Generic ‘someone is better than someone else’ post

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South Africa are supposed to be playing the Windies today, then India play Pakistan before England play New Zealand. However, we’re away for the weekend with no plans to use the internet, so you’re going to have to fill in the gaps yourselves in the comments section.

We’re not really in the habit of predicting things because we always anticipate being wrong and if you don’t trust your own predictions, why should anyone else? However, if pushed to commit to some sort of opinion, we’d say South Africa’s bowling line-up appears to have been put together for Chris Gayle’s benefit, so maybe something will happen there should the rain relent.

As for the second match, we’ve been backing India in this tournament and so should probably stick with that. It’s a bizarre match though with a great batting line-up and mediocre bowling line-up pitted against a shoddy batting line-up and fantastic bowling line-up. Only one thing’s for certain: one team will reveal themselves as being better than the other one (unless the match is rained off).

England v New Zealand? We’re pretty confident that one will be a washout. It’s just the way these things work.

DON'T BE LIKE GATT!

Mike Gatting wasn't receiving the King Cricket email when he dropped that ludicrously easy chance against India in 1993.

Coincidence?

Why risk it when it's so easy to sign up?

39 comments

  1. Really looking forward to England v New Zealand. That’ll be a refreshing change.

  2. Can you tell me whether my 3rd XI match tomorrow will be rained off? It will save me a two-hour round trip if so. Thanks.

  3. Enough of this international cricket crap. Are any of you commenters from Essex? I bloody well hope so. Come on, show yourselves.

    Oh Lanky lanky
    Lanky lanky lanky lanky Lancashire

    1. Clearly 3 o’clock is Check The County Scores Time in offices around the country.

    1. What is the lowest score by someone carrying their bat? I’d be pretty happy to have that record.

    2. The first-class record was set back in 1882, when the noted stonewaller Richard Barlow batted through Lancashire’s innings of 69 against Nottinghamshire at Trent Bridge, and finished with just 5 not out in about two and a half hours. The Test record was also set a long time ago: for South Africa against England in Cape Town in 1888-89, Bernard Tancred batted through an innings of 47 to finish with 26 not out. That was the first instance of a batsman carrying his bat in a Test. Bill Woodfull, the Australian opener and future captain, came close to undercutting this with an undefeated 30 out of 66 in the first Ashes Test in Brisbane in 1928-29, although two men were absent hurt in that innings.

    3. 6th lowest total in Championship history, and the lowest score for 30 years. Oh, and hats off to the person who has already updated the Wikipedia County Championship page.

    4. Was the bat carried? I have blocked cricinfo in my web browser to try and get some work done. As you can see, it is working brilliantly.

      Also, what kind of a name is Jaik?

    5. I’m afraid not. Had I the mind to edit a Wikipedia page, it would have been the Essex CCC page, making the opening line:

      “Essex CCC is an English County Cricket Club and laughing stock. Their rich and proud history in the County Championship is just that – history. In modern times Essex is famous for being bowled out in under an hour for 20 miserable runs by an ageing ginger county journeyman and his mate.”

  4. 20 all out?? that ought to be, like, impossible under modern playing conditions. and one batsman actually reached double figures (just)… staggering

    as for the rained off ODI – bet pollard got a few filthy looks when he got back to dressing room…

  5. Charley The Gent was there, boys, Charley The Gent was there.

    His e-mail to me late pm today is not re-publishable in polite company.

  6. cricinfo has just posted a link to the page where the d/l method is detailed (several predictable comments about impossible maths ensue). but despite its utility in generating “results” from matches which would otherwise be unfinished, it still seems to me fundamentally flawed. pakistan got shot out for 165 earlier on today, just failing to bat out their allotted 40 overs in (what was already) a rain-revised match. it was promptly announced that india’s target, assuming they could bat 40 overs, was 168. er, slightly obvious problem with that, albeit it’s only two runs out – but any method which does NOT come up with a target of 166 needs to be reworked surely?!

    1. First innings D/L adjustment is based on performance before the rain came, not after. So it was the score of 70/3 off 19.1 overs, achieved while there was an expectation of a full 50 overs, that leads to a tiny D/L revision when the overs are reduced from 50 to 40. Had Pakistan been on 70/0 at that point, the adjustment would have been greater, even if they had subsequently been rolled in fewer than 40 overs. Had Pakistan been 70/6 at the 19.1 over point, the target for India would have been reduced, not increased by D/L.

      Actually it does make sense.

      Meanwhile, it seems that KC might have been quite mistaken in his article and we might indeed get a whole 50 over game of cricket in Cardiff today, or at least a fairly sizable D/L one.

      What fun.

  7. ged, i’m not denying that the d/l method makes sense according to its own internal logic; i suppose what i’m really saying is that in some cases it may not be needed at all. match reuced from 50 to 40 overs, first side out for 165: target for second side to win is clearly 166, no other calculations required there. it does then look a bit silly (… i think) when a different target is set, even if it is very close to the “basic” or obvious one.

    the other thing which doesn’t sit well with me is the way in which wickets lost/remaining are such a crucial aspect of the formulas used. in an ODI, 260/9 beats 259/0 so what is the relevance, really?

    1. The resources available to the batting side at any time during an ODI are a combination of wickets and balls remaining.

      If you do not accept that logic then you don’t accept the logic of any method that attempts to make the game fair when the two sides are faced with different propositions due to the weather.

      If you do accept that logic, then there are various algorithms that you can use to try to make the game fair. D/L happens to be the one that has been accepted. But all methods based on that logic by definition work by adjusting from the resources that were available before a rain delay to resources available after a rain delay. None are based on post hoc rationalisation (ie what happened in an innings after the rain delay.)

      In the old days, the way they tried to do it was to eliminate the outcome of the lowest scoring overs from the side that batted first. That left the luckless Saffers needing 21 runs off the final ball after a rain delay in a match that was absolutely poised until that delay. THAT was a daft and unfair method.

      Only when there is a really irritating rain delay would I bother to write all of this down.

  8. “Pietersen looks likely to play for Surrey against Yorkshire. Asked on Twitter if he was playing, Pietersen replied: “Yes I am.” BBC journalism right there.

  9. ah, there we go. england somehow contrived to throw away all their wickets and folded just short of the allotted 24 overs, all out for 169. hence the kiwis’ target is obviously something other than 170 – ? nope, it’s 170 on the nose.

    soooo – this will presumably be the bit i missed yesterday while i was out of the house – pak vs ind started off as a 50-over match, then was reduced to 40 overs (initially) only *after* a rain delay..? is that how it works? and this time the target does not need any calculation, since the length of the match was established *before* eng started batting – ?

    1. Exactly, Cent. They’re assuming that had the Pakistan match been 40 overs from the start, they would have scored more. Which is daft.

  10. haha, yes indeed…

    … meanwhile the kiwis are looking highly dangerous. 35 required from 17 and two batsmen well set

  11. So does this mean England are better than New Zealand, who are better than Sri Lanka, who are better than England?

  12. 5.2
    Kulasekara to Hughes, OUT, what sort of shot is that? Hughes guides that off the middle of the bat to the keeper, looking to steer that to third man but he doesn’t get enough on it, Australia lose their second, it was a back of a length ball outside off, Hughes tried to be too cute and paid the price
    PJ Hughes c †Sangakkara b Kulasekara 13 (10b 3×4 0x6) SR: 130.00

  13. Everyone is better than Australia.

    Absolutely everyone.

    Apart from Surrey under Chris Adams.

  14. Pitiful effort from Australia. If you want to know everything about whats wrong with the Aussie team you need look no further than this quote from Bailey:
    “It would have been nice to get over the line in the end. Our goal was to do it in the 29 overs, but we never got going. There was no value in the result as such, semis was our main aim.”
    So, because we didn’t make the semis, apparently there is no point in winning. This team has no fucking heart, if the weather holds up it will be 5-0 to England.

  15. wolf, to be fair that was a big ask, chasing that total in only 29.1 overs; and they did give it a good go – even kept up with the scoring rate for a while, but kept losing wickets in the process of course. and once they’d *failed* to qualify they could easily just have given up, but they did carry on and really made sri lanka finish them off, even though winning would only have done a favour to the kiwis. (not quite sure what bailey was talking about there.)

    i didn’t actually see any of the match, just followed it online (and heard some of the commentary) but fwiw i thought they DID show some heart, given that they were missing their captain/best player (by miles) and always up against it…

    … agree with you about the ashes though, i can’t seem them getting anything much out of this english summer; i wouldn’t be surprised if CA are already making feverish plans for saving face in the return series

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