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Cricket things that annoy you

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zyzzbruh said:
Using the examples in this post as an example, as someone who enjoys but doesn't live and breathe cricket (im clearly a novice) I just don't get the gibberish cricket vernacular. Wobble seam? Leg cut? Like when i watch cricket to me it looks like a pretty simple game, yet the commentary around some of the bowling and batting actions are just wank. Can't we just use layman's terms? I guess i'm not a fan of the overcomplication lol, couldn't care less if the shot was a cover cut sweep pull, all he did was swing the bat with the face pointing to the left - it's almost as if there's a different swing name for every degree the ball can be hit.

Not long ago i also tried to get an understanding of the field positions, my goodness gracious.
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What you're kind of saying here isn't really a cricket issue, because it has its origin in naming something you can see. Cricket's been around for an awfully long time; when someone experienced something or that specific something happened again, someone named that phenomenon.

When a ball from a fast medium bowler seems to spin towards the on or leg side, it's not a spin delivery because it's not used wrist spin or finger spin to get there, so it's a distinction that's made between someone who bowls seam up and doesn't do it and someone who can get the ball to cut. I understand that some of the terminology is arcane - if the ball turns towards the on or leg side of the wicket, why is it called off spin? - but when you notice something that keeps happening you name it. As for the names for fielding positions, they're used for different kinds of catches based on different kinds of shots; it's just jargon used within proper context to allow someone to understand what you mean without needing to get a diagram out.

If I went and played in a game of cricket that wasn't filmed, I could tell the person that the wicket was tricky to drive on, and that most people went out driving through mid on and off unable to keep the ball down. Most would be able to understand what I meant from just that sentence.
zyzzbruh said:
As someone who is not an avid follower, i rekn it actually gives me a keen eye on not understanding the hype around certain players. Quite a few shield and bbl players who the media seem to have a fap fest over, yet every time i watch them i can't help but think they're bang average cricketers - and i look at their averages out of curiosity, which also confirms they are overrated. Am i wrong in saying the cricketing fraternity seem to put certain names up in lights (in all forms) and they then go onto have an armchair ride to national team selection whilst actual better cricketers miss out?
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I mean, parochialism exists at all levels of cricket. Everyone has their favourites, and everyone puts them forth ahead of others can usually contrive a few reasons why this player or that is awesome or horrible.

Having said that, this also smells of confirmation bias.
zyzzbruh said:
Also can someone please explain to me the purpose of spin bowlers who can't actually get the ball to turn?
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There's more than just movement off the surface. You can get the ball to drift either way in the air, bounce before the batter things or pitch fuller than you think it will. You can change your pace, drastically altering how the batter plays the ball. You can bowl with a round arm to get it to shoot low, or with a high arm to get it to kick. You can use the width of the crease to change your angle.

Please note that the above requires you to know what the jargon used in the post refers to in order to make sense of it; without that jargon, it would take more than just five sentences to explain.

A bowler doesn't have to spin the ball to be an effective slow bowler, and bowlers are not categorised by what the ball does but by the manner of release.
 
Basically: Swing/Drift = movement in the air; Seam/Spin = movement off the pitch.

Most bowlers have only one as a weapon due to the changes in action/grip it requires.

Deception is generally more important than simply movement, especially at Test level.

The ball moves in the air because of differential airflow (and momentum) either side of the seam.
The ball moves on the ground by angular impact of the seam and/or the rotation (spin/cut) applied to the ball.

Imagine the seam of the ball as a clockface. Looking down from above, 12 points towards the stumps/keeper, 6 the bowler/umpire. (Right hand batsman, reverse applies for a left-hander)

When bowling, the bowler generally tries to bowl along (behind) the line of the seam for stability - changing their grip, wrist position, arm rotation, feet landing angle and even their entire body to create the alignment so they can bowl "behind" the ball and maintain as much speed and control as they can.
  • Aiming at 1 or 2 is Inswing (aimed towards leg-slip, fine leg)
  • Aiming at 11 or 10 is Outswing (aimed towards the slips cordon, or even gully)
  • Aiming at 12 - Attempting to land the ball on the seam - lots of options for movement here (traditional and reverse swing; cutters by angling the seam on the vertical, or "spin" by applying sideways rotation through the delivery action.
  • 9 or 3 is "Cross Seam" - the ball will generally be bowled across the seam - hopefully resulting in inconsistent bounce depending on whether the ball lands on the smooth part of the ball, or part of the seam.
Cutters (Leg, Off) - these USED to refer to bowling action - pulling down the side of the ball (left = leg, right = off) instead of behind the seam; however now refers to anyone trying to hit the seam (12 from above), and slightly changing the vertical angle of the ball (when looking from behind) to make the ball hit on the edge of the seam and generate movement.

"Wobble Seam" appears to me to just be a less extreme version of the Cross seam - using a more extreme angle for swing (2 or 10), and/or changing the vertical angle of the seam - the bowler doesn't quite get behind the seam as they bowl and bowl directly down the back of the BALL (not the seam). It used to be called lucky, or maybe just a bad bowler who couldn't keep the seam up. The two biggest advantages of this method appear to be related to the inconsistency of the ball behaviour; and the improved ability for deception as a smaller adjustment to the bowling action is required.

It LOOKS like a different ball to the batsman - the scrambled seam creates a moment of hesitation to pick up, and as it contains elements of all of swing, seam and cross-seam it could do "anything". For a bowler who has a prime weapon (e.g. Starc's inswing) and can make the angle work (left arm angling across the batsman) it works similar to an off-spinner's "arm ball", or a leg-spinners "top-spinner".

In truth, almost everything a bowler does is a variation on the same thing - they change the vertical and horizontal angle of the seam, the power/speed behind it, the rotations (back spin, side spin, top-spin) - which combined with the conditions (pitch, ball, air and cloud cover - even the elevation above sea level) result in the variances we see and try to label.
 

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Drugs Are Bad Mackay? said:
Is that the rule change?

I thought that fielders could now move when anticipating a shot. Eg slip fielder to a spinner darting across to the leg side when the batter shapes to play a lap sweep

But I thought changing positions mid-run up was still not allowed
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Hmm if that's so then the umpires should've been onto that. Couple of misses from the umps today if so.
 
Simon_Nesbit said:
Cutters (Leg, Off) - these USED to refer to bowling action - pulling down the side of the ball (left = leg, right = off) instead of behind the seam; however now refers to anyone trying to hit the seam (12 from above), and slightly changing the vertical angle of the ball (when looking from behind) to make the ball hit on the edge of the seam and generate movement.

"Wobble Seam" appears to me to just be a less extreme version of the Cross seam - using a more extreme angle for swing (2 or 10), and/or changing the vertical angle of the seam - the bowler doesn't quite get behind the seam as they bowl and bowl directly down the back of the BALL (not the seam). It used to be called lucky, or maybe just a bad bowler who couldn't keep the seam up. The two biggest advantages of this method appear to be related to the inconsistency of the ball behaviour; and the improved ability for deception as a smaller adjustment to the bowling action is required.
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The problem I have with this is the description of cutters describes the English method of generating cut, rolling your fingers over the ball to create turn at pace. The Australian method is different, inclining the seam so that the seam impacts the wicket on an angle and the ball cuts away; this is something we picked up from WI bowlers as they played at park level on their tours, and it works well on our decks. The advantage of the Australian method is that you can do it without sacrificing speed; the disadvantage is that unless you are very good, you lose the ability to swing the ball and you don't get as much movement as you can using the other method. Starc might use a wobble seam delivery - a kind of mystery cutter, because he can't get the ****er to behave consistently - but Cummins has been bowling leg cutters since he was a teenager using the Australian method, and the Australian method looks like a scrambled seam.

Hearing comms refer to the wobble seam as though it's a new thing bothers the shit out of me, because McGrath ****ing used this shit for decades without them noting it, and isn't it funny how it tended to move away when he wanted it to and in when he wanted it to.
 
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Gethelred said:
The problem I have with this is the description of cutters describes the English method of generating cut, rolling your fingers over the ball to create turn at pace. The Australian method is different, inclining the seam so that the seam impacts the wicket on an angle and the ball cuts away; this is something we picked up from WI bowlers as they played at park level on their tours, and it works well on our decks. The advantage of the Australian method is that you can do it without sacrificing speed; the disadvantage is that unless you are very good, you lose the ability to swing the ball and you don't get as much movement as you can using the other method. Starc might use a wobble seam delivery - a kind of mystery cutter, because he can't get the ****er to behave consistently - but Cummins has been bowling leg cutters since he was a teenager using the Australian method, and the Australian method looks like a scrambled seam.

Hearing comms refer to the wobble seam as though it's a new thing bothers the shit out of me, because McGrath ****ing used this shit for decades without them noting it, and isn't it funny how it tended to move away when he wanted it to and in when he wanted it to.
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Thanks for the confirmation. I'm over a decade out of the game now (and twenty five years from playing rep cricket with proper coaches) so an awful lot is from memory. I was constantly frustrated trying to talk skills to other bowlers, I found the majority had little idea what - or how - they were bowling, they just did.

I was a left-arm "quick" - Fast-Medium would probably be generous. Bowled in-swing as my stock ball, and based on how much the ball was doing would work through variations - seam angle, wrist 'snap', how upright or round-arm I was so I could vary the amount (and starting point) of swing. Sometimes I could swing the new ball away also with a genuine outswinger, but usually it was either inswing or straight through the air, plus whatever the pitch could give me.

I may not have been the quickest (125), but I had excellent control and could often make the ball move how I wanted with variations of swing, seam and 'cutters' ("spin" at pace). As I came up through rep cricket those variations didn't matter as much - I wasn't quick enough to stop "good" batsmen from 'slogging' so whilst I could still deceive the batsman into mis-hits the thickish edges still went to the boundary! At higher levels the wickets got flatter and harder - I wasn't quick enough to get reverse so once the shine went off and the seam softened I was cannon-fodder.

What got me a LOT of wickets with the new ball were deliveries that shaped in through the air and then seamed away off the pitch. I held the ball angled towards leg-slip, start just outside the off-stump line, swing in towards middle, then seam away off the pitch to either take the edge or clip the off bail (my natural length was very full - always tried to hit the stumps). I was doing it intentionally, but I couldn't really explain what it was I was doing until we started filming my action. The biggest noticeable change to my action between deliveries was the wrist position and 'snap' depending on what I was (trying) to get the ball to do.
 
Simon_Nesbit said:
Thanks for the confirmation. I'm over a decade out of the game now (and twenty five years from playing rep cricket with proper coaches) so an awful lot is from memory. I was constantly frustrated trying to talk skills to other bowlers, I found the majority had little idea what - or how - they were bowling, they just did.

I was a left-arm "quick" - Fast-Medium would probably be generous. Bowled in-swing as my stock ball, and based on how much the ball was doing would work through variations - seam angle, wrist 'snap', how upright or round-arm I was so I could vary the amount (and starting point) of swing. Sometimes I could swing the new ball away also with a genuine outswinger, but usually it was either inswing or straight through the air, plus whatever the pitch could give me.

I may not have been the quickest (125), but I had excellent control and could often make the ball move how I wanted with variations of swing, seam and 'cutters' ("spin" at pace). As I came up through rep cricket those variations didn't matter as much - I wasn't quick enough to stop "good" batsmen from 'slogging' so whilst I could still deceive the batsman into mis-hits the thickish edges still went to the boundary! At higher levels the wickets got flatter and harder - I wasn't quick enough to get reverse so once the shine went off and the seam softened I was cannon-fodder.

What got me a LOT of wickets with the new ball were deliveries that shaped in through the air and then seamed away off the pitch. I held the ball angled towards leg-slip, start just outside the off-stump line, swing in towards middle, then seam away off the pitch to either take the edge or clip the off bail (my natural length was very full - always tried to hit the stumps). I was doing it intentionally, but I couldn't really explain what it was I was doing until we started filming my action. The biggest noticeable change to my action between deliveries was the wrist position and 'snap' depending on what I was (trying) to get the ball to do.
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I was a shitty short arse who never got the ball to go above 110km consistently, but I read everything I could and learned as much as I could about the biomechanics of it and how to do a wide variety of shit, but most of my use for it is coaching. It's fun watching a young bloke work out that if I do this, hold the seam a particular way, the ball does something different. I still bowl, but I got fat; can make the thing talk, but very slowly. I've bowled everything in a game before; used to get bored doing the same thing over and over again, so I developed the knack of being able to bowl everything. I figured out how to bowl precisely how Murali bowled, and it absolutely makes sense he could turn a ball like a wrist spinner the other way. About the only thing I can't do is bowl a flipper; that's not to say I do everything well, just I can execute the skill in order to show others how to do them.

The big thing with bowling is that most of the commentary around cricket is made by batters. You might get a Brett Lee in the commentary box sometimes, but Lee has never struck me as being all that deep a thinker and his one wood was his pace and almost nothing else; no slower balls, not really even a great understanding of what a bouncer is beyond just bowling short. As a consequence, you're just not going to get the insight into bowling you get if you have a Michael Holding in the box; listening to him commentate fast bowling is like listening to Tolkien read his own work. You get someone like Mark Waugh trying to commentate Nathan Lyon's bowling and just not getting it.

I remember hearing from Dirk Nannes during one of the breaks on Grandstand over the last few years, and the bloke tells the story of playing with Cameron White who would tell him more or less what to bowl - where to pitch the thing - and that was how he learned the game after being a late bloomer with the right athletic traits. It's always been weird to me that captaincy is something a batter does; a batter might be able to read a batting technique for weaknesses, but they don't think in terms of wickets without additional flexibility.

It's weird seeing just how observant Ricky Ponting is now he's out of the game when his actual tactical acumen when playing was reduced to 'bring on McGrath or Warne'.
 
Gethelred said:
I was a shitty short arse who never got the ball to go above 110km consistently, but I read everything I could and learned as much as I could about the biomechanics of it and how to do a wide variety of shit, but most of my use for it is coaching. It's fun watching a young bloke work out that if I do this, hold the seam a particular way, the ball does something different. I still bowl, but I got fat; can make the thing talk, but very slowly. I've bowled everything in a game before; used to get bored doing the same thing over and over again, so I developed the knack of being able to bowl everything. I figured out how to bowl precisely how Murali bowled, and it absolutely makes sense he could turn a ball like a wrist spinner the other way. About the only thing I can't do is bowl a flipper; that's not to say I do everything well, just I can execute the skill in order to show others how to do them.

The big thing with bowling is that most of the commentary around cricket is made by batters. You might get a Brett Lee in the commentary box sometimes, but Lee has never struck me as being all that deep a thinker and his one wood was his pace and almost nothing else; no slower balls, not really even a great understanding of what a bouncer is beyond just bowling short. As a consequence, you're just not going to get the insight into bowling you get if you have a Michael Holding in the box; listening to him commentate fast bowling is like listening to Tolkien read his own work. You get someone like Mark Waugh trying to commentate Nathan Lyon's bowling and just not getting it.

I remember hearing from Dirk Nannes during one of the breaks on Grandstand over the last few years, and the bloke tells the story of playing with Cameron White who would tell him more or less what to bowl - where to pitch the thing - and that was how he learned the game after being a late bloomer with the right athletic traits. It's always been weird to me that captaincy is something a batter does; a batter might be able to read a batting technique for weaknesses, but they don't think in terms of wickets without additional flexibility.

It's weird seeing just how observant Ricky Ponting is now he's out of the game when his actual tactical acumen when playing was reduced to 'bring on McGrath or Warne'.
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I only played against Ricky a little bit as a junior, he was a couple of years older than I so was already off playing for Tasmania by the time I made senior cricket (there's a story on here about him playing against him in the 2nds after his 'bourbon and beefsteak' incident) - he was a phenomenal talent, only exceeded by his arrogance as a teenager. Normal rules simply didn't apply.

Talking to him I got the feeling he was captain more because of his talent and being the "right" thing to do, rather than any tactical acumen or mental approach to the game...and when your SECOND choice is to hand the ball to a bowler of generational talent you really can't go to far wrong. Tactically, we were very vanilla during his reign, but they were simply so much better than everyone else, that calling either McGrath or Warne to the crease was always the smart move anyway.
 
people who call bowling skewed pitches 'shit tips'. expression just annoys me. snakepit or minefield were the correct nomenclature when i was playing.
 

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big_e said:
Recency bias, like this:
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There are now 17 male cricketers who played Tests in the 1990s in the Australian Cricket Hall of Fame and seven from the 1920s. Brett Lee was a good Test bowler and exceptional in ODIs, but I'm sure Jack Gregory and Bert Oldfield should be honoured ahead of him


There were 34 cricketers who played test cricket in the 1920s, and 90 in the 1990s.

7/34 = 20.5%
17/90 = 18.88%

Seems like the 1920s are over-represented.

(FWIW, I actually don't give a sh!t about Hall of Fames - they're all a load of crap).
 
Greg Chappell…he flips and flops all over the place, now criticising the Aussie batsman when he’s had the most influence over the decline of standards in his roles at CA…give me a spell. Once the technical guru of Australian Cricket, he’s morphed into rent a quote
 
western royboy said:
Greg Chappell…he flips and flops all over the place, now criticising the Aussie batsman when he’s had the most influence over the decline of standards in his roles at CA…give me a spell. Once the technical guru of Australian Cricket, he’s morphed into rent a quote
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I don’t click on his material anymore.

I don’t want make fun of any misfortune but he returned to print media not long after that story of him going broke came out not long ago.
 
peternorth said:
Cameras pointing inwards in the commentary box.

The match is about the players, not the commentators
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Totally.

And we are seeing more and more of it, "commentator videos" are all over Facebook for instance these days.
 

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