When I was in New Zealand recently, I watched a lot of World Cup cricket with my sons-in-law who were unfamiliar with the game. What impressed them was that the fielders in cricket, unlike in baseball, did not wear any gloves (except for the wicket keeper) and yet managed to stop and catch the ball with their bare hands, even though a cricket ball is roughly the same size and hardness as a baseball.
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In cricket, there are eleven ways in which a batter’s innings can end of which five are common (bowled, caught, stumped, run out, and leg before wicket). Five others (hit wicket, hit the ball twice, handled the ball, timed out, obstructing the field) are much rarer and I have never seen such an out in all the matches that I have watched live. The eleventh is where the batter leaves the field voluntarily or due to injury or some other reason without getting out by one of the other ten ways and this is referred to as ‘retired’.
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Here’s a question for knowledgeable baseball fans. Cricket and baseball are similar in many features but there is one difference that puzzles me. In cricket, as in baseball, a batter gets out if he hits the ball and a fielder catches it before it hits the ground. In cricket, a common way this happens is if the batter is ‘caught behind’, i.e., touches the ball with the bat or glove and the fielder directly behind him (known as the wicket keeper) catches it.
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England and Australia have the longest running rivalry in Test cricket and they just completed one of the strangest series in living memory. England won the five-match series 3-2 and thus won back the symbolic Ashes that they lost due to a 5-0 drubbing in Australia just 18 months ago. Given that, Australia were favored to retain the Ashes so the result was undoubtedly a surprise.
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There is a big difference in the way that Test cricket is played compared to the limited over game. Test matches are time-limited (five days of play with six hours per day) with no guarantee of a result, while the limited-overs format (50 overs per inning for one-day games and 20 per inning for the roughly three-hour Twenty20 format) are designed to guarantee a result.
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Riche Benaud died yesterday of skin cancer. His contributions to cricket were immense, starting with his superb leg spin bowling and aggressive lower batting but most importantly as one of the shrewdest captains in the game and the architect of many victories under whose leadership Australia did not lose a test series. Well-deserved tributes to him are pouring in from all over. Daniel Brettig gives us an overview of his life and here is video summary..
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In writing about cricket on this blog, I was aware that the game is mystifying to those readers who live in countries that do not play this game. Americans in general tend to be quite clueless about it. Hence it may come as a surprise that America was once one of the leading nations playing the game, with Philadelphia as its center, and had (arguably to the extent that one can rank these things) the best bowler in the history of the game. In fact, the first international cricket match took place in 1844 in the US between it and Canada.
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So we are down to the two host teams to battle it out for the trophy on the grounds of one of them. Despite the advantage that playing in Melbourne gives the Australians, I am sticking with my original pick of New Zealand to win the game. They just strike me as a well-balanced, complete team. Both teams have good batting depth, explosive hitters, and excellent fast bowlers. They both field well. NZ has the edge in a wily and experienced spinner in Daniel Vettori. If they can keep their cool the way the did in that exciting semi-final game against South Africa, they should be able to defeat Australia. It is clear from my time here in Auckland that there is nothing that New Zealanders would like better than defeating their arch rivals in the final.
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So here I am in Auckland awaiting the start of the first semi-final game between New Zealand and South Africa due to start in four hours time. I will be watching it on TV instead of going to the nearby Eden Park grounds. If Sri Lanka had beaten South Africa and made it to this game I would have tried to get tickets even though it would have been very hard. The four semi-finalists (New Zealand, South Africa, Australia, and India) are not surprises and all the games should be close ones.
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The preliminary rounds are over and the matchups for the quarterfinals are now set. This is a knockout process in which anything can happen, where a spectacular performance by a single player or a lucky break or a fielding lapse can change the situation dramatically. As I said before, I am terrible at predicting cricket outcomes but that does not prevent me from keeping on doing so, so here are my picks for the rest of the tournament.
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