How to take the fun out of watching a game?

Show the same couple of advertisements over and over again at the end of each over.

You know of any?

Utterly, butterly delicious

For decades now, Amul has been making ads that have a humourous spin on whatever’s in the news. And, as everybody knows, cricket’s often in the news in India. Here, I post some of these topicals (as Amul likes to call them). You can browse through all of them here.

Image © Amul

This is one of the posts lost during the WordPress server crash over the last weekend.

Deteriorating quality at Cricinfo

Is it just me or does the quality of text commentary at Cricinfo seem to be going down? As an example, take Dravid’s run out in today’s game. Here’s what Cricinfo had to say:

13.5 Naved-ul-Hasan to Pathan, 1 run, WICKET, low fulltoss on the pads and Pathan flicks it away well in front of square leg, Malik moves across in the deep and fires in a good throw at the keeper’s end, Naved-ul-Hasan does the rest and Dravid is out by a long way - crucial breakthrough

Oh, really? The throw was at the bowler’s end. How could one miss something like that? And this is just one example. I’ve seen edged fours being defined as superb, steered shots and what not. Seriously? Another example’s when Pathan was reportedly caught by Afridi off a no ball. The commentary went on to describe that the umpire had his hand out rightaway. Funny thing is that it wasn’t a no ball, and Pathan was not given out because the ball had gone onto his helmet. This mistake was later corrected by the commentator, but still, how can you provide details about things that haven’t happened at all?

Cricinfo stores detailed information about each delivery (beyond what we’ve been used to in the past) and bases some of its stats on them. A while ago, they were doing an analysis of who were the best players in the world for each shot. Remember that? Well, how can they rely on such shoddy reporting?

I suppose we can’t complain though, since it’s free.

MIA

My posts, not me. I had a couple of new posts since the last one on here, but they’ve mysteriously disappeared. Will dig them up and post them back up. Patience, friends.

Work for Cricinfo

Saw this posting on their website:

The job will involve vetting articles and features for grammar and syntax (including spelling and punctuation) and overall style and clarity. A few articles may require a certain amount of rewriting and basic restructuring. All articles will need to be fact-checked ­- mainly statistics and dates, which will need to be verified against the cricinfo.com database.

More

I did consider it for about a minute (perhaps if they weren’t looking for a full-timer). Then decided to post it here for any readers from Mumbai who might be interested.

D/L needs updating

It’s been a while since the ODI rules have been changed. The supersub rule has been tried out and dumped already. In the meantime, several new scoring records have been set. New Zealand, of all countires, nearly missed chasing a score in the vicinity of 330 against Australia at the end of last year, but followed it up by chasing a world-record 331 in the very next game a couple of days later. Then, of course, there was THAT game. Australia scored a record 434 in an innings, only to see South Africa chase it down.

The pattern of higher scores because of the rule changes is quite clear, and that is only expected given that there are more overs with fielding restrictions now. So, why then hasn’t the Duckworth-Lewis system been updated to reflect this? Until it is, any team chasing under D/L will be at a disadvantage.

Hawkeye in tennis

I was watching the Nasdaq-100 Open Women's final between the Russians Sharapova and Kuznetsova (which the latter won easily, by the way), and what do I see? They were using Dr. Paul Hawkins' Hawkeye technology. The players could challenge any line call they disagreed with. What's even more interesting is that their use is similar to the solution I had suggested last year.

Each player will receive two challenges per set to review line calls. If he or she is correct, he will retain the same number of challenges, but if he is incorrect, one will be lost.

My suggestion had been to allow teams to challenge as many decisions as they want so long as they are correct. If they are incorrect on two occasions, they would lose the right to challenge any more decisions.

While we wait for the men people running ICC to grow balls (and common sense) and start using Hawkeye to aid the umpire, the tennis world has already done so. Granted, they're using it to determine where the ball's been instead of where the ball would have been, but Hawkeye and other similar technologies (the red strip marking the wicket to wicket area, for instance) are not being used to determine that either (ie, where the ball has landed or hit the player's pads). It disgusts me.

Cricket rules

Some very interesting cricket’s been going on for a few days now. There’s the on-going India v. England Test match. The one between West Indies and New Zealand had been see-sawing this way and that, before a thrilling comeback by NZ on the back of Bond’s efforts. And then the small matter of what is being touted as the best ODI game ever that saw records tumble like dominoes. South Africa chased down the Australia’s 434 to lay the ghosts of the 1999 World Cup to rest.

Cricket has taken center stage, so much so that the Australian Open was rescheduled to not clash with the first Ashes Test later this year. Cricket rules. And all is well with the world.

Personal reminder

I have a tendency to share my passions (although some friends, for some absurd reason, would describe it as a tendency to force my passions upon them), and cricket is one of them. An article in the Sydney Morning Herald got me talking about cricket to one of my friends of Chinese origin (whom I had previously unsuccessfully tried to convert into a cricket fan). After a little debating (she was adamant that cricket would never pick up in China), we decided to put our money where our mouths were.

So, this post is simply to record a personal wager of USD2000. My claim is that in thirty years’ time (Dec. 2035) cricket will have become a popular sport (the definition of popular will be subjective, but hopefully the two of us will agree) in China. That’s a tough ask for a country where cricket is unknown to most and that has little or no grass-roots support for the sport, but I am counting on the “communist single-mindedness” of the Chinese.

Cricket catching the eye of the American audience

Okay, maybe that’s an overstatement, but I can see early signs of cricket gaining prominence in the States. Not too long ago, some ad on TV (I think it was Coke or Gatorade or some such company) showed some Caribbean beach cricket being played. Just yesterday, I saw an ad for GE that showed some kids in whites playing cricket. Perhaps this is the beginning of something?

A quick search led me to this video (”Beats”) of kids playing cricket with the Taj Mahal as the backdrop. Not sure if this was the ad I saw on tv.