AGB Cricket

EFFORT BALLS!

The certificate on the left is the only academic prize I ever won.

Yes. That is quite hard to believe.

Just as hard to believe is what's written on the certificate.

The beagle-eyed among you will have noticed that this esteemed accolade for Academic Excellence in the Field of Effort was awarded to A.B.G. Cricket. (A nom de blog, and not my real name in 1971.) Doubtless you had already warmed up your trigger fingers, and were all set to fire: "A.B.G.? You pin-head."

You will have jumped your guns. You see, on the original, before I'd photo-shopped it, the headmaster of Brighton Grammar, one John Baddeley Esq., got my name wrong.

True story.

And now you are wondering what the hell this has to do with cricket?

Well, this: the award in question is glued to the inside of a book, a first edition hardcover - or hardback as we call them here in Straya - written by none other than that revered Knight of West Indian cricket, Sir Garfield St Aubrun Sobers AO.

Bonaventure and the Flashing Blade is about a young West Indian, Clyde, who is rubbish at cricket, but who writes a computer program which makes him good at cricket. Bear in mind this is a children's novel written 1967, well before the likes of John Buchanan and Tim Nielsen started using computers to analyze cricket. Actually, I think Geoff Lawson might be the first person I heard of who started recording cricket data for digital regurgitation and assessment.

The exhibition was also to test bowling. Frank would pause between shots to say things like: "You are too square-on to the wicket. Take three paces off your run, turn your shoulders and come in at an angle to your point of delivery." Three or four balls later he said: "Yes, much better, but your shoulders are too stiff. You are wasting power."

All these comments were recorded by Clyde's machines and every bowler was filmed. This type of practice had been going on for several weeks, and Clyde now had help running off the film and dubbing all the voice recordings on the sound-track. From this film and sound-track he took the meter readings from the coloured balls and the secret instruments in the cricket bats. He collected these into certain sets of figures, which he then put onto a punched tape.

This tape was fed into a KDR6 and other computers. The answers he received told him exactly how each player could bowl against any type of stroke play, or how any batsman could bat against certain types of bowling. It told him too the muscle power, foot speed and mental-reaction speeds of each player. The computers told him a great deal more, but as this was for the secret part of his own task, no one else knew it.

No word on whether it could tell if the bowler chucked it.

Having said that, can I just say this? Does Gary Sobers read this blog? (Hello, Sir Gary.) Is he embarrassed to have written Bonaventure? Did he even write it?

You couldn't have made it up - pity

Rereading my shortlist [of nominations for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year], I was most struck by their innocence and pathos. In each of them, the tightly knit sporting world, replete with rules and status, provides a fitting backdrop for a conflict of character. In a way, with fairly obvious white hats and black hats, they most resemble westerns. Yet they are, by and large, satisfying and entertaining.

Not one of them, of course, is written by a celebrated sportsman. And the decline of sports fiction coincides with their deadening and malign appearance on the scene. The rot started in the late 1960s, when Denis Law, Graham Hill and Garry Sobers allowed their names to be attached to works of fiction. When I showed Sobers a copy of the book wot he supposedly wrote, he couldn't have been more alarmed if it had been entitled 'I am a Paedophile' rather than Bonaventure and the Flashing Blade.

Incidentally, Sobers was in Australia in December 1971 for the Rest of the World tour.

RISKY SINGLES

A warts an' all exposé:

Shoaib pulled from World Twenty20 squad

The PCB has withdrawn Shoaib Akhtar from the 15-man squad for next month's World Twenty20, saying - in an unusually revealing statement - that he had been diagnosed with genital viral warts. Rao Iftikhar Anjum's name has been sent to the ICC's technical committee by the PCB as a replacement.

The PCB's unusually graphic press release said that a three-member medical panel appointed by the PCB had found that Shoaib was suffering from "genital viral warts and electrofulgration [a surgical procedure] was done on May 12, 2009."

Like Bruce I laughed, then I saw the pictures on Wiki.

Couple of things: one) given the "unusually graphic" nature of the press release, the PCB must hate Shoaib; and two) given their... ahem, proclivities, how many other Test cricketers have suffered similar afflictions?

ASHESQUAD

1. Ricky Ponting
2. Michael Clarke
3. Stuart Clark
4. Brad Haddin
5. Nathan Hauritz
6. Michael Hussey
7. Mitchell Johnson
8. Peter Siddle
9. Graham Manou
10. Brett Lee
11. Andrew McDonald
12. Simon Katich
13. Marcus North
14. Phillip Hughes
15. Ben Hilfenhaus
16. Shane Watson ("Subject to fitness." True. Hilditch said that.)

THE CASE OF THE SACRIFICIAL ANODE

Life after the doosra

A bloke who carries an illegal weapon up his sleeve should look the part. Johan Botha is one such man. There's a glint in his slivered eyes and a grim set to his jaw that warns you not to mess with him and his doosra.

Several things leap out from the willfully descriptive article by Telford Vice that Nick linked to yesterday:

Jo-Bo is a cross between Jesse James and Mike Hammer. Although I'm sure Jo-Bo wouldn't mind being characterised as a gunslingin' gumshoe.

Mark Boucher doesn't know "whether [Jo-Bo] throws it or not," but does know enough to say all the other doosra bowlers should be tested. That sounds suspiciously like "well, of course Johan chucks, but everyone else chucks worse."

Jo-Bo has a bent arm. (Nuralidaran.)

Subcontinental bowlers can bowl the doosra, while their Caucasian cousins cannot. Question: Do Caucasians have a genetic disadvantage when it comes to flexible appendages?

Squiff.

And this:

"The umpires who reported him, Rudi Koertzen, Brian Jerling and Asoka de Silva, submitted 18 video clips to state their case. Not one of them featured the doosra."

18 deliveries? None of them doosras? Surely that must ring the odd alarm bell or fifty. And yet the article, all about the doosra, blithely skips over this stark admission. It might transpire the umpires submitted the 18 under the misconception they were 18 doosras, but that should not obscure the fact that if the 18 deliveries were not doosras, they were 18 dodgy offies and/or arm balls.

What I wrote the other day (OFF LIMITS) must be correct: Jo-Bo is using the doosra to take the heat off his offie and arm ball.

NO SIX PLEASE, WE'RE SKITTISH

Part II: It's not a game, it's a Shamely

Remember this? Well, thanks to this, we now have this:

Court judgement could threaten village green cricket

It is a judgement that could threaten the very fabric of village green cricket.

A county court is to rule whether a homeowner can stop his local village cricket team playing because of the threat of players knocking a six on to his roof or into his garden.

OFF LIMITS

Jo-Bo chucks, right. And not just his doosra, which is officially a rancid hurl (thanks, HB), but his other ones. (Nyuk. Nyuk.) This must be true if he "hasn't really used [the doosra] much in the last year", because we clearly saw him bending his arm here last January, which must mean his offie and/or arm ball exceeded the optical trigger point of 15 degrees.

And yet. Both his offie and arm ball clocked in at 12.2 and 11.1 degrees respectively - obviously under the 15 degree limit. (Albeit, suspiciously close.) This leaves us on the horns of a conundrum: if we can clearly see Jo-Bo bending his arm, and his arm has not been exceeding 15 degrees, at least in the UWA labs, where does this leave the limit?

And another thing. Is Jo-Bo's doosra a red herring? A smoke screen? Could he be using it to take the heat off his offie and arm ball?

Botha's doosra ruled illegal by ICC

Johan Botha, the South African vice-captain, has been given the green light to play in the World Twenty20 despite his doosra testing almost twice the legal elbow flexion limit. Botha's doosra was measured at 26.7 degrees by the ICC's appointed biomechanist, Bruce Elliott, and will be banned until the bowler can prove he can deliver "the other one" at a flexion limit of less than 15 degrees.

To quote Michael Caine at the end of The Italian Job: "I got a great idea."

Compare all offies to Daniel Vettori. He has a fine action, he's not a chucker. Therefore, instead of the umpire trying to work out whether the bowler is bowling at 14.9 or 15.1 or even Jo-Bo's extravagant 26.7, all the umpire need do is say "That's clearly not a Vettori. No ball!"

Sorted.

Got another great idea, too.

You know that video of Murali bowling in a brace? Well, lets have a look at Ravi Shastri, Slogger Slatts' and their calm and dispassionate commentary:

Ravi: "What you are going to see today is something quite spectacular. If I say you are going to see mind boggling stuff, that will be an understatement. This will clear a lot of arguments. Movement in his shoulder gives the illusion that he's chucking it."

Caption: Murali's magical arm!

Ravi: "That is simply amazing. You can see he's born with it. Outstanding stuff."

Slatts: "I never thought he was a chucker. To me it was always an optical illusion. He's just a genius and a one-off."

Ravi: "We've seen it all. It was quite amazing stuff. Michael, you see so many bowlers around world cricket with seriously questionable actions. I just feel it is unjust for Murali to be scrutinised the way he has been over the years, to be penalised for bowling a particular delivery, to be singled out."

Slatts: "I totally agree and I've thought that way right throughout his career. Murali is the world record holder and he shouldn't be victimised like he has been throughout his career and it's got to be sorted out. It was a privilege to be here today, to witness all that, to face him, and it was the same Murali I faced in Test cricket with and without the brace. I can tell. And I'm going to go back to Australia and I'm going to tell as many people as I can that I've seen proof that Murali does not chuck."

Ravi: "Yes, and he comes across as an exceptionally brave man, to do something like this for us with all the cameras around, where we can say anything we want, but he had the guts to come out and do it live tells you something about the human being."

Slatts: "He's such a strong character. If he thought his action was dodgy, do you think he'd be doing this?"

Ravi: "Closing gag."

Phew! That was quite the sell. I nearly went out and bought one for myself.

My other idea: From today onward, Murali can bowl with a brace on his arm. I won't complain. I won't call him a chucker. More power to him and his little bent appendage. But, since the boffins proved that his bendy action was not an optical illusion as initially claimed, and was indeed a chuck, here's the trade-off: first, test him again under the rule which now states you have to bowl ALL balls under 15 degrees, not have your average below 15 degrees; second, all his wickets taken before the law was changed in 2004 must be given back.

Once again: sorted.

I continue to outsmart officialdom.

FRONTAL DICHOTOMY

Few things in cricket commentary give me a bigger headache than the good vs the bad.

For instance, a batsman can play identical shots: he hits one for six, he gets out off the other. Yet the former is met with acclaim, while the latter is met with disdain. It's worse with catching. A good catch is a screamer, while an identical chance put down is a sitter grassed. You can't have it both ways.

Gideon Haigh, in an article containing no mention of Sally Warhaft, and with his focus heightened by the excesses of the IPL, expands on this in an excellent piece for CricInfo Magazine:

Night of the screamers

When commentators hype a batsman up for consecutive boundaries only to watch him perish to an imbecile smear, or praise a bowler to the skies for four dot-balls, then see him smacked into orbit twice while closing the over out, they subtly erode their own authority - such authority as they had, anyway.

For thirty years, we here in Straya have been subjected to the hype and huckstering of the Channel Nine commentary team. Their constant GBH of the earholes has reduced most of what they say to pointless drivel. Which is a pity. Whenever any of the Nine team talk cricket outside of the box they have plenty worthwhile to say. The same can be said for Dean Jones' commentary from the recent Straya Pakistan series in the Gulf. Deano is a dreadful commentator liable to explode at the merest on field incident - "That's the END OF THE OVER!!" - or make extravagant snap judgements - "1/44 off 11 overs. Pakistan are getting a STRANGLEHOLD ON THIS GAME!" - but has much to say that makes for interesting listening. Who knew about the importance of the different weights of balls before Deano described it during the 2005 Ashes? The less said about the horror that was the commentary for the South African one day series, the better.

As I see it... or rather, listen it, the solution to the problem is simple. However, given cricket's career path from pitch to commentary box, which is flooded by former players wanting a paid gig talking about cricket, it's never going to eventuate. Cricket needs professional commentators to do the ball-by-ball, and cricketers, preferably lucid and expert in the caper, to provide the insights. The likes of Bill and Tony have watered down their credibility with decades of nonsense instead of progressing to the end of their careers perceived as fonts of cricketing wisdom.

Also, with more and more cricket needing more and more commentators, the problem will only get worse. Expect more, not less, of the tortured delivery provided by the likes of Merv Hughes and Courtney Walsh in South Africa.

MO BALL!

"It's cheating. There are too many chuckers in the game. The 15-degree rule just allows cheating and chucking."

~~ Greg Matthews, No Elbow Room

BADA BING

What was that I was saying about Dean Jones? Rubbish commentator, but full of interesting points of view.

Well, putting side Deano's commentary for another post, in Wednesday's Age he had a fair old lash at Michael Clarke:

Is Clarke a great captain?

Clarke has won seven of the 10 matches he has captained when stepping in for Ricky Ponting. But his batting average in those matches is down to 36 in ODIs from 43, which is worrying. The other worrying feature is that I believe not too many of his teammates would walk over broken glass for him. Sure, he's well liked, but he can't be rated that highly because NSW won't even make him its captain.

Today he puts the cudgels to Brett Lee:

Brett Lee: no way back?

Lee has already stated on his website that he is ready to assume the lead role for the Ashes Tests. I think he needs to get out of the bubble that he is living in and look at the real world that is about to confront him.

Can you think of any time Lee did the same? Every great cricketer has had one time in the sun when cricket fans and players of the like say: "Remember when so-and-so did this?" I can't remember a time when Lee did something that left us gobsmacked or in awe.

Australia now has quite a balanced Test line-up for the Ashes tour. Johnson will bowl serious pace and worry all of England's batsmen. Stuart Clarke will keep things tight and bowl stump-to-stump, similar to Terry Alderman. Peter Siddle is improving on every outing, bowls with serious pace and bowls well to left handers. And Ben Hilfenhaus will swing the ball around and is Australia's best secret because England has not seen him.

So where does Lee fit in? Well, he has played 10 Tests in England with miserable figures of 29 wickets at an expensive average of 46. He has never taken 10 wickets or more in a Test and I just can't remember when he has seriously turned a match on its ear. The only two teams he has hurt in his career are Sri Lanka and New Zealand. Everyone else has had some fun with him.

Now, has Lee done a con job on us over the years? We all know he has bowled the ball at more than 150 km/h in the past, but when has he done that recently?

And this, the coop of grass:

He has some wonderful talents. Brett can play the guitar, sing and play classical music on the piano. I will never forget the time he captivated a huge audience in the foyer of the Taj hotel in Colombo playing peoples' favourite hits and some classical music along the way. He is also a good-looking guy, so my daughters tell me, and has represented Australia proudly.

Ouch.