Australians watching a different game

[Zinzan]

Get off the drugs mate, England didnt hammer anyone, they didnt even pass 180.

England lost 20 wickets for 334 runs and lost by 239 runs, I think you need to see a doctor.

And if it wasn't for the help from S.Africa it would have been about 350 runs

 

[Zinzan]

You need to realise that you can hammer a bowler while losing wickets to them
Something England did with Lee after his opening spell.
QUOTE]

Yes of course Richard ....they smashed Lee all over the park....I just hope the devastation doesn't cause Lee too much damage mentally otherwise he might end up in a straight-jacket next to you.

Time for your prescriptions now Richard...

 

[Top_Cat]

Edit: Reads previous post - God! Corey even beat me to the lalalalala bit. Going to cry now.

I'm sorry, Obi Wan, but your time has passed.



EDIT: Hot DAMN I've been dying to use that smilie.

And if it's any consolation, I borrowed the line from you. LONG time ago now...............

 

[marc71178]

And if it wasn't for the help from S.Africa it would have been about 350 runs

Except who knows how many Thorpe would've scored?

 

[Richard]

Obviously, your bias (whatever the basis of it is) against short-pitched bowling is never going to allow you admit a wicket taken with a bouncer was deserved. Nevertheless, accurate, fast short-pitched bowling which forces the batsman to play always has been and always will be a wicket taking tactic. It is one of the reasons the West Indies four prong was so successful, because such bowling is extremely difficult to play and easy to hit in the air. Inaccurate short-pitched bowling obviously isn't worth much as you can just avoid it, but there's a reason that most of the best seamers ever seen regularly employed short bowling to good effect.

And there's a reason it's taken a tiny proportion of wickets, too (with the exception of the West Indian quartet - sometimes quintet or ***tuplet).

 

[Richard]

Yeah but at that speed, no ball is going to move a great deal. The ball is just simply travelling too fast to get grip on the pitch to move a long way. It's why slower bowlers get more movement. It's not brain surgery but basic physics. And at that speed, it moved more than enough to beat the stroke and I still maintain that even in form, Vaughan would have probably missed it. It was just too quick and too good.

Eh? Slower bowlers get more movement? That's why Shoaib and Lee (and Bond probably better still) hoop it round corners sometimes is it?
I fail to see that physics, which can't even wholly explain swing (the chap who famously described it as an optical-illusion comes to mind), can be applied with confidence here
The ball moved not enough to cause an in-form Vaughan trouble, I maintain that and will continue to do so.

It is possible to bowl good stort stuff and get wickets with them. You poking your fingers in your ears and screaming "LA LA LA!" won't change that. Put it this way; if we were in the nets and I bowled you a short one, you'd struggle more to cope with it than a length ball. They're not a weapon to be used consistently even against a batsman who's been out to them a few times; they're a shock weapon, like a slower-ball or a yorker because all three of those are 'low-percentage' deliveries. Intelligent usage of short balls takes wickets and has been proven time and again. Geez, even Ponting who's as good a player of the pull-hook as you'll see has struggled against the short ones this season and that's because the bowling has been high-standard stuff generally. Harmi in particular has made him rush the shot on a few occasions I've seen. And Lee, bowled them with great accuracy in the first Test and was probably part of the reason he took a few wickets.

The ball which got Strauss is a case in point; from over-the-wicket, a bouncer would have angled away from him and likely flown through to the 'keeper. From around-the-wicket, the bouncer angled in at the batsman an as he went to make that split-second decision to pull or get out of the way, it followed him and in the end, he made the decision too late, hence why he was half-way through pulling/letting-it-go. It was really well-executed set-piece against a well-set batsman who is usually really good on the pull shot. That was high-standard bowling from Lee and just to ram home the point, I doubt either Glenn McGrath or Jason Gillespie would have been able to emulate it because they don't have the raw speed to force the indecision.

You constantly telling me that I'm acting in such a desperate manner won't change the fact that short-balls almost never get good batsmen in good nick out.
Ponting has had trouble with the short-ball for 2 reasons this season: his own sketchy form (fairly obvious to all of us who saw him struggle with deliveries of all lengths in the early ODIs) and the Lord's Test pitch which made all short balls tricky to negotiate.
There are various batsmen (Hick, for instance; Flintoff) who can be dismissed by "intelligent" use of the short-ball. But they are very much in the minority, and for most batsmen short-balls, either used ephemerally or constantly, do not cause any significant difficulties.
Except, of course, on uneven pitches.

 

[Richard]

lalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalala

Richard can't hear you

lalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalala

Edit: Reads previous post - God! Corey even beat me to the lalalalala bit. Going to cry now.

Good, good - more than I'm going to do.
Fact is I've given good reasons why the short-ball is not a wicket-taking weapon the overwhelming majority of the time and people resorting to the "you sing la-la-la" tactic just shows the plain idiocy of the situation for that precise reason.

 

[Richard]

Some batsmen play "poor strokes" to good short deliveries, that's why bowlers bowl them. For example the chances of KP getting out to that delivery are negligible, whereas there is a severe chance of Giles and Jones getting out to them. This is cricket and it's played by human beings, not androids. It'd be a pretty poor show if every batsmen played the correct shot at the correct time, all the time. It was a good delivery to Jones, doubtful it would've been a good one to KP.

Chance of Giles getting out to them is high, sure, and always has been.
Chance of Jones getting out to them on a true pitch is much, much lower as he's generally a very fine player of the cross-bat strokes. The Lord's pitch, as so many said so many times, was a very difficult one to Pull and Hook on, and that cost Jones his wicket twice.

 

[Richard]

Yes of course Richard ....they smashed Lee all over the park....I just hope the devastation doesn't cause Lee too much damage mentally otherwise he might end up in a straight-jacket next to you.

Time for your prescriptions now Richard...

They did smash Lee all over the park - of course that won't do any bowler's confidence any harm *if* wickets are being taken in the meantime.
People need to realise that wickets don't affect being smashed all over the park.

 

[Richard]

And if it wasn't for the help from S.Africa it would have been about 350 runs

You never know - the other South African (Strauss) might have had someone else do better; so might the Papua New Guinean-Australian-Welshman.
Players of a foreign upbringing are part of sport and always will be, and the sooner everyone gets that into their thick skulls and stops talking as if players who are qualified to play for one country aren't really from there the better.

 

[FaaipDeOiad]

And there's a reason it's taken a tiny proportion of wickets, too (with the exception of the West Indian quartet - sometimes quintet or ***tuplet).

It doesn't take a tiny proportion of wickets. It entirely depends on the bowlers playing, how well they bowl the short ball, and how well the batsmen play it. If your seam attack is McGrath, Gillespie and Kasprowicz, obviously not many of your wickets will come from short balls. If it's Lillee, Thomson and Pascoe, obviously more of them will.

It's certainly true that few bowlers today use the short ball to great effect, but clearly Harmison does, and Lee has evidently improved significantly in his use of it to what was seen earlier in his test career, probably due to his new, more upright action. It's hard for the short ball to have the same impact or accuracy when you deliver it from a low point like Lee used to. If he keeps bowling them like he did at Lords though, you'll see plenty of wickets with them, because regardless of who you are 90mph short pitched bowling right at the body is extremely difficult to play safely.

 

[Richard]

I'll hold you to that, when Lee (and Harmison for that matter) plays on some truer pitches. Because I can absolutely gurantee that England and South Africa will clatter that sort of rubbish all over the park on a true pitch, which we are likely to see again before long (though we thought we'd see it at Lord's...)

 

[Top_Cat]

Eh? Slower bowlers get more movement? That's why Shoaib and Lee (and Bond probably better still) hoop it round corners sometimes is it?

It's pretty basic physics that the more time an object has to cross a certain distance (like a pitch length), the more exaggerated any external forces are going to be. Shoaib and Lee move the ball quite a bit but compare that to how far Botham or Massie or Alderman or even Ellison swung the ball and the amount of swing is quite a deal less. Can't believe you're even trying with this one. Sure the exact reasons for swing are still being worked out but I'm not speaking to the reasons for swing, only the result of said forces. And the faster an object is hurled from one point to another, the less external forces are going to have an effect, especially over 19 metres.

You constantly telling me that I'm acting in such a desperate manner won't change the fact that short-balls almost never get good batsmen in good nick out.

In isolation, not necessarily. In combination with other good bowling beforehand or afterwards, of course it works.

Ponting has had trouble with the short-ball for 2 reasons this season: his own sketchy form (fairly obvious to all of us who saw him struggle with deliveries of all lengths in the early ODIs) and the Lord's Test pitch which made all short balls tricky to negotiate.

A batsman doesn't just magically go in and out of form. Ponting wasn't hugely out of form for the duration of the ODI's (maybe still feeling his way after a long layoff); he just got out early. He got a great yorker from Harmi in one game, a reasonable yorker against Bangladesh (remember; in form or not, that shuffle across his stumps early in his innings is problematic) and I remember in at least one or two other innings, he got out just as he scored 30 or 40 in quick time. And then, towards the end, the runs started coming. Ponting may have not scored as many runs as he'd like but he was still hitting the ball well. The fact that Harmi made him struggle against the short ball in the ODI series says more about the quality of Harmi's bowling than Ponting's play.

There are various batsmen (Hick, for instance; Flintoff) who can be dismissed by "intelligent" use of the short-ball. But they are very much in the minority, and for most batsmen short-balls, either used ephemerally or constantly, do not cause any significant difficulties.

Are you deliberately missing my point? Because I just read back and I'm pretty sure I said that the short ball is a shock weapon, not a stock weapon. What you're arguing against is that short-balls can be used exclusively to get wickets and that in isolation, they cause batsmen trouble which I never argued.

From my previous post;

They're not a weapon to be used consistently even against a batsman who's been out to them a few times; they're a shock weapon, like a slower-ball or a yorker because all three of those are 'low-percentage' deliveries. Intelligent usage of short balls takes wickets and has been proven time and again.

THAT is why it worked on Strauss that time; it shocked him into making a decision which he didn't have much time to make and he didn't make it in time.

 

[Richard]

It's pretty basic physics that the more time an object has to cross a certain distance (like a pitch length), the more exaggerated any external forces are going to be. Shoaib and Lee move the ball quite a bit but compare that to how far Botham or Massie or Alderman or even Ellison swung the ball and the amount of swing is quite a deal less. Can't believe you're even trying with this one. Sure the exact reasons for swing are still being worked out but I'm not speaking to the reasons for swing, only the result of said forces. And the faster an object is hurled from one point to another, the less external forces are going to have an effect, especially over 19 metres.

Are we even sure how fast Massie or Botham were? No.
I do understand what you mean, but I still don't see that the amount of swing is going to be much less, maybe a millimetre or two, which makes no difference when you think that a ball's got to swing 5 or 6 millimetres to even begin to be noticed.

In isolation, not necessarily. In combination with other good bowling beforehand or afterwards, of course it works.

I still maintain that, for every time it works, there'll be 30 or 35 times it doesn't - meaning it'll work once every 300 deliveries - per bowler - or so.

A batsman doesn't just magically go in and out of form. Ponting wasn't hugely out of form for the duration of the ODI's (maybe still feeling his way after a long layoff); he just got out early. He got a great yorker from Harmi in one game, a reasonable yorker against Bangladesh (remember; in form or not, that shuffle across his stumps early in his innings is problematic) and I remember in at least one or two other innings, he got out just as he scored 30 or 40 in quick time. And then, towards the end, the runs started coming. Ponting may have not scored as many runs as he'd like but he was still hitting the ball well. The fact that Harmi made him struggle against the short ball in the ODI series says more about the quality of Harmi's bowling than Ponting's play.

Maybe it does to you - to me it shows Ponting's lack of form and not much else - as I say, he might have looked good on some shots (as he pretty much never fails to do) but in almost every innings before that century he looked like he was feeling for the ball early on. As I've said countless times - I couldn't care less about Bangladesh games (not exactly like the Baisya ball was a Yorker anyway, it was just a fullish ball, just short of Half-Volley, that he missed), the only games that mattered this summer were against England, and in all of them, even at the start of the one where he scored a century, he looked uncomfortable against short and good-length alike.
And added to the fact that I've watched enough times where he's hammered short rubbish all over everywhere, even in front of square at The WACA against 90mph, you'll forgive me for not taking too seriously any occasion where he might struggle with short stuff.

Are you deliberately missing my point? Because I just read back and I'm pretty sure I said that the short ball is a shock weapon, not a stock weapon. What you're arguing against is that short-balls can be used exclusively to get wickets and that in isolation, they cause batsmen trouble which I never argued.

From my previous post;

They're not a weapon to be used consistently even against a batsman who's been out to them a few times; they're a shock weapon, like a slower-ball or a yorker because all three of those are 'low-percentage' deliveries. Intelligent usage of short balls takes wickets and has been proven time and again.

THAT is why it worked on Strauss that time; it shocked him into making a decision which he didn't have much time to make and he didn't make it in time.

And the uneven pitch had far more to do with him getting into trouble than otherwise.
I've seen Strauss bat plenty and plenty and I've seen many occasions where the short ball and resulting Pull-stroke has surprised me, partly because of how quickly he latched onto it, but clearly not the batsman.
I'm not deliberately missing the point - I'm pointing-out that sustained short bowling is almost never effective and occasional short-balls rarely have much effect either.

 

[Zinzan]

You never know - the other South African (Strauss) might have had someone else do better; so might the Papua New Guinean-Australian-Welshman.
Players of a foreign upbringing are part of sport and always will be, and the sooner everyone gets that into their thick skulls and stops talking as if players who are qualified to play for one country aren't really from there the better.

Don't be so sensitive Richard .....just teasing

 

[luckyeddie]

Are we even sure how fast Massie or Botham were? No.
I do understand what you mean, but I still don't see that the amount of swing is going to be much less, maybe a millimetre or two, which makes no difference when you think that a ball's got to swing 5 or 6 millimetres to even begin to be noticed.

As Corey inferred, swing bowling still has more 'art' than science' involved - things happen to a ball in flight to affect its trajectory but we still don't have a total understanding. Obviously seam position and speed are important factors (witness how often the ball swings when the seam is scrambled in flight but it then straightens up after the pitch and goes like a boomerang - wonder if Jones wants to buy that as an excuse?), as are dampness and general roughness of one side or the other of the ball, humidity or 'heaviness' of the atmosphere and so on.

Regarding Massie and 'that match' (see History of the Ashes Part 2), what made Massie such a dangerous proposition was only in part the prodigious amount of movement he extracted from the conditions - it was the LATENESS of the swing.

There are two possible explanations I can think of (both are totally pulled out of the air - or out of where the sun doesn't shine)

1. Perhaps the fingers may not have been totally behind the ball at release and that, somehow, the ball rotated into the 'perfect' position some time during flight.
2. The speed was absolutely critical for the seam position, and as it decelerated during flight, the aerodynamics causing the pressure difference resulting in the movement became 'perfect' and the ball started to move late in flight.

(2) seems more likely than (1), although my guess is that there might have been a combination of both involved. Either way, a year later, he had crashed and burned, so it must have been something so tenuous that he was barely able to grasp it for one golden weekend.

Maybe a genuine swing bowler would like to add their thoughts - I understand that you are an esoteric lot who don't feel comfortable disclosing 'trade secrets', but it's all right. I won't tell.

 

[social]

I still maintain that, for every time it works, there'll be 30 or 35 times it doesn't - meaning it'll work once every 300 deliveries - per bowler - or so.

.
I'm not deliberately missing the point - I'm pointing-out that sustained short bowling is almost never effective and occasional short-balls rarely have much effect either.

Then how do you explain the WI domination of cricket?

Having watched throughout this era, I can guarantee that deliveries of a length where the batsman would even contemplate playing forward were few and far between.

 

[Top_Cat]

What was Michael Holding's motto again? "If you want to drive, hire a car?"

 

[Richard]

Then how do you explain the WI domination of cricket?

Having watched throughout this era, I can guarantee that deliveries of a length where the batsman would even contemplate playing forward were few and far between.

Let's have it then - how do WI of the 1970s and 1980s, with 5 or 6 bowlers capable of doing the same thing hour after hour, session after session, come into anything?
They don't - they're an anomaly.
WI don't prove anything.

 

[tooextracool]

as expected, anything which richard cant explain is indeed an anomaly.