Or just play it on ice!

August 15th, 2005 - 14:45 | 6 comments

Way back when I was 15, I spent summer PE lessons learning how to play cricket. Actually, that’s a complete lie. We were never taught any outdoor sports in PE, it was expected that we knew the rules and therefore how to respond when told to be ’scrum-half’ or whatever. I just made it up as I went along, most of the time. In this particular lesson there were 100 or so kids split up into three practice groups: one bowling, one batting, one throwing/catching. At one point, I looked up to see my friend Rachmaninov* throwing a cricket ball to somebody in my vicinity. After a moment I realised that it was in fact coming directly towards me.

I deftly twisted my body, stuck out a hand and caught the projectile.

All right, so I made that up. What I in fact did was run away. Like, directly away. Like, in a straight line from the ball. I then ducked, which had the remarkable effect of causing the ball to collide perfectly square-on with the back of my head. Next thing I know I’m on the ground (I like to think I was knocked out for a moment, but that’s just so I can say “I was knocked out for a moment” and get sympathy from women) and a crowd quickly gathered around me. I busied myself trying to figure out whether I could move my legs, see properly, feel my brains leaking out of my ears, that kind of thing. After a minute the teacher - Mr Sympathetic, I think his name was - arrived. He looked me over and said “get up, Westy.” I felt compelled to point out that people die from this kind of injury, but he frightened me, so I didn’t. I stood up, felt no ill effects whatsoever, and carried on playing.

Despite being entirely to blame for this incident, I like to bring it up occasionally to annoy Rachmaninov. I have a theory, however, that this ball homed in on the part of my brain devoted to understanding cricket, and broke it. For example, just now I witnessed the following:

Man 1 throws ball
Man 2 hits ball away with bat
Man 3, in a stunning flying leap, catches ball
Massive cheers, and everybody crowds around Man 1.

Man 1? What about Man 3? He did a massive flying leapy catchy thing! All Man 1 did was throw the ball in a straight line…how hard can that be? He does it all the damn time! Poor old Man 3 had about 3 nanoseconds to react to an 80mph ball heading towards him and still managed to grab the thing, yet Mr throwy-throwy got all the glory. Poor Man 3, I felt sorry for him.

I think I’m going to invent a new sport called Really Hard Sport, where they only have to do really difficult things. Like catching 100mph projectiles or skating up trees. We could then have another sport called Really Easy Stuff That Makes People Cheer, where you do things like throwing balls in straight lines, or kicking lozenges between incredibly wide and very tall posts with nobody in the way or even nearby. What do you think? Am I on to something?

*name changed to protect Ed.

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6 Responses to “Or just play it on ice!”

1 Simon Aug 16th, 2005 at 11:17 am

Is there a sport you don’t think is too easy? Not that you can replicate any of the feats yourself ofcourse.
2 Andrew Aug 16th, 2005 at 11:30 am

Messrs Catchy-Catchy and Batty-Batty have difficult jobs! It’s just Mr Throwy-Throwy who’s getting all the glory for doing basically nothing and missing half the time anyway I saw the cricket equivalent of a penalty shoot-out recently where the bowlers just had to hit the stumps with nobody in the way, and they were pants!
3 Simon Aug 16th, 2005 at 11:47 am

Actually the bowler and catcher do tend to meet up after getting a wicket and congratulate each other. Secondly, working a batsman to force a mistake is hard work. Not to mention generating 80-90mph deliveries landing on target with suitable variation, such as controlling seam movement and swing to deceive the batter so as to get an outside edge or nip back in behind his defences to get the stumps or lbw. I should draw your attention to Flintoff’s dismissal of Hayden where Freddie used varying line and swing to cause Hayden all kinds of trouble outside his off-stump forcing him to move across to defend, finally bowling a straight delivery at Hayden’s now exposed leg-stump.

Ofcourse your counter-argument will be that they practice that all the time and they should have it perfect now. But then surely the catcher has practiced equally hard to make such catches which would defeat your assertion that it is a difficult task by your own argument.

Your habit of preaching about stuff without due research or supporting evidence reminds me of something with an almost ironic flavour, but I can’t think what
4 Andrew Aug 16th, 2005 at 11:54 am

As far as I can tell, what you’re saying is “he aimed a bit to the left, then to the right (when he managed to get the ball in the correct area at all) which confused Mr Batty Batty.” Mr Catchy-Catchy always has a fraction of a second to react, which I can see takes a large amount of skill no matter how you practice. Mr Throwy-Throwy has a much more leisurely time, and I would suggest it is a skill that could be learnt…

It’s entirely possible that I write things like this just to wind people up, you know ‘course, I’d like to hear a defence of the ‘everybody has to stand on one leg on multiples of 111′ rule…
5 Simon Aug 16th, 2005 at 12:23 pm

Thats not a rule afaik and only some superstitious folk mark it in anyway. There can be little defence for that really. As for winding people up, I, of course, have no understanding of such a concept
You know, you are right about learning that skill. I forgot how hard it was to select 4 world class bowlers for a national team, what with there being thousands of the buggers out there. The evidence is really against me there. How could I be so stupid.

I think you need to watch more, and in fact listen more. The TV coverage is full of info about bowling strategy and Hawk-Eye is wonderful for showing the different deliveries.
6 Joe Adam Aug 16th, 2005 at 6:02 pm

Well despite having been playing cricket on a fairly regular basis for the last two years, I still suck at nearly all the above mentioned skills. And I would like to point out, that running up, bowling at 90ish miles an hour repeatedly, is not exactly leisurely! Nor is having the control to able to control, not just where you throw the ball, but which way it swings while it is in the air, not exactly trivial.
Finally, I have watched bowlers attempt to hit the stump (note only one when they tried it) and they managed fairly regularly. Its just that bowling straight at the stumps, to good batsmen, tends to result in Mr Batty-Batty dispatching the ball the edge of the ground.

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