over is six bowls to the batsman.
What happens then?
They change the bowler, and then bowl to the other side.
Why do they do that?
That's just the rules.
Right, so they get 120 bowls?

.....


Right, so they get 100 bowls.

See. Its literally cricket at its most dumbed down, which is probably why Balladeer gets so wound up about it.

Cricket has a million and one complex rules and terms, I'm not convinced reducing the number of balls to the decimal system will make that much difference in the grand scheme of things.

more heat than light wrote:See. Its literally cricket at its most dumbed down, which is probably why Balladeer gets so wound up about it.

I know you're mucking about, but the real reason I get wound up about it is that I'm a big fan of two things: long-form cricket, and the county cricket system. With every new format that gets introduced, county cricket, and especially first class county cricket, gets shrunk down and marginalised more and more. It's pushed further and further into spring and autumn, where the pitch conditions are more suspect and the odds of play are worse. It also has a symbolic effect, telling people that these types of cricket are less important. And that has knock-on effects: England are really really good in the formats that get played in summer and get the focus and the money. They're really quite bad at the format I care about most: Tests.

I know first class county cricket isn't the most glamorous product. I know it's not going to attract new people. I know something had to change there. Replace the T20 Blast and the Kia Super League with a county-based Hundred-alike and I wouldn't have batted much of an eyelid.

(One final addendum: yes we need a vehicle to reintroduce cricket to people. Would that still be the case if the ECB had taken cricket off free-to-air in 2005? Or are the ECB mostly trying to solve a problem of their own making?)

I watched most of it last night. I took away two things:

1) I can't believe a team with Lizelle Lee, Harmanpreet, Alex Hartley, Kate Cross and Sophie Ecclestone lost. Potentially the RCB of this tournament.

2) Their explanation of DRS was amazing. Let's just say they didn't go near the concept of Umpire's Call.

Balladeer wrote:(One final addendum: yes we need a vehicle to reintroduce cricket to people. Would that still be the case if the ECB had taken cricket off free-to-air in 2005? Or are the ECB mostly trying to solve a problem of their own making?)

Yes, absolutely. The same ECB sold exclusive rights in the UK to the 50-over World Cup, a tournament England had long been fancied to win, to Sky, thereby locking what turned out to be the biggest moment in English cricket since 2005 behind a paywall. Fortunately things were worked out at the last minute to enable it to be cast on free-to-air telly as well, but this demonstrates the absolute lack of foresight that continues to hold back the game in the UK.

I have no issues with the advancement of white-ball cricket but the ECB's tacit insistence that it needs to come at the expense of red-ball cricket is nonsense. There's no reason that the seasons for each format cannot overlap when required, this would allow clubs/players to choose which format they want to prioritise.

more heat than light wrote:Its just a gimmick really, plus it really is easier to explain to a newcomer.

Right, so they get 20 overs.
What's an over?
An over is six bowls to the batsman.
What happens then?
They change the bowler, and then bowl to the other side.
Why do they do that?
That's just the rules.
Right, so they get 120 bowls?

.....


Right, so they get 100 bowls.

See. Its literally cricket at its most dumbed down, which is probably why Balladeer gets so wound up about it.

You could say that about any sport, though. Only the keeper can use their hands in football. Except when the ball goes out of play. Wait, why can't the keeper pick the ball up outside the penalty area? OK, so they can only handle the ball inside the area. But not when someone on their own team passes to them. etc. etc.

I'm not convinced cricket is as convoluted as it's made out to be. It's the second-biggest sport in the country. It's been proven that people will watch it if it's available.

I watched some of it last night and it reminded me of the attempts to market women's football by focusing on anything except the football itself. If you think it's worth watching, then have some confidence in it.

Balladeer wrote:

more heat than light wrote:See. Its literally cricket at its most dumbed down, which is probably why Balladeer gets so wound up about it.

I know you're mucking about, but the real reason I get wound up about it is that I'm a big fan of two things: long-form cricket, and the county cricket system. With every new format that gets introduced, county cricket, and especially first class county cricket, gets shrunk down and marginalised more and more. It's pushed further and further into spring and autumn, where the pitch conditions are more suspect and the odds of play are worse. It also has a symbolic effect, telling people that these types of cricket are less important. And that has knock-on effects: England are really really good in the formats that get played in summer and get the focus and the money. They're really quite bad at the format I care about most: Tests.

I know first class county cricket isn't the most glamorous product. I know it's not going to attract new people. I know something had to change there. Replace the T20 Blast and the Kia Super League with a county-based Hundred-alike and I wouldn't have batted much of an eyelid.

(One final addendum: yes we need a vehicle to reintroduce cricket to people. Would that still be the case if the ECB had taken cricket off free-to-air in 2005? Or are the ECB mostly trying to solve a problem of their own making?)

I think those are all valid points. I love Test Cricket, I love ODIs too. What i have struggled with in my experience is getting my kids into it. Like i said earlier, my lad was really into it with the World Cup, but hasn't been bothered since. Getting tickets for The Hundred and watching yesterday made him interested for the first time in ages. He actually just asked me to watch highlights of yesterday's match again.

I am obviously just messing with you, I also worry about the long form game. But I think there is still an audience for that, and I'm hopeful this format might just act as a gateway to the more traditional forms of the game.

I get that. Certainly I only got into it as an adult myself. If the Hundred actually gets children et al. into FC cricket (and other groups that aren't posh middle-aged white men) I will take bad almost everything bad I've said about it, while still thinking that the ECB threw a lot of money around to solve their own problem.

more heat than light wrote: What i have struggled with in my experience is getting my kids into it. Like i said earlier, my lad was really into it with the World Cup, but hasn't been bothered since. Getting tickets for The Hundred and watching yesterday made him interested for the first time in ages.

Out of curiosity have you identified likely reasons behind this, beyond 99% of content being behind the Sky paywall?

Drumstick wrote:

more heat than light wrote: What i have struggled with in my experience is getting my kids into it. Like i said earlier, my lad was really into it with the World Cup, but hasn't been bothered since. Getting tickets for The Hundred and watching yesterday made him interested for the first time in ages.

Out of curiosity have you identified likely reasons behind this, beyond 99% of content being behind the Sky paywall?

Well honestly, thats a big part of it. Length of matches is definitely another. But the bright colours and US-style team names seems to have been a big draw for my daughter (7), plus obviously the women's game being so heavily promoted. She's big into football and plays for a local team, so I think something that she can see herself doing is appealing.