tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-216368942024-03-28T20:27:40.162-07:00A CRICKETING VIEWKartikeya Datehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03512491310629949028noreply@blogger.comBlogger1783125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21636894.post-2136957233964002932020-04-19T07:25:00.002-07:002022-09-29T08:43:45.457-07:00On Pressure<span id="docs-internal-guid-dd992974-7fff-4a58-c545-f088a4ede7a6" style="line-height: 1;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 3pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><span style="font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Pressure”</span><span style="font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, Keith Miller once told the veteran broadcaster Michael Parkinson, </span><span style="font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #232323; font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">is a Messerschmitt up your arse. Playing cricket is not”</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #232323; font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Miller had seen combat as a fighter pilot in World War II. His observation should have been the last word on the subject. But the idea of pressure remains an enduring favorite of the cricket commentariat. It is used, for the most part, as a prelude to the other favorite subject of the cricket commentariat - manliness. Manliness, toughness - just how much of a man a player is, is determined by the result a player produces under pressure. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 3pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #232323; font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This often leads to some palpable contradictions. For example, at 286/9 in the fourth innings </span><a href="https://www.espncricinfo.com/series/18659/scorecard/1152848/england-vs-australia-3rd-test-icc-world-test-championship" style="line-height: 1; text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">at Headingley in the 2019 Ashes</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #232323; font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, England’s situation in the Test was hopeless. At the same time, Ben Stokes was said to be under tremendous pressure to deliver victory. It was, apparently, a hopeless pressure situation. 73 were required as Jack Leach joined Stokes for the final wicket stand. Only 5 other stands out of 605 10th wicket stands in the 4th innings of a test have produced at least 73. 99% of the time, the last wicket pair adds less than England’s requirement that day. If we consider all four Test innings, then 99.13% of all last wicket stands have produced less than 73. There have been only fourteen 10th wicket stands in all fourth innings in Test history which ended with the winning runs. Eight of these fourteen were worth 19 runs or less, 11 were worth 48 runs or less. The two highest fourth innings 10th wicket stands which ended in victory came in 2019 - Stokes & Leach at Headingley, and </span><a href="https://www.espncricinfo.com/series/18645/scorecard/1144164/south-africa-vs-sri-lanka-1st-test-sl-in-sa-2018-19" style="line-height: 1; text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Kusal Perera & Vishva Fernando at Kingsmead, Durban</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #232323; font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 3pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #232323; font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The record suggests that those who observed that the situation was hopeless for England when the 9th wicket fell are right. Until February 2019, no team had ever won a Test match from that position. In August 2019, it had been done once in 160 years. There could have been no reasonable expectation of victory even if England had Bradman batting with Leach. Stokes had to hit out because he couldn’t rely on Leach (first class batting average 12.5) to hold his end up for too long against Cummins, Hazlewood, Lyon and Pattinson. Now, Stokes is very good at hitting the long ball. He’s probably one of the best hitters in the world. But none of this adds up to there being any pressure on Stokes to produce a result or preserve his team’s position in a hopeless situation.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 3pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #232323; font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Most fourth innings hundreds which help to successfully chase down large targets are innings played from situations where the form book suggests that a win would be a miracle. Miracles are flukes unless they keep occurring, in which case they’re not miracles but marks of excellence. Steven Smith did not play a first class match for 14 months and 10 days before his comeback in the first Ashes Test at Edgbaston. He reeled off six Test innings of 144, 142, 92, 211, 82 and 80. He averages over 60 in Test cricket. He averages 90 in the first match innings of Tests. Given this evidence of his overall quality, those scores were far more likely to be a consequence of his excellence than they might have been of his good fortune. Ben Stokes averages 37 in Tests. Given this record, his innings at Headingley was less likely to be a sign of his excellence compared to Smith’s innings. There are some obvious cases where most cricket watchers will readily accept the proposition that an outlier performance involves a large element of good fortune. Ashton Agar’s 98 on Test debut batting at number 11 was an innings unlikely to be repeated by him or by other number 11s.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 3pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #232323; font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Flukes and fortune play a role in some of the most storied innings of this type. Even the great Brian Lara’s famous 153* at Barbados in 1999 benefited not only from a famous dropped catch by Ian Healy, but also from </span><a href="https://youtu.be/Ju5XgdOpyko?t=309" style="line-height: 1; text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">this LBW</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #232323; font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> shout going Lara’s way early in his innings. Similarly, Sachin Tendulkar’s 136 might have ended much earlier had it not been for a stumping missed by Moin Khan. You could argue that it’s not Lara’s or Tendulkar’s fault that they benefited from those errors. The point is though, that given their actions, their survival was contingent on a mistake by someone else. They offered chances. If cricket had a tradition of recording errors in the way that baseball does, this would have been clear.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 3pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #232323; font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yet, this idea that a player who is having an unusually perfect day out, like Stokes was in his 135 not out, is often described as BBC Test Match Special’s top presenter Jonathan Agnew described him in the documentary </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #232323; font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Test. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #232323; font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Agnew’s view of that last wicket stand was “The Aussies, they’d gone, they’d scrambled. Whereas Stokes, clinical!” As some of my logician friends would point out, this by Agnew was </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc" style="line-height: 1; text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">post hoc ergo propter hoc</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #232323; font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #232323; font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Everything Stokes tried was coming off, and nothing Australia tried seemed to work, so Australia must have been mentally shot, while Stokes must have been in some zone of mental perfection. It must surely be a basic role of members of the cricket commentariat to be able to tell the difference between events which are due to an extraordinary confluence of good fortune, and events which are due to an extraordinary demonstration of skill. The former is very rare by definition, the latter is habitual. The idea that extraordinary occurrences in cricket are a matter of luck because if they weren’t they would occur more often and would be less extraordinary, remains a massive blindspot for much of the cricket commentariat.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 3pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #232323; font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Test cricket provides us with this brilliant illustration of the paradoxical nature of what we commonly understand to be pressure. Ian Chappell has often observed that first innings runs are the most important runs in a Test match. They are the runs which decide the shape of the Test match. It should follow that batsmen are under the greatest pressure in the first innings. This is when they are in the greatest control of their destiny. It is when the capriciousness of the pitch is least likely to ruin their day. They live and die by their skill and their concentration. The greatest high-pressure batsmen then, are those who are most consistent in the first innings of Test matches. For this is when they are expected to produce the goods. Yet, these runs are often noticed the least. The table below gives the centuries per match innings by result. It is in the first innings that a century shapes a result most significantly.</span></p><br /><div align="left" dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-left: 0pt;"><table style="border-collapse: collapse; border: none; line-height: 1;"><colgroup style="line-height: 1;"><col width="184"></col><col width="152"></col><col width="152"></col><col width="136"></col></colgroup><tbody style="line-height: 1;"><tr style="height: 0pt; line-height: 1;"><td style="border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: solid; border-width: 1pt; line-height: 1; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 5pt; vertical-align: top;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #232323; font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Match Inns\Result</span></p></td><td style="border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: solid; border-width: 1pt; line-height: 1; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 5pt; vertical-align: top;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #232323; font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Draw</span></p></td><td style="border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: solid; border-width: 1pt; line-height: 1; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 5pt; vertical-align: top;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #232323; font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Won</span></p></td><td style="border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: solid; border-width: 1pt; line-height: 1; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 5pt; vertical-align: top;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #232323; font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lost</span></p></td></tr><tr style="height: 0pt; line-height: 1;"><td style="border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: solid; border-width: 1pt; line-height: 1; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 5pt; vertical-align: top;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #232323; font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">l</span></p></td><td style="border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: solid; border-width: 1pt; line-height: 1; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 5pt; vertical-align: top;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #232323; font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">0.91</span></p></td><td style="border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: solid; border-width: 1pt; line-height: 1; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 5pt; vertical-align: top;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #232323; font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">0.89</span></p></td><td style="border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: solid; border-width: 1pt; line-height: 1; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 5pt; vertical-align: top;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #232323; font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">0.25</span></p></td></tr><tr style="height: 0pt; line-height: 1;"><td style="border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: solid; border-width: 1pt; line-height: 1; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 5pt; vertical-align: top;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #232323; font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">2</span></p></td><td style="border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: solid; border-width: 1pt; line-height: 1; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 5pt; vertical-align: top;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #232323; font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">0.72</span></p></td><td style="border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: solid; border-width: 1pt; line-height: 1; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 5pt; vertical-align: top;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #232323; font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">0.21</span></p></td><td style="border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: solid; border-width: 1pt; line-height: 1; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 5pt; vertical-align: top;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #232323; font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">0.93</span></p></td></tr><tr style="height: 0pt; line-height: 1;"><td style="border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: solid; border-width: 1pt; line-height: 1; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 5pt; vertical-align: top;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #232323; font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">3</span></p></td><td style="border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: solid; border-width: 1pt; line-height: 1; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 5pt; vertical-align: top;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #232323; font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">0.53</span></p></td><td style="border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: solid; border-width: 1pt; line-height: 1; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 5pt; vertical-align: top;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #232323; font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">0.18</span></p></td><td style="border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: solid; border-width: 1pt; line-height: 1; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 5pt; vertical-align: top;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #232323; font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">0.53</span></p></td></tr><tr style="height: 0pt; line-height: 1;"><td style="border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: solid; border-width: 1pt; line-height: 1; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 5pt; vertical-align: top;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #232323; font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">4</span></p></td><td style="border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: solid; border-width: 1pt; line-height: 1; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 5pt; vertical-align: top;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #232323; font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">0.21</span></p></td><td style="border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: solid; border-width: 1pt; line-height: 1; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 5pt; vertical-align: top;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #232323; font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">0.14</span></p></td><td style="border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-style: solid; border-width: 1pt; line-height: 1; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 5pt; vertical-align: top;"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #232323; font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">0.13</span></p></td></tr></tbody></table></div><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 3pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #232323; font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Other sports provide us with this illustration too. Great footballers live in the popular imagination via iconic moments, but they are great footballers only because they play all other moments at an incredibly high standard. One of my favorite observations in all of sport comes from the former Spain and Real Madrid coach Vicente del Bosque. Del Bosque used to be a central midfielder in his playing days, and of Sergio Busquets (Barcelona & Spain) he observed “if you watch the game, you do not see Busquets, but if you watch Busquests, you see the whole game.”. Del Bosque was describing excellence there. The average decision Sergio Busquets makes on the football pitch is of such a high standard that it shapes much of what follows.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 3pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #232323; font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Brian Lara was not a great player because he made 153 not out against Australia at Barbados in that 4th innings. That was a chancy affair. It made for an entertaining story. But </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #232323; font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">that is no evidence</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #232323; font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #232323; font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">of his quality</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #232323; font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Lara was a great player because of his cumulative record all over the world which sets him apart, not only from almost all of his contemporaries or from almost all of his compatriots, but from almost all batsmen to have played the game. Similarly, Ben Stokes’ innings or Kusal Perera’s for that matter, are no evidence of the quality of their batsmanship. That becomes evident only from their cumulative record.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 3pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #232323; font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This business of pressure then, is perhaps not about cricket or cricketers at all. It seems to be about our anxieties and hopes. If we get to enjoy an unexpectedly favorable outcome, we are prepared to create a simulacrum for ourselves in which we sketch heroic identities and characters and imbue them with superhuman (usually, super-manly) properties. We do it when we are disappointed too. For years, Sachin Tendulkar was thought to “not produce runs when they really mattered”. We build up our heroes and tear down our monstrous villains. As Jean Baudrillard observed 40 years ago, these simulacra often settle down to produce their own conventional wisdom - their own hyperreality. They shape a view of the world which has no basis in reality.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 3pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #232323; font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It is hard to escape reality in top level professional sport though. The excellence is relentless. So much so that often we, as spectators, fail to realize just how outstanding the human beings playing sport in front of us are at their craft. Quite apart from questions of what defines greatness in the top level sport, the average standard in top-level sport is far beyond the capabilities of every spectator other than one who is also a top-level sportsperson. Greatness is evidence of exceptional cumulative excellence even within this limited elite set of human beings. That excellence is far removed from spectatorial anxieties which manifest themselves as pressure. It depends on the standard of the average performance and not of the outlying one.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 3pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #232323; font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You may be wondering at this point about Nathan Lyon. Didn’t he miss a run-out which he would not miss most of the time? Yes, he did. But players make the occasional mistake on the first day too. Mark Waugh dropped relative straightforward chances once in a while. The difference lies in how the mistake is read, not in the existence of the mistake itself.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 3pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #232323; font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The question of pressure illuminates two ways of thinking about the top level sportsman. There is, let’s accept it, the popular view - that some players perform better under pressure because they are inherently better, stronger men - products of better soil, better water, better genes. Blessed by a greater God. And then there is the other view in which some players appear to perform better under pressure because they are better players. I prefer this view. Because it provides a way to think about what a person has actually done to achieve excellence rather than taking refuge in some doctrine of superiority. It depends on what people have done rather than one what people are. It is a constructive picture of reality as opposed to the other, mythical one.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 3pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #232323; font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am not unmindful of the allure of the mythical picture. It is not difficult to imagine the story one might tell oneself about the tattooed warrior named Stokes as a powerful patron saint of causes which appear lost to everyone but him. I will suggest gently that to do so is to miss both the real Stokes and real cricket.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 3pt; margin-top: 3pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #232323; font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is reality in cricket and sport more generally which cannot be swamped by simulacra made up of pressure or rivalry or any other spectatorial anxiety. It is why competitive professional top level sport will never be purely entertainment. Ben Stokes’ innings, and Kusal Perera’s were both wondrous, fantastical flukes adorned with spectacular hitting. I can see Perera’s pull for six off Rabada and Stokes’s reverse-wallop off Lyon (I don’t think ‘reverse-sweep’ does it justice) in my mind’s eye as though they’re happening live. They told us nothing that we did not already know about Ben Stokes, Kusal Perera, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Australia, or England. Everything went right at the time for Stokes and Perera. That happens on the rare extraordinary occasion. Such occasions should be enjoyed for what they are - a departure from expectation. A reversion to the mean invariably follows. That reversion does not make Ben Stokes a poor performer “under pressure” anymore than the extraordinary century makes him a great performer “under pressure”. The pressure is our invention from beginning to end.</span></p><div style="line-height: 1;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #232323; font-family: Consolas, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>Kartikeya Datehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03512491310629949028noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21636894.post-23865097651571937352019-11-21T12:30:00.001-08:002019-11-21T12:32:10.997-08:00Is This Bowled?Mohandas Menon poses <a href="https://twitter.com/mohanstatsman/status/1197543226141364224" target="_blank">this interesting example</a>.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK6O_vE4-c4a7gKImSWClIGT8GLpy2Z-23R5CsVlIy-XwUBHxhGDqJfLBhEB3xGxXLBDMykJxX_PrMPN-2tTi0yYTZH030JNX5MSTDnl9kc-YdiG0Pg0NJHpfYmIBZw9ACP084/s1600/Screenshot+from+2019-11-21+21-50-31.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="513" data-original-width="585" height="280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK6O_vE4-c4a7gKImSWClIGT8GLpy2Z-23R5CsVlIy-XwUBHxhGDqJfLBhEB3xGxXLBDMykJxX_PrMPN-2tTi0yYTZH030JNX5MSTDnl9kc-YdiG0Pg0NJHpfYmIBZw9ACP084/s320/Screenshot+from+2019-11-21+21-50-31.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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The umpire gave this not out according to the commentator. Under the Laws the umpire appears to be wrong, and at first I was convinced that it had to be wrong. But there might be a wrinkle.<br />
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The <a href="https://www.lords.org/mcc/laws/bowled" target="_blank">bowled</a> dismissal is defined in Law 32<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
32.1.1 The striker is out Bowled if his/her <b>wicket is put down</b> by a ball delivered by the bowler, not being a No ball, even if it first touches the striker’s bat or person.</blockquote>
The issue here is the meaning of the phrase "wicket is put down" in this definition. This definition is given in <a href="https://www.lords.org/mcc/laws/the-wickets" target="_blank">Law 29</a>. The relevant parts of this law are quoted below.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
29.1.1 The <b>wicket is put down</b> if a bail is completely removed from <b>the top of the stumps</b>, or a stump is struck out of the ground,<br />
29.1.1.1 by the ball,<br />
29.1.2 The disturbance of a bail, whether temporary or not, shall not constitute its complete removal from the top of the stumps, but if a bail in falling lodges between two of the stumps this shall be regarded as complete removal.</blockquote>
Law 29.1.2 refers to "its complete removal from the top of the stumps". This implies that there is a prescribed position for the bail on "the top of the stumps". This is given in <a href="https://www.lords.org/mcc/laws/the-wickets" target="_blank">Law 8</a>. The relevant portions of Law 8 are given below.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
8.2 Size of stumps<br />
The tops of the stumps shall be 28 in/71.12 cm above the playing surface and shall be dome shaped except for the bail grooves. The portion of a stump above the playing surface shall be cylindrical apart from the domed top, with circular section of diameter not less than 1.38 in/3.50 cm nor more than 1.5 in/3.81 cm. See <a href="https://lords-stg.azureedge.net/mediafiles/lords/media/images/resizedimagewzewmdasnjk3xq-appendix-d_1.png">Appendix D.</a><br />
8.3 The bails<br />
8.3.1 The bails, when in position <b>on top of the stumps</b>,<br />
- shall not project more than 0.5 in/1.27 cm above them.<br />
- shall fit between the stumps without forcing them out of the vertical.</blockquote>
Stumps have to have bail grooves. From this, it follows that the bails have to be in the grooves (otherwise they won't stay in position). Further for the bails to be "in position" on the top of the stumps, they have to satisfy 8.3.1. It follows from this, that if any of these conditions are not satisfied, the bails have been disturbed and consequently, the wicket is down.<br />
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In the above example, following the terminology from Law 32 to Law 29 to Law 8 in this way, the batsman should have been out bowled. But there is one wrinkle. Law 29.1.2 specifies that the disturbance of a bail "whether temporary or not" shall not constitute its "complete removal from the top of the stumps". Its the "temporary or not" phrase which leads me to think that the batsman may not have been bowled in the example above. Given the way the bail rests on the stumps, the disturbance can be "temporary" is the bail is lifted out of its groove(s) but falls back into the groove(s) and stays there. A non-temporary disturbance could occur is at it did in the case of the appeal in question.<br />
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On balance, I'm inclined to think that the batsman was out in the example above, but there may be an argument to say that the requirement that the bail be "completely removed from the top of the stumps" and not just non-temporarily disturbed, may work in favor of the batsman and against the bowler.<br />
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What do you think?<br />
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<br />Kartikeya Datehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03512491310629949028noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21636894.post-34374567818793238522019-11-05T22:10:00.001-08:002019-11-05T22:10:55.072-08:00Podcast Episode Seven: Snehal PradhanIn this episode, I speak to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snehal_Pradhan">Snehal Pradhan</a>. Snehal is a former India fast bowler. In addition to running her youtube channel <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCvpM7DecY_8xtKY8aeSCxg">Cricket with Snehal</a>, she writes and reports on cricket for <a href="https://www.firstpost.com/author/snehal-pradhan">First Post</a>, News 18, <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/content/story/author.html?author=752">ESPNCricinfo</a>, <a href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/sports/taking-one-series-at-a-time-2021-is-still-two-years-away-jhulan-goswami/articleshow/71532675.cms">Economic Times</a> and several other publications. She also commentates on cricket matches for broadcasters like the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/sport/live/cricket/47123090">BBC</a>. We spoke about the landscape of women's cricket in India in the 21st century. Among other things, I asked her about the prospects for a Women's IPL, mixed-gender matches and the Indian domestic scene in women's cricket<br />
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Snehal tweets at @SnehalPradhan<br />
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I tweet at @cricketingview<br />
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Please listen to this episode and share it with others. If you like this episode, please subscribe to the podcast at the podcast service of your choice. Please rate the show, so that others might find it more easily. The podcast is also available on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nlsx51xv4jg">youtube</a>.<br />
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Please do write to us with your thoughts.<br />
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My conversation with Snehal Pradhan was recorded on November 01, 2019.</div>
Kartikeya Datehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03512491310629949028noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21636894.post-22978702908596710822019-11-02T00:32:00.001-07:002019-11-02T00:32:27.644-07:00Episode Six: Daniel Norcross (Part II)This is part two of my conservation with Daniel Norcross. <a href="https://www.danielnorcross.com/">Daniel</a> is a commentator for BBC Test Match Special. He also writes for various publications like <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/content/story/author.html?author=354">ESPNCricinfo</a>. Daniel is also the first guest on this show who commands <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Norcross">his own Wikipedia entry</a>. I invited Daniel over to reflect on the 2019 English summer season with the benefit of some distance. <br />
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This episode begins where <a href="https://anchor.fm/dashboard/episode/e8db1v">Part I</a> finished. We discussed Ben Stokes, Pat Cummins, Ravindra Jadeja, India's recent results and ended with some speculation about where cricket might be at the end of the 2020s.<br />
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Daniel tweets at @norcrosscricket<br />
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I tweet at @cricketingview<br />
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Please listen to this episode and share it with others. If you like this episode, please subscribe to the podcast at the podcast service of your choice. Please rate the show, so that others might find it more easily. The podcast is also available on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nlsx51xv4jg">youtube</a>.<br />
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Please do write to us with your thoughts.<br />
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My conversation with Daniel Norcross was recorded on October 29, 2019.</div>
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Kartikeya Datehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03512491310629949028noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21636894.post-67556175258052949482019-10-30T04:03:00.000-07:002019-10-30T04:03:14.488-07:00Podcast Episode 05: Daniel Norcross (Part I)This is part one of my conservation with Daniel Norcross. <a href="https://www.danielnorcross.com/">Daniel</a> is a commentator for BBC Test Match Special. He also writes for various publications like <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/content/story/author.html?author=354">ESPNCricinfo</a>. Daniel is also the first guest on this show who commands <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Norcross">his own Wikipedia entry</a>. I invited Daniel over to reflect on the 2019 English summer season with the benefit of some distance. This episode includes the first part of our conversation which ended up being a reflection on the two outstanding figures of the summer.<br /><br />Daniel tweets at @norcrosscricket<br /><br />I tweet at @cricketingview<br /><br />Please listen to this episode and share it with others. If you like this episode, please subscribe to the podcast at the podcast service of your choice. Please rate the show, so that others might find it more easily.<br /><br />Please do write to us with your thoughts. <br /><br />My conversation with Daniel Norcross was recorded on October 29, 2019.<br />
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You can subscribe to A Cricketing View on your preferred podcast service (please visit <a href="https://anchor.fm/cricketingview">this page</a> for the appropriate link, or search for "A Cricketing View" in your podcast app on your phone or tablet). The podcast is also available on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_Btm_yx9Xw">youtube</a>.Kartikeya Datehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03512491310629949028noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21636894.post-3548993112909252072019-10-25T07:00:00.004-07:002019-10-25T07:02:43.719-07:00Podcast Episode Four: Gary NaylorIn this episode, Gary Naylor discusses the art of reviewing and criticism. Gary has reviewed plays, opera, films, cricket and football at various venues.<br />
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Gary Naylor is <a href="https://www.broadwayworld.com/author/Gary-Naylor">chief reviewer for Broadway World</a> in London, writes about <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/profile/gary-naylor">cricket for the Guardian on the blog 99.94</a>, and <a href="https://www.guerillacricket.com/">commentates on cricket for Guerilla Cricket</a>. He also maintains a separate weblog called <a href="https://tootingtrumpet.wordpress.com/">The Sound of the Tooting Trumpet</a> . He tweets <a href="https://twitter.com/garynaylor999">@garynaylor999</a>.<br />
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I tweet at <a href="https://twitter.com/cricketingview">@cricketingview</a>.<br />
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You can subscribe to A Cricketing View on your preferred podcast service (please visit <a href="https://anchor.fm/cricketingview" target="_blank">this page</a> for the appropriate link, or search for "A Cricketing View" in your podcast app on your phone or tablet). The podcast is also available on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_Btm_yx9Xw" target="_blank">youtube</a>.</div>
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Do write to us with your thoughts.<br />
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This episode was recorded on October 21, 2019.</div>
Kartikeya Datehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03512491310629949028noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21636894.post-16726594241533784202019-10-20T06:40:00.003-07:002019-10-22T06:37:55.201-07:00Podcast Episode Three: Tim Wigmore & Freddie WildeIn this episode, Tim Wigmore and Freddie Wilde discuss their new book <i>Cricket 2.0</i> and reflect on past, present and possible futures of T20.<br />
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Listen to the episode here. Please subscribe to the podcast at the service of your choice. The podcast is available on:<br />
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<a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/2i1xYUkOWOwOGCLHpXKzmB" target="_blank">Spotify</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/il/podcast/a-cricketing-view/id1483378901" target="_blank">Apple</a>, <a href="https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy9lNWI2N2U4L3BvZGNhc3QvcnNz" target="_blank">Google</a>, <a href="https://www.breaker.audio/a-cricketing-view" target="_blank">Breaker</a>, <a href="https://castbox.fm/channel/A-Cricketing-View-id2410909?country=us" target="_blank">CastBox</a>, <a href="https://overcast.fm/itunes1483378901/a-cricketing-view" target="_blank">Overcast</a>, <a href="https://radiopublic.com/a-cricketing-view-8gRqpa" target="_blank">Radio Public</a><br />
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You can also listen to episodes on YouTube on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXsCKt3mGKmvX4ssGvU0Bqg" target="_blank">this channel</a>.<br />
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Tim Wigmore is a sports journalist for <i>The Daily Telegraph</i> and has also written for <i>ESPN</i>, <i>The New York Times</i>, <i>The Economist</i> and <i>The New Statesman</i>. He tweets at @timwig<br />
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Freddie Wilde is a cricket writer at <i>CricViz</i> and has contributed to <i>The Independent</i>, <i>Cricbuzz</i> and, <i>Cricket Next</i>. He tweets @fwildecricket<br />
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I tweet at @cricketingview<br />
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Do write to us with your thoughts.<br />
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This episode was recorded on October 16, 2019<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Cricket-2-0-Inside-T20-Revolution-ebook/dp/B07Y16V73X/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=Cricket+2.0&qid=1571413237&sr=8-2">Cricket 2.0: Inside the T20 Revolution</a>, Tim Wigmore and Freddie Wilde, Polaris Publishing, 2019<br />
<a href="https://www.cricbuzz.com/cricket-news/96378/why-t20-leagues-need-to-be-longer">Why T20 Leagues need to be longer</a>, Freddie Wilde, Cricbuzz<br />
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Kartikeya Datehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03512491310629949028noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21636894.post-19560843181389937432019-10-14T21:26:00.001-07:002019-10-14T21:26:06.126-07:00Podcast Episode Two: Gaurav Sabnis<a href="https://twitter.com/gauravsabnis">Gaurav Sabnis</a> is an Associate Professor of Marketing at Stevens School of Business in Hoboken, New Jersey. He is also a cricket fan. I spoke to him about the question of the viability of Test cricket. Is Test Cricket viable as a professional sport? What does it mean for a sport to be viable? This remains a question of interest among people who are interested in cricket. This is the first of hopefully many conversations on this subject with people from different fields.<br />
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Gaurav tweets at @gauravsabnis<br />
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I tweet at @cricketingview<br />
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Listen to our conversation here. The podcast should also be available on Google Podcasts, Spotify, Tune In and other services later today.<br />
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If you enjoy this episode, please subscribe to the podcast on <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy9lNWI2N2U4L3BvZGNhc3QvcnNz">Google Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/2i1xYUkOWOwOGCLHpXKzmB">Spotify</a>, <a href="https://tunein.com/podcasts/Podcasts/A-Cricketing-View-p1256295/">Tune In</a> or other podcast portals. This podcast will also be available soon on Apple podcasts.Kartikeya Datehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03512491310629949028noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21636894.post-44285164004289373342019-10-10T04:16:00.002-07:002019-10-14T21:29:58.106-07:00Podcast Episode One: Subash JayaramanIn this episode, Subash Jayaraman reflects on the nature of cricket coverage and his experiences as a freelance member of cricket press.<br />
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Subash Jayaraman has covered cricket as a hobby for over a decade. During this time, he has traveled all over the world and attended matches at every major international venue. He maintains <a href="https://thecricketcouch.com/">The Cricket Couch</a>, hosts <a href="http://thecricketcouch.com/couch-talk">Couch Talk</a> and has contributed reports, interviews, and essays to <i>ESPNCricinfo</i>, <i>Scroll</i>, <i>Livemint</i>, <i>First Post</i>, <i>Sportstar</i> and <i>Cricbuzz</i>. He is the Bradman of cricket hobbyists. <br />
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Subash tweets at @cricketcouch<br />
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I tweet at @cricketingview<br />
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Do write to us with your thoughts.<br />
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This episode was recorded on October 5, 2019<br />
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<a href="https://www.livemint.com/Leisure/ryRxjbTb9POTal4BLl52BM/Pearls-from-pressers.html">Pearls from pressers</a>, Subash Jayaraman, Livemint, September 14, 2015<br />
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The podcast will be available on all podcast platforms soon.</div>
Kartikeya Datehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03512491310629949028noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21636894.post-62308422946181599982019-08-18T02:14:00.000-07:002019-08-18T02:14:06.209-07:00Archer, Smith Headline Memorable Fourth Day At Lord'sSteve Smith was hit twice in the same afternoon by the phenomenal Jofra Archer on the 4th day at Lord's today. The pictures below are extracted from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuvKjgRFrxI" target="_blank">the highlights</a> published by the England & Wales Cricket Board. It was the headline contest on a memorable, rain-free 4th day of a Lord's Test which has otherwise been mauled by bad weather. The wicket has played slower than usual.<br />
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All Test cricket is made up of a contest between one batsman and one bowler. The average batsman and bowler in Test cricket are of the highest standard. But even among them, some stand out. Steve Smith has a better eye than most Test batsmen. It lets him use a technical approach which would be considered high risk for most batsmen. Smith's method against seam and swing bowling involves shuffling across his stumps and is based on his confidence that he cannot be beaten on his inside edge by most bowlers because they are not quick enough to do this. As the bowler is about the release the ball, Smith's back foot is planted outside off stump, and his head is positioned such that his eye is in line with off-stump. His front foot is still on middle and leg. The bat always comes down perfectly straight. This helps Smith's judgment outside off. As long as he does not play outside his eyes, he's defending his stumps. The picture below shows Smith's position as he was about the receive a ball from Stuart Broad yesterday.<br />
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Jofra Archer is quick, effortless and precise as a fast bowler. He seems to have terrific endurance. Archer bowled 29 of England's 94 overs in the Australian 1st innings. He troubled every batsman he bowled to. He hit Smith twice and beat him often. But more than that, he forced a change in Smith's approach. Archer's extra pace meant that Smith could not shuffle across his stumps knowing that he could always catch up with the fast, full in-dipper designed to beat his inside edge. Archer's afternoon spell was especially quick. This sustained pace seemed to shrink Smith's shuffle. </div>
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The picture below shows the delivery which hit Smith on the arm. Compare the position of Smith's feet here to their position above where he is shown facing Broad and Stokes. The front foot is not in front of middle and leg. Against Archer, Smith is as worried about being beaten on the outside edge as he is about being beaten on the inside edge. Archer's extra pace, allies with his high arm action and natural height means that he also gets steep bounce. This means that a ball which is short of a length on about off-stump which Smith would normally play off his hips to mid-wicket or square-leg cannot be addressed with a vertical bat without the batsman having to fend at it (the short leg fielder makes fending a risky proposition). If the batsman doesn't want to fend at the delivery, he has to try and evade it, or pull/hook it. Smith's shuffle makes evasion harder. For most batsmen, the way to evade a climbing delivery on off-stump would be to sway out of line and let the ball fly past the chest or the nose. For Smith, unless the bouncer is outside off stump, the only possible evasion is to let the ball fly over his left shoulder. This was the first of two occasions when Smith was caught in no man's land and had no option but to turn away from the delivery.</div>
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The picture below is the first ball of the 77th over of Australia's innings. England had set a backward square-leg about 40 yards from the bat. Archer banged this ball in short of a length, and Smith managed to complete a pull shot which went just wide of that fielder to the boundary. The fact that it went so close to the fielder and the fact that he didn't control the shot well may have put a little bit of doubt in Smith's mind about playing the shot again. By now he'd faced most of Archer's quickest spell of the day.</div>
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The picture below shows the very next ball. It was on a similar length and just as quick. While the previous ball was on middle stump and allowed Smith to go through with the shot, this one was on off-stump. Once Smith had decided not to play the shot, his only option was to try and get out of the way. He tried to do this but couldn't. Instead of whistling past his left ear, the ball slammed into Smith.</div>
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It would be a mistake to think that Archer has the ability to move his bouncer with that much precision from middle stump to off stump. It is far more likely that Archer saw Smith's shot on the previous ball and thought that it was worth letting Smith have another one. The long-leg and the backward square-leg were positioned for the miscued hook, and the short-leg was waiting under the helmet if Smith fended at one. It was a classic ploy. What was remarkable was that it came from a bowler on Test debut.</div>
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It would also be a mistake to think that this is a significant problem for Smith. Its a line of attack he has left himself open to in his pursuit of other advantages. What is most likely is that Smith will work out a method of evading this line of attack against Archer's extra pace. Justin Langer has described Smith as <a href="https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/_/id/27331886/justin-langer-places-best-problem-solver-steven-smith-virat-kohli" target="_blank">the best problem-solver in the game</a>. Archer presents a problem worthy of Smith. </div>
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It worth considering the fact that all this happened on a pitch where outside edges have not always carried to slip cordon. A more even-paced wicket than this uncharacteristically slow wicket at Lord's may make Archer easier to deal with.</div>
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Fast bowling in Test cricket requires a unique combination of intelligence, power, endurance, and concentration. If Jofra Archer's debut demonstration of fast bowling is anything to go by, a new genius has emerged this week at Lord's. Not since Kagiso Rabada in 2015-16 has there been a more exciting arrival of a new fast bowler on the Test match scene. The thing about Archer (a fact he shares with Jasprit Bumrah) seems to be that he is genuinely quick without being a tearaway. Every ball he bowls is measured. As he bowls each ball, you can tell from his reaction at the end of his follow-through if he thinks he bowled the delivered well. Batsmen are often celebrated for their ability to play exactly one ball at a time. The idea behind this phrase is that some batsmen have the ability to forget what happened on the previous delivery when they face the current one. Archer, like Bumrah, seems to bowl exactly one delivery at a time. In the process, he managed to lay a siege to the best batsman in the world in his debut Test.</div>
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The weather has probably interfered fatally with this Test match already. Only 203 overs have been played in the first four days. Nevertheless, Archer, Smith, Broad, Cummins and the others have provided a compelling exhibition of Test Cricket.</div>
Kartikeya Datehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03512491310629949028noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21636894.post-29604766561316591162019-07-15T02:46:00.000-07:002019-07-15T03:04:35.318-07:00The Lowdown on the Overthrow Problem In the 2019 World Cup FinalIn the 50th over of England's run chase in the 2019 World Cup final, England were chasing 15. Ben Stokes and Adil Rashid were at the wicket. Trent Boult was the bowler. Boult conceded nothing from the first two balls. Stokes hit the third for Six. The fourth was hit towards deep mid-wicket and Stokes raced back for the 2nd runs to keep strike. Martin Guptill's throw hit Stokes' bat as he made a dive into his crease for the 2nd run and rolled away to the boundary.<br />
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The umpire awarded six runs - they ran 2 and the four overthrows.<br />
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Under the laws of cricket, this is incorrect. It's worth reflecting on a couple of basic points about the laws. Boundaries and runs are different categories in the game. They are governed by different laws. Law 18 governs runs, Law 19 governs boundaries.<br />
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In the case of the run which is completed by the batsmen and the non-striker crossing over to the other end, the key moment is when the batsmen cross each other. As specified under Law 18.1.1, A run is scored <i>"so often as the batsmen, at any time while the ball is in play, have crossed and made good their ground from end to end." </i>There are two significant elements in a run. First, the batsmen must cross, and second, each must make ground from end to end. The crossing is significant because it determines which batsman is run out at which end if they fail to make their ground. Further, if the batsmen cross and then return to their original ends, then, if the umpire determines that they did this deliberately, they get no runs (under Law 18.5). If the umpire determines that the batsman has failed to complete the run inadvertently, they signal one short.<br />
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Boundaries are 'declared' runs. If the batsman hits the ball and the ball crosses the boundary, then whether the batsmen run 0 or 1 or 2 or 3 before the ball crosses the boundary, it counts as 4 declared. 'Declared' runs are a fundamentally different category from runs which have been 'run'. However, if the batsmen complete 5 runs before the ball is grounded beyond the boundary line, then it is counted as 5 runs (as per 19.7.3). One important consequence of 'declared' runs is that the ball is no longer considered to be in play (i.e., the ball is "dead") once the ball is grounded beyond the boundary line.<br />
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For example, suppose there's a very long boundary to mid-wicket, and the only fielders posted on the leg-side are a short-leg under the helmet and a long leg on the boundary. Suppose the batsman hits an on-drive, and by the time the helmeted fielder reaches the ball and is about the haul it in, the batsmen have crossed five times (i.e. they've run four and have already crossed each other for the fifth). If the fielder misses the ball completely, this counts as 5 runs. If the fielder misfields in some way - let's say that in diving to haul the ball in, the ball hits the fielder and crosses the boundary line - its still 5 runs.<br />
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However, if the fielder hauls it in and tries to make a fancy relay throw and this throw goes wrong, then it is, technically, not a misfield, but a "willful act". This was a doubt <a href="http://cricketingview.blogspot.com/2009/02/was-it-4-or-6-ii.html" target="_blank">I had back in 2009</a> when Suresh Raina made a diving stop on the long-off boundary and flicked the ball to Gautam Gambhir in one beautiful fluid motion, except, the ball missed Gambhir completed and went over the boundary. This should not have counted as a misfield. It should have counted as overthrows.<br />
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Overthrow runs are counted in the same way as normal runs. They accrue to the batsman, and the total number of runs completed before the ball becomes 'dead' are counted. However, if throw reached the boundary, then under Law 19.8, the total runs to be counted are the allowance for the boundary plus the number of runs completed by the batsman plus the run in progress if the batsmen have crossed by the time the throw is made.<br />
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The point about the "willful" act distinguishes the misfield from the overthrow. 19.8 also refers to 18.12.2 which determines which batsman should end up at which end. 18.12.2 says the following:</div>
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"If, while a run is in progress, the ball becomes dead for any
reason other than the dismissal of a batsman, the batsmen
shall return to the wickets they had left, but only if they had
not already crossed in running when the ball became dead. If,
however, any of the circumstances of clauses 18.11.2.1 to 18.11.2.3
apply, the batsmen shall return to their original ends."</blockquote>
18.11.2.1 accounts for a boundary being scored. This governs to common fact that when a batsman hits a boundary, that batsman faces the next ball unless the boundary is scored from the last ball of the over.<br />
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In this case, when Martin Guptill made the throw, the batsmen (Stokes and Rashid) had not yet crossed in the course of their attempted 2nd run (see 2:20 in the video below). As a result, under the laws, the correct conclusion is that they scored 1 run and they got the boundary from the overthrows. A total of five. Furthermore, Stokes was to return to the non-striker's end. So, Adil Rashid was to be on strike on the next ball.<br />
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As it happened, the umpire wrongly awarded six runs to England and Stokes ended up at the striker's end. New Zealand should have been defending 4 from the final 2 balls with Adil Rashid on strike. Instead, they defended 3 from the final 2 balls with Ben Stokes on strike.<br />
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It's nearly impossible for the umpires on the field to monitor exactly when the throw is made because they have to check for short runs at each end while the batsmen are running. It would help them if the TV Umpire could intervene in these circumstances, but it's not clear that the third umpire would be allowed to initiate an intervention. Under the laws, the only situation in which the third umpire is explicitly permitted to initiate an intervention is in a situation where the on-field umpire miscounts the number of deliveries in the over. Apart from this, the TV Umpire is only involved when consulted from the field of play.<br />
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It will be tempting to condemn the umpires for this mistake. It did put New Zealand at a significant disadvantage in that final over, but it did not cause the Tie. The umpires have had an outstanding World Cup in general and Dharmasena, Erasmus and Dar are the three best umpires in the world. It cannot be denied that, as the former Test umpire Simon Taufel <a href="https://www.foxsports.com.au/cricket/icc-world-cup/cricket-world-cup-2019-final-simon-taufel-claims-grave-error-made-awarding-england-six-runs/news-story/df8fb4f013f4f6fa4ae04cff9b7cb105" target="_blank">put it</a>, they made "a clear mistake".<br />
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The Laws of Cricket are beautifully intricate and precise. They have an internal logic which rests on a handful of basic concepts (such as the concept of a run, declared runs, the ball being "in play", the ball being "dead", the concept of an appeal). They constitute a great game. In much the same way that Video Assistant Referee (VAR) has made laws like handball and off-side more precise. The margin of doubt has been shrunk. Video evidence is doing something similar in Cricket. It is the precision with which the conditions are applied to events on the field which has changed as much as the accuracy.<br />
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About 30 years ago, there probably wouldn't have been a drone camera which captured exactly when the throw was made and where the batsmen were when it was made in the same frame. Now that there is, the law has to be applied as precisely as the available evidence makes possible. Anything less will be considered an umpiring mistake. It is an unforgiving time for international umpires who are, regardless of what people say, experts who are outstanding at their job.Kartikeya Datehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03512491310629949028noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21636894.post-52791251617063410842019-02-14T00:09:00.000-08:002019-02-14T20:56:15.691-08:00The Problem With Stump MicrophonesAfter a two unexpected defeats which cost the visitors the series, England were finally on top in the 3rd innings of the 3rd Test of their tour to West Indies at St. Lucia. Their captain Joe Root had finally produced a substantial innings, and after coming second in the contest in the West Indies for most of the tour, his team was finally in a position to win something.<br />
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On the other side, the West Indies, having won their series, and having lost their captain to an over rate related suspension for the final Test, were finding it hard going. They had conceded a three figure lead in the first innings and, as often happens when the batting side is ahead in the game, were finding it difficult to make headway with the ball.<br />
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It was at this time that the stump microphone caught a stray comment by the England captain. He was heard saying, as all of you probably know by now:<br />
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<i>'Don't use it as an insult. There's nothing wrong with being gay.'</i></blockquote>
Root has since been cast as a knight in shining armour coming to the defense of gay people everywhere. <a href="https://twitter.com/TheBarmyArmy/status/1095309820629082112" target="_blank">The Barmy Army</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/stephenfry/status/1095403211232608256" target="_blank">Stephen Fry</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/MailSport/status/1095295230293803010" target="_blank">Nasser Hussain</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/MailSport/status/1095295230293803010" target="_blank">the former Arsenal and Crystal Palace forward Ian Wright</a> - all England and all cricket (and to be fair, initially, I did this too) heard those 12 words and thought, Root had struck a blow for good in the world (Here's a <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/story/_/id/25975177/shannon-gabriel-charged-icc-apparent-homophobic-remark" target="_blank">good summary of reactions</a> compiled by the reporter George Dobell for ESPNCricinfo). Hussain encapsulated this view perfectly in this tweet:<br />
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I don’t know who said what to whom .. but boy do I applaud Joe Root’s reaction here . For me his twelve words as a role model will be in the end more important than a test hundred or possible victory. <a href="https://t.co/QMDHhO3VAC">https://t.co/QMDHhO3VAC</a></div>
— Nasser Hussain (@nassercricket) <a href="https://twitter.com/nassercricket/status/1095272957402890241?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 12, 2019</a></blockquote>
Now we <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/story/_/id/25992851/do-boys-apologetic-shannon-gabriel-comes-clean-joe-root-sledge" target="_blank">know</a> the full exchange. But the more basic problem is, we didn't know it then, and it didn't seem to matter. This bothered me, not because I doubted the obvious meaning of Root's words. Many have asked, why would he say that if what Gabriel said wasn't obviously homophobic?<br />
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It bothered me because Root was cast as a bystander. And yet, this exchange took place in the middle of a Test match. This is a contest which has an obvious psychological aspect to it. As we now know, Root was making eye contact with Gabriel, smiling at him, basically getting in his face, rubbing in the fact, without having to say a word, that his side was in front in the game and Gabriel was failing to get the better of him. This is all completely fine. The batsman is perfectly within his rights to try and throw the bowler off balance with a comment.<br />
<br />
In every day life, people are not in a zero-sum contest with each other the way the bowler and the batsman are in the middle of a Test match pitch. The social contract which governs our daily lives is different from the one which governs the sporting contest in Test cricket. We're not trying to defeat other people all the time. We're trying to co-exist - to live as social beings. This effort is harmed by arbitrary prejudices be they based on ethnicity, race, religion, gender or sexuality. Its corrosive when people are cast on the margins because they are different and are powerless to prevent this banishment. These prejudices visit tremendous, and often untold, violence on their targets.<br />
<br />
The deal in Test cricket is different. There is psychology involved. And Root was a contestant, not a bystander. Gabriel's comment was not homophobic for this reason. And Root's retort was not that of a good samaritan trying to calm things down. It was the comment of a contestant in a rhetorical joust, trying to win. Consider this another way. If you went outside and hit someone on the head with a cricket ball, you'd be charged with assault. In the context of a cricket match, its not assault, its a perfectly legitimate skill. The standards of everyday life cannot be transplanted into the middle of a Test pitch as seamlessly as they have been by Root's champions.<br />
<br />
Later, in a podcast with Test Match Special, Root <a href="https://twitter.com/bbctms/status/1095434946687262725" target="_blank">said</a> that he did what he thought was right at the time. Now, Test Match Special are very good at live commentary, but as <i>journalists, </i>they are to the English Test team what Pravda was to the Soviet Communist Party. Root is right though. He was in a contest, and undoubtedly won that exchange with Gabriel. So in this sense, he did do what he thought was right at the time. But that's what he was trying to do - win the exchange, play on Gabriel's mind. Its what contestants do. And at the Test level, you get some of the most fierce contestants going. TMS's commentators lauded Root for <a href="https://twitter.com/BBCSport/status/1095344918472638466" target="_blank">showing</a> "integrity and leadership" in his response to Gabriel. They said this despite not knowing anything about what Gabriel might have said.<br />
<br />
In Root's defense, he did try to play things down at the end of the day's play. But <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/story/_/id/25975177/shannon-gabriel-regret-field-comments-says-joe-root" target="_blank">even there</a>, the competitor in him could not resist getting a dig in at the opponent first up and milk the moment. Root essentially takes up two contradictory positions. First he casts himself as a bystander intervening to uphold a <i>"responsibility to go about things in a certain manner". </i>But then, he and the English team management played things down, as the Test Match Special producer Adam Mountford reported.<br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
<div dir="ltr" lang="en">
Shannon Gabriel warned by on-field umpires over language used in incident with Joe Root. <br />
<br />
But <a href="https://twitter.com/englandcricket?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@englandcricket</a> say they don’t expect any further action to be taken & the case is now closed. <br />
<br />
REPORT👇<a href="https://t.co/QlvT3n35je">https://t.co/QlvT3n35je</a><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/bbccricket?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#bbccricket</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WIvENG?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WIvENG</a></div>
— Adam Mountford (@tmsproducer) <a href="https://twitter.com/tmsproducer/status/1095232602926022657?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 12, 2019</a></blockquote>
<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>So why did the ICC act? The Umpires charged Gabriel with a breach of 2.13 of the ICC Code of Conduct, and Gabriel did not contest the charge. Even so, the West Indies reportedly successfully argued that Gabriel was in contention for the ODI games, and so will serve out a 4 match ODI ban and not a 2 Test ban. Gabriel has not played ODI cricket since 2017.<br />
<br />
Once the stump microphones caught those words, the ICC basically had no option but to act. The Laws of Cricket govern the cricketing contest. The ICC's Code of Conduct exists to preserve the presentation of the game. As a result, if a player <a href="http://cricketingview.blogspot.com/2014/07/icc-wrong-to-silence-moeen-ali.html" target="_blank">uses a bracelet</a> to express solidarity with civilian victims of conflict, as Moeen Ali attempted to do, the "Clothing and Equipment Regulations" (for instance) can be used to prevent this because the ICC wishes to avoid political controversies. Other similar regulations govern sponsor logos, team crests and the like, because the ICC wishes to avoid commercial controversies. If a player is seen on TV shoving an opponent, or mouthing obscenities at an opponent, this looks bad too. Sponsors don't like it, and the public often doesn't like it either. The Code of Conduct exists to police this behaviour and keep a lid on things. The ICC's Code of Conduct is, at its core, a public relations device. The game itself is governed by its laws.<br />
<br />
The ICC has essentially managed the PR situation, just as the Code of Conduct was designed to enable it to do. Shannon Gabriel has been handed a ban for four ODIs, a form in which he has not been selected of the West Indies's last 12 ODIs (he last played for them on Boxing Day in 2017). Gabriel has played 11 Tests for West Indies since December 26, 2017. He will be available for their next Test match as well.<br />
<br />
The struggle against prejudice is not a public relations problem. It has to be taken seriously by people who think carefully about facts and circumstances. It is not served well by the mediocrity evident in the frustrated juggernaut that is the English sports media contingent. "I don't know all of what was said, but Root is right", is not the opinion of someone who is serious about tackling prejudice. It is the opinion of someone who is participating in the business of entertainment and wants to be seen to be tackling prejudice. There are those who understand this but nevertheless think its a force for the good. I'm not convinced that it is. No worthy cause has ever been served well by lazy mediocrity.<br />
<br />
It was Gabriel's misfortune that Root's comment was caught on the microphone. Gabriel denies that he's homophobic. In fact, assuming his account of the exchange is true, it was the very first thing is said in response to Root's much publicized comment. <i>"I have no issues with that, but you should stop smiling at me." </i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Had the stump microphone caught the full exchange, would Gabriel be handed a ban and a fine? Almost certainly not. Stump microphones should be switched off between deliveries. Voyeurism is not transparency. Entertainment is not scrutiny. These categories matter. They should be taken seriously. In the unfortunate case of Shannon Gabriel, they were not.Kartikeya Datehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03512491310629949028noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21636894.post-11042270317914889692018-12-21T02:46:00.005-08:002018-12-21T02:46:59.939-08:00On the Charge Of Selection ErrorsAfter India lost at Perth, a truism about the current Indian side has emerged in the press and among observers on twitter. The charge against the India is that they are prone to picking the wrong team. From a distance, you can see the picture this charge is trying to paint. It suggests incompetence on the part of India's team management (specifically, the head coach Ravi Shastri, and the captain Virat Kohli). This sense is encapsulated by this observation which appeared on my timeline yesterday.<br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
<div dir="ltr" lang="en">
Indian cricket desperately needs a Gopichand equivalent. A no-nonsense, brutally honest, tactically brilliant and unconditionally dedicated coach. It is the only way out of this mess. <br /><br />If only they hadn't gotten rid of the priceless <a href="https://twitter.com/anilkumble1074?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@anilkumble1074</a> to pacify the captain's ego. <a href="https://t.co/JYWHGBvfNf">https://t.co/JYWHGBvfNf</a></div>
— Sameer Dharur (@SameerDharur) <a href="https://twitter.com/SameerDharur/status/1075297411185238017?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 19, 2018</a></blockquote>
This, about one of the world's best cricket teams. One of the <a href="http://cricviz.com/2018/12/cricviz-analysis-indias-selection-costs-them-in-perth/" target="_blank">better presentations</a> of the the India-are-prone-to-selection-errors argument is by Freddie Wilde for the cricket data company CricViz.<br />
<br />
Selection is a matter of judgment. At any given point in time, in any Test team, more than one equally reasonable combination is always possible. Therefore, to lay a Test defeat at the door of the selection of one of two players in an XI is tenuous. Further, all fifteen (or however many) players selected to a squad are considered good enough to play in the XI. Therefore, it is little more than a shell game to ask "if X wasn't picked, why is X in the squad". The answer is obvious - the squad has more than 11 members and the team has only eleven spots.<br />
<br />
At Perth, its fairly obvious that Umesh Yadav had a bad game. But this, by itself, does not show that India would have been better off picking a spinner in his place. Nathan Lyon has a lot of experience of bowling in Australia and is a very very good bowler. With more than 326 Test wickets in 81 Tests before the Perth Test, he could lay claim to being Australia's best ever Test off-spinner. Australia rarely drop him when he's available, no matter what the conditions. He has featured in 82 of the 86 Tests Australia have played since his Test debut. The options available to India were two spinners who have never bowled in Australia before. Nevertheless, Ravindra Jadeja is a terrific bowler and would have been a good option, even with an Australian line-up dominated by lefties. The six fast bowlers not named Umesh Yadav had an excellent game. Hanuma Vihari had to bowl for India because Umesh Yadav was struggling. Given how successful the fast bowlers were, it is very difficult to sustain the argument that picking Umesh Yadav instead of a spinner was a bad decision.<br />
<br />
Umesh Yadav has bowled well at Perth in the past and <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/series/12641/scorecard/518952/australia-vs-india-3rd-test-india-tour-of-australia-2011-12" target="_blank">took 5/93</a> in a dismal Indian bowling effort here in 2012. He also <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/series/18902/scorecard/1157753/india-vs-west-indies-2nd-test-west-indies-in-india-2018-19" target="_blank">took 10 wickets</a> the last time he played for India. Umesh Yadav has never been one to keep the runs down. He either gets wickets or he goes for runs. With the other three Indian fast men demonstrating much improved control, India could have picked a 4th bowler who would offer them some added depth in their batting and keep the score under control, or they could have gone with the shock weapon - the seamer who might go for runs, but could have a spell worth two or three quick wickets.<br />
<br />
We've considered the spin option. What of Bhuvneshwar Kumar? Kumar last played for India in South Africa in January. Since then, he has played a lot of limited overs cricket for India but has been injured and was ruled out of the England tour (where he might have enjoyed the conditions). Kumar's record is too good for him to be left out. It was worth taking him to Australia in the hope that he could play in the tour game. Everybody would be able to bowl and bat in the tour game, and everybody but Bhuvneshwar Kumar did, suggesting that he had not recovered by then. As Kohli indicated, Kumar had recovered to be available for selection, but didn't have any significant bowling under his belt. Wilde summarizes this situation as follows:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
In the post-match press conference Kohli explained that Bhuvneshwar wasn’t picked because of a lack of first class cricket—he hasn’t played a first class match since the third Test in Johannesburg—but if that makes him un-selectable and with no first class matches scheduled during the series, then why is he in the squad at all? Either India got their team wrong or their squad wrong.</blockquote>
Except that Kohli <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mM9NsS6GOPg" target="_blank">didn't say</a> that Bhuvneshwar was unselectable. Nor did he suggest it. If you listen to what Kohli says, his entire point was that it was a close decision and Umesh Yadav's form, together with the fact that Bhuvneshwar hadn't bowled much recently, meant that Umesh Yadav got the nod ahead of Bhuvneshwar.<br />
<br />
India did misread the conditions at Lord's when they played two spinners. None of the other selection decisions - leaving out Rahane and Pujara in South Africa and England respectively - could be considered bad decisions. They were arguable decisions. In fact, none of the selection decisions<br />
<br />
Selection is a favorite subject for observers and writers. Some have gone so far as to describe the selection choices of the current Indian side as "blunders" - careless, or stupid mistakes. This is a peculiar formulation. Consider what's happening here. Lay people are accusing Test players of careless, stupid selection! This is obviously the voice of disappointment. But it does not seem to be a particularly self-aware voice.<br />
<br />
It is generally impossible to criticize selection seriously. By seriously, I mean, to make a good quality argument which justifies a claim to the effect that a particular selection was obviously bad. This is because there's always more than one reasonable combination available to a squad in any given Test. At Perth, India could have played Bhuvneshwar Kumar or Umesh Yadav or Ravindra Jadeja as their fourth bowler. All three would have been reasonable selections. Therefore, selecting any one of these cannot be considered an error.<br />
<br />
Every India captain (and their team management) has shown a particular pattern to their selection. The selection has never been careless or random or stupid. Sourav Ganguly preferred to err on the side of batting depth. Rahul Dravid was more attacking, but he would hedge his bets. Kohli has shown a near monomaniacal preference for chasing twenty wickets. India have played five bowlers as a rule under Kohli, and he has seemed averse to picking bowlers for their ability with the bat. There appears to be little expectation that the bowlers should contribute with the bat. It is possible to consider this as being too attacking. But it is not a stupid idea. Nor is it arbitrary.<br />
<br />
Even though I would prefer it if Kohli were to hedge his bets a little (I would have preferred it if India had played Ravindra Jadeja at Perth) and not attack so much, I can see that this is the way they want to play. The one thing about Kohli, both in the way he bats and in the way he sets up his team, is the total absence of any fear of losing. This is a quality to be admired in the captain of the Indian team. It is an anti-nationalistic approach which treats the game as a game - as a contest to be won, rather than as a proxy for some ridiculous "national pride". These are professional sportsmen and not warriors, and that's how it should be.<br />
<br />
Anytime you hear criticism of selection choice, you can be sure of two things. First, it has no cricketing merit, and second, it is the voice of disappointment or resentment, not reason. Now, some of these resentments may even be justified. It is not in serious dispute that the way in which Anil Kumble was replaced by Ravi Shastri in 2017 was dubious. I wrote about it at the time (<a href="https://www.thehindu.com/thread/sports/why-guha-quit-the-coa/article18707910.ece" target="_blank">1</a>, <a href="https://www.thehindu.com/thread/sports/how-the-bcci-failed-kohli-kumble-and-coaching-job/article19119728.ece" target="_blank">2</a>, <a href="https://www.thehindu.com/thread/sports/weak-bcci-weak-press-powerful-kohli-misjudged-kumble/article19140520.ece" target="_blank">3</a>). But even so, this does not justify bad arguments about selection.Kartikeya Datehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03512491310629949028noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21636894.post-89945832219747590672018-12-08T01:17:00.002-08:002018-12-08T05:25:23.481-08:00India v Australia, Adelaide 2018, Day 3I watched most of India's batting on the 3rd day after waking up early on Saturday morning to do so. When I went to sleep on Friday night, I feared that Australia might still be batting, with Mitchell Starc and Travis Head doing their best impression of Jason Gillespie and Steve Waugh. But India earned lead of 15, which, from 127/6 still meant that the last 4 Australian wickets added 108.<br />
<br />
Murali Vijay played as though he knows he is keeping the spot warm for Prithvi Shaw. KL Rahul played like a left-wing legislator who, having come through a surprisingly close challenge in an election, votes and speaks as though he's determined never again to be challenged on the basis of not being left-wing enough. Rahul spent much of the series in England speculating hopelessly outside off stump while the ball moved extravagantly off the pitch. At the Oval he turned the tables on that area outside the off stump, slaughtering most deliveries hung out there by England's expectant seamers. He seems to have carried that vengeance with him to Australia.<br />
<br />
The Adelaide wicket has been cagey. Its not flat and its not a flier. There's always been a little bit for the bowlers off the pitch. Not enough to bother the player who is prepared to bide his time and play late. But enough to make the more cavalier style of batting a risky proposition. The outfield has been slower than any in recent memory anywhere in the world, testing patience even more than usual. Australia's right-arm seamers bowled well today. Mitchell Starc seems to be enervated by the pitch and looked well below his best. More than Cummins or Hazlewood, Starc appeared far more anxious about his choice of length.<br />
<br />
I haven't watch Ashwin bowl in this Test, but I did watch the superb Nathan Lyon. It took all of Cheteshwar Pujara's experience to keep him at bay. Pujara's batting against Lyon reminded me of his <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/series/12286/scorecard/565807/india-vs-england-2nd-test-england-tour-of-india-2012-13" target="_blank">innings</a> against Monty Panesar (especially) and Graeme Swann at the Wankhede stadium in 2012. Watching Pujara gets me thinking about transport. He runs between wickets like a large leisure boat. But more importantly, he bats like a train. He has his track and he sticks to it. Against Lyon, Pujara batted according the field set to him. Lyon consistently kept a slip and a two man leg-trap with a short-leg and leg-gully, but no silly mid-off. He bowled for the foot marks outside the right hander's off stump. Pujara kept kicking the ball away with the bat glued to the inside of the pad, drawing Lyon's line closer to his middle and leg-stump, at which point he would try to score into the leg side. Pujara's bat never advanced past the pad. He seemed absolutely confident that the ball was never hitting the stumps from that line of attack. We know he was right because once, after Pujara had kicked the ball away after advancing a step down the pitch, the umpire gave the LBW to Lyon, only to have it reversed on review. Lyon might have moved that leg-slip to silly mid-off with some advantage. Pujara does not sweep or paddle, and the silly mid-off might have forced the batsman to change tracks.<br />
<br />
Australia defended deeper against Kohli. Nathan Lyon had a deep mid-wicket to Kohli for most of his innings. He also didn't have the leg-gully. Kohli played with the bat far more than Pujara. This meant that he would score more runs, especially into the off side, but it also meant that Lyon was offered both edges of Kohli's bat. With the wicket beginning to wear from nearly 120 overs from each end, the likelihood of the ball misbehaving out of the rough is improving steadily. Towards the end of the day, there was a break in play. Almost immediately after that, Kohli played at Lyon's stock ball to the right-hander with the bat well in front of the pad, and the catch popped up to Aaron Finch at short leg.<br />
<br />
For Lyon, it was a reward for some magnificent bowling. But I can't help wondering if he might have benefited more if he had not allowed Pujara to play him to a stalemate. Lyon could have gotten Pujara, but the batsman's methods ensured that the odds of this happening were minimized.<br />
<br />
It was a terrific session of play all in all. The match situation favors India, if only because Australia have to bat last, the wicket is beginning to wear and nobody has scored freely on this pitch.Kartikeya Datehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03512491310629949028noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21636894.post-7306780094436060252018-12-04T04:00:00.003-08:002018-12-04T04:38:14.260-08:00On Mithali Raj's Increasingly Puzzling LetterMithali Raj is a great player. She has a Test double hundred, more ODI runs than any player in history, and more than 200 international caps for India. She was left out of India’s eleven for their semi final in the recently concluded T20 World Cup. India lost that game. A player of Raj’s ability being dropped in such an important is unusual but not unheard of. Anil Kumble was left out of the eleven at the 2003 World Cup final. At the time, Kumble of one of only two Indian bowlers who have more than 300 limited overs wickets and had been the mainstay of India’s limited overs attack in the previous decade.<br />
<br />
Matters exploded spectacularly after Raj <a href="https://scroll.in/field/903672/full-text-mithali-rajs-letter-to-bcci-ceo-rahul-johri-and-gm-saba-karim">wrote</a> to the BCCI CEO and Cricket Operations General Manager (and former India wicketkeeper) Saba Karim to complain about being left out. Her letter to the BCCI is essentially a complaint against two individuals - Diana Edulji and Ramesh Powar. Her first complaint against Powar is that he changed the batting order and asked her to bat in the middle order. Mithali Raj found this unsuitable. Her second complaint against him is that he dropped her from the eleven for the semi final. She writes that she went to the team manager because she didn’t like what the head coach was saying. In the letter, Raj casts the decision to drop her as the coach’s decision.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"At this juncture I would also like to point out that I have nothing against the T/20 captain Harmanpreet Kaur except for the fact that her call <b>to support the decision of the coach to leave me out of the eleven was baffling and hurtful</b>. I wanted to win the world cup for my country and it hurts me because we lost a golden opportunity. But I am of the opinion that Harman and I are senior players and our issues, if any, should be sorted out by the two of us by sitting across the table. " </i>[emphasis is mine]</blockquote>
The Indian captain Harmanpreet Kaur has also <a href="https://scroll.in/field/904437/full-text-harmanpreet-kaurs-email-asking-bcci-to-allow-ramesh-powar-to-stay-on-as-coach" target="_blank">written</a> to the BCCI and flatly contradicts Raj's characterization of the decision as one made by the coach.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>“With regard to the exclusion of Mithali Raj, Sir Ramesh Powar was not single handedly responsible. The decision was entirely based on the cricketing logics and observations from the past. Keeping in mind the need of the hour where me, Smriti, the selector (Sudha Shah) and the coach together in the presence of our manager felt that we should go ahead with the winning combination. And I believe it should have come to your understanding that the intent was not personal but entirely based for the welfare of the team”</i></blockquote>
The Indian Vice-Captain Smriti Mandhana has also <a href="https://scroll.in/field/904446/full-text-smriti-mandhanas-email-to-bcci-backing-ramesh-powar-to-stay-on-as-coach" target="_blank">written</a> to the BCCI and agrees with the captain. She writes that all playing elevens were selected using the same procedure. <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>“All meetings that were held with respect to the playing 11 for all the matches came to a unanimous decision which was taken by the Captain (Harmanpreet Kaur), the Vice Captain (Smriti Mandhana), Coach (Ramesh Powar) and Selector (Sudha Shah) in the presence of our Team Manager (Trupti Bhattacharya).”</i></blockquote>
Raj's complaints against the head coach and her disappointment at being dropped is understandable. The team management is perfectly within its rights to decide things like the batting order. Besides, given that Raj went to the team manager to ask her to referee her dispute with the head coach, its hardly surprising that the head coach and the team manager agreed with the captain and vice-captain that she should be left out of the eleven. If she was required in the middle-order and didn't bat want to bat in the middle-order, it's best for everybody if she didn't play at all.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In any event, based on Raj's accounts and the accounts of others, its clear that this was a cricketing matter, and no matter what you might think of the merits of the decision, the legitimacy of the decision is not in question. It is more than a little bit surprising that a player of Raj's excellence and experience should let her disappointment get the better of her in this way.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Raj's complaint against Edulji seemed puzzling from the beginning. It appears in the first part of the letter, before the case against the head coach is laid out. The idea that a member of the CoA or the CoA should interfere with who gets picked in the eleven from the squad is as preposterous as asking Jagmohan Dalmiya to get involved in such a dispute. Edulji rightly took the view that the CoA wouldn't get involved in team selection. </div>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"To put things in perspective, I have always reposed faith in Diana Edulji and have always respected her and her position as a member of the COA, Never did I think she will use her position against me, more after hearing what all I had to go through in the Caribbean as I had spoken to her about it. Her brazen support in the press with regard to the decision of my benching in the semi final of the t/20 World Cup has left me deeply distressed, more because she knows the real facts having spoken to me.</i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Thereafter her statement saying ‘selection is not the COA’s headache’ is like suggesting there is no system of checks and balances and anyone can do anything and get away because they have the backing of people in power.</i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>May I say that I am aware that by writing this email I am making myself even more vulnerable. she is a COA member while I am just a player. For the record, I scored back to back fifties in the games before the semi final, was adjudged player of the match on both occasions, to leave me out in the semi final and go with only three performing batters was a decision that left me baffled as much as it left the whole world.</i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I have always adhered to protocol and haven’t said a word in the press regarding anything that happened in the West Indies believing that the BCCI is there and in the end ‘my truth ‘ will have an ear there and my matter will be handled justly. But the brazen support of a COA member is a clear sign of bias and also that a stance has already been taken against me. By saying ‘I don’t support someone’ and then going all out to support my benching in the press is prejudice of the clearest sort. </i></blockquote>
<div>
Tushar Arothe, Ramesh Powar's predecessor as head coach, has <a href="https://scroll.in/field/903730/edulji-contradicted-her-stance-on-coa-interference-in-team-selection-says-former-coach-arothe">added his voice</a> to Raj's. His intervention is bizarre because he suggests that Edulji interfered with the team selection at the Asia Cup because, after the tournament ended, she inquired into the selection decisions made by the team management. It is not unusual for former players to express opinions about team selection even though they may be office holders at BCCI. Sourav Ganguly played over a hundred Tests for India and captained India. He is currently the President of the Cricket Association of Bengal which is a member association of the BCCI. He often comments on the selection and performance of men's team. It would be very surprising if he didn't offer his opinion to the players and the selectors in private as well. But this does not mean that the Cricket Association of Bengal is interfering with selection.<br />
<br />
Mithali Raj has written to the BCCI CEO Rahul Johri (Her letter is addressed to "Rahul Sir and Saba) complaining about Diana Edulji only a few days after Edulji <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/story/_/id/25081885/coa-split-rahul-johri-allegations">disagreed</a> with the CoA chairman Vinod Rai's decision to keep Johri in his job following an inquiry into allegations of improper behaviour against Johri by a BCCI employee. The committee which inquired into the allegations against Johri did not return a unanimous verdict. One of the three members <a href="https://www.thehindu.com/sport/cricket/gowda-blames-bcci-and-coa/article25569381.ece">dissented</a>, and accused the BCCI and CoA of not following the law (specifically, the <i>Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013</i>). At the CoA, the chairman Vinod Rai is accused of suppressing the dissenting voice in the inquiry committee and ignoring Edulji's opposition to grant Johri a "clean chit".<br />
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Apart from the fact that Raj's complaint against Edulji is substantively feeble, it is remarkable that she has written to the BCCI's CEO to complain about a member of the CoA, who's job is to supervise the CEO. It is an incredible coincidence that Johri should receive a written complaint against Edulji a a few days after Edulji opposed Johri's reinstatement following an inquiry which did not unanimously exonerate him. <br />
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If Raj was advised by her advisors to complain in writing, then she was advised poorly. If any part of this advice came from Johri, this would be obviously inappropriate. Did Johri (directly or indirectly) advise Mithali Raj to put her complaints against Diana Edulji in writing? Only Mithali Raj and Rahul Johri can answer this question. Note that Raj's letter appeared in public on November 27. It was reported that she <a href="https://indianexpress.com/article/sports/cricket/mithali-raj-harmanpreet-kaur-meet-ceo-rahul-johri-gm-saba-karim-separately-ramesh-powar-summoned-5465805/">met</a> the BCCI CEO and General Manager on November 26.<br />
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At first Raj's letter seemed to be an ill-judged expression of disappointment. Now that subsequent communications by the head coach, captain and vice-captain have been made public, it looks worse than ill-judged. It is very sad that a great player has allowed herself to be put in such a terrible position where in she has been contradicted by her head coach and her colleagues. It would be even sadder if her obvious disappointment has been exploited in a larger political power struggle at the BCCI.</div>
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Kartikeya Datehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03512491310629949028noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21636894.post-80556709527840272712018-09-04T00:09:00.004-07:002018-09-04T00:14:28.151-07:00Big Moments and Clutch PlayersToni Kroos stood over the football on the edge of the Swedish penalty area. The angle was acute. Marco Reus stood over the ball with Kroos, and pointed out to the Real Madrid midfielder that it might be better if he went for goal since the Swedish defense had a height advantage over the German attack. Kroos did. He played a very short pass to Reus who lined up a drive for Kroos around the nominal Swedish wall. Kroos’s drive curled around the wall with pace and nestled in the far corner of the Swedish goal.<br />
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Kroos had come through when it mattered. Germany’s world champion midfield maestro had just produced that holy grail in elite professional sport - the clutch performance.<br />
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The standard account of sporting contests suggests that there are some parts of games which are more important than others. There are key moments and key players who specialize in these key moments. The great tennis players, we are told, excel especially when the game is on the line. The great footballers are the ones who finish (or defend) that one crucial chance late in the game. Great basketball players specialize in the last few dozen seconds of games. They take their game to higher level. The great batsmen are the ones who score when it matters.<br />
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It follows from this idea that some parts of sporting contest matter more than others. Identifying these moments and winning them is a skill which some players have and others don't. This distinction opens the floodgates to much of what passes for the evaluation of individual players. It also shapes the nature of fandom. Fans praise or condemn players based on their perceived achievements in these big moments. Sport is cast in a gladiatorial light in which there are winners and champions, and just as importantly, losers and cowards.<br />
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The record provides little evidence to support the idea that sporting contests are made up of big moments and smaller moments, key moments and average moments. This essay considers some of this evidence, primarily from cricket, examines why this picture of sport persists despite the evidence, and suggests that this picture of sport may not be the predominant way of understanding sporting contests in the foreseeable future.<br />
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In limited overs cricket matches, for example, the advanced phase of the run chase is considered the “business end” of the game. This is batting when “the pressure is on”, “when it matters”. There are great finishers and then there are others. And the basic difference seems to be that the great finishers are usually there at the end of a successful chase. They “win the game for their side”.<br />
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And yet, the record does not reveal a single player who fits this description. Every player who ever achieved a reputation as a finisher just happens to have played in very strong teams which had very strong batting lineups. Michael Bevan and MS Dhoni, two of the greatest finishers in limited overs cricket score slower in run chases than the rest of the team. What’s more, in a large number of run chases, they are not required at all. Dhoni has played in 166 run chases, of which India have won 104 and lost 62. He has batted in only 131 of these chases, of which India have won 69 and lost 62. Dhoni averages 50 in these games and scores at 81 runs per 100 balls. At the other end, India’s batsmen average 31 and score at 89 runs per 100 balls.<br />
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Dhoni’s reputation as a cold-blooded finisher was greatly enhanced in Australia in 2012. On February 12, 2012, the <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/series/8531/scorecard/518959/australia-vs-india-4th-match">two teams met</a> at the Adelaide Oval. Australia batted first and reached 269/8. In response, India reached 178/3 after 34 overs and required 92 in 96 balls. Gautam Gambhir was out off the first ball of the 35th over and Dhoni came to the crease. India eventually won by four wickets with two balls to spare. But they needed 13 from the last over, 12 off the last four balls. Dhoni hit a six and finished 44 not out in 58 balls. The reviews of the game referred to an <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/series/8531/report/518959/australia-vs-india-4th-match">‘ice-cool’ Dhoni</a>, but there was also the <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/story/_/id/22338219/taken-game-50th-gautam-gambhir">lingering feeling</a> that the game should not have been in the balance for as long as it had been. Sidharth Monga’s account of India’s run chase <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/story/_/id/22338391/ms-dhoni-chases-own-pace">at the time</a> puts Dhoni’s effort in context. India had not batted well on the tour. Their record in Australia was modest. Dhoni was under pressure, but made sure that India got over the line.<br />
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The facts suggest a different picture. At the start of that final over, Dhoni had 33 in 55 balls to his name and India had scored 79 in 89 during his time at the wicket. The other end produced 46/2 in 34. Overall, the other end produced 48/2 in 37. Dhoni’s caution was subsidized by successful aggression at the other end. He could afford to bide his time only because the runs came quickly at the other end.<br />
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Why was our attention drawn to Dhoni’s caution, and not to the successful aggression at the other end? Perhaps it is because we notice that Dhoni is there at the end. Finishers who “see their team home” are the ones who are still there “when it matters”.<br />
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This is generally true not only about MS Dhoni, but about ‘finishers’ in general. The table below shows a list of the most prolific middle order “finishers’ in ODI history. The ones in grey score slower than their average partner in run chases. Among the exceptions (in white), all but three score less than one-fifth of one run faster than the players at the other end.Virat Kohli, who has a brilliant record in run chases, scores 69(72) in the average run chase. In these chases, other Indian batsmen produce 66(72) for 1.85 dismissals.<br />
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There are exceptions. AB de Villiers, Suresh Raina, Aravinda de Silva and Andrew Symonds score appreciably quicker than their teammates and are also more consistent. Yet, these four players would not feature on anyone’s list of reliable finishers in the way that Bevan or Dhoni would. Some of them would figure in many people’s list of adventurous stroke makers, great players even. But, especially in the case of AB de Villiers, there has been criticism of de Villiers’ inability to “take his team home”.</div>
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The chart below shows a 5 over rolling scoring rate for the player and for the average teammate by over in an ODI. The grey bars (on the right vertical axis) show the number of instances in which a player has been at the wicket in a given over in an ODI. Each circle represents the player’s scoring rate (on the left vertical axis) over the previous 5 overs, while each star represents the scoring rate at the other end over the previous 5 overs.<br />
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De Villiers consistently scores quicker than the player at the other end. Kohli scores as quick as the player at the other end, and then, on the rare occasions when it is still necessary, he can explode after the 40th over. MS Dhoni on the other hand, consistently scores slower than his partner during ODI run chases, except towards the very end.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN5CobPAI2uBC4EiQ1DGWpo74HUW0TAV7oqc_isNy-bBoNbX49JQq-w2fPBKE_DFemZKXlXjTLj606K6u-0mDVQd1ZwvDIkpbYGkzkP0hJIMxhyphenhyphenxSDIQnsJX2uTvdlOOpBDFJF/s1600/deVilliers.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="483" data-original-width="939" height="329" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN5CobPAI2uBC4EiQ1DGWpo74HUW0TAV7oqc_isNy-bBoNbX49JQq-w2fPBKE_DFemZKXlXjTLj606K6u-0mDVQd1ZwvDIkpbYGkzkP0hJIMxhyphenhyphenxSDIQnsJX2uTvdlOOpBDFJF/s640/deVilliers.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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Unsurprisingly, Kohli and Dhoni are more successful than de Villiers in run chases. Compared to him, they have to do less of the heavy lifting. But de Villiers is as good if not better than Kohli or Dhoni at doing his share of the heavy lifting.<br />
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The 100 most prolific run chasers in the world are shown in the chart below. The horizontal axis represents the ratio of teammates’ scoring rate to that of the player. If this ratio is less than one, it means that the player scores quicker than his teammates and vice versa. The vertical axis represents the ratio of teammates’ dismissal rate to that of the player. If this ratio is more than one, it means that the player is more consistent than his teammates and vice versa.<br />
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This allows us to organize players into four categories - anchors (62%), quick scorers (11%), superior players (23%), and liabilities (4%). Anchors are more consistent and score slower. Quick scorers are less consistent and score quicker. Superior players score quicker and are more consistent. Liabilities score slower and are less consistent. As the chart shows, most of the most prolific run chasers are anchors. Superior players are typically marginally superior. For every run scored by Virat Kohli, 0.97 runs are scored at the other end. Liabilities are expectedly extremely rare. Most of them either keep wickets or bowl. Only one ‘superior’ player in ODI history has scored at least 10% faster than their teammates and been at least 10% more consistent than their teammates - Tendulkar between 1994-04. Viv Richards scored 22% faster than his teammates and was 9% more consistent.</div>
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From 1994 to 2004, a period spanning three world cups, Tendulkar played primarily (though not exclusively) as opener, and made 6039 runs in chases, more than any middle-order batsman has in their entire career batting second. His career lasted a quarter of a century. His longevity justifies the consideration of a decade of his career in isolation. 94-04 is <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/story/_/id/23355262/three-phases-tendulkar-odi-batting">a good time span</a>. It covers his twenties. It begins when he began opening the batting and ends with an injury riddled period of transition for him in 2004.<br />
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The players who are considered finishers have the luxury of playing in strong teams which provide them with the luxury of scoring slower and protecting their wicket. Finishers acquire their reputation because of consistent success. But the basis of that success is a strong team. Great chasing teams are strong batting teams. Finishing is a team skill. The “finisher” does not exist in the sense that most people imagine. There is no player who ‘takes his team home’. There are players who have the luxury of biding their time because a lot of heavy lifting is being done very ably at the other end with regard to the scoring rate for about 80-90% of the run chase. These players may not get the not out, but they contribute at least as much, if not more to the run chase than the ‘finisher’ does.The trope about ‘big moments’ exists across sports. In professional tennis, for instance, it is widely accepted among fans that there are important points and unimportant points because in theory it is possible to win a tennis match despite winning fewer points than the opponent. Data available at <a href="http://www.tennisabstract.com/">Tennis Abstract</a> shows that top players are not significantly better or worse at winning any particular type of points. They don’t perform better on “important points” than on others.<br />
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The authors at <i>Tennis Abstract</i> provide a measure known as the <i>Dominance Ratio</i> which gives the number of points won by a player off the opponent’s serve divided by the number of points conceded by a player while serving. This measure (Rafael Nadal (1.29), Roger Federer (1.31), Novak Djokovic (1.27) and Andy Murray (1.20)) also shows that the best players are better at winning points in general.</div>
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In baseball the idea of the ‘clutch’ hitter has existed for decades and has been studied at least since the 1970s. There is no serious evidence to suggest that ‘clutch’ hitting is actually a skill. Some studies have found the odd player who could be marginally considered to demonstrate ‘clutch’ capability, but these are not players who are typically considered ‘clutch’ players.<br />
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So why does this idea persist? The idea of the ‘big moment’ and the ‘clutch player’ who excels in the big moment seems to be due to a combination of two well understood <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_bias">cognitive biases</a> which human beings are prone to.<br />
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The availability bias is our tendency to confuse the obvious with the significant. When evaluating a concept or an event, we tend to make use of those things which are most easily available to our minds. Memorable events during games are easier to remember and evaluate than all the events in games. For example, MS Dhoni not only stayed till the end that day at Adelaide in 2012, but he also hit a memorable six in the last over. However, that boundary was no more or less significant than any other delivery in the run chase on which a boundary was hit, or, more crucially, was not hit. In that last over, Dhoni had little option but to go for it. But the conditions which produced this desperate situation were as significant as the 13 runs in the final over.<br />
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The confirmation bias is our tendency to recall events in a way which confirms our pre-existing beliefs or ideas about those events. If we accept that big moments decide games, then we’re likely look for these big moments. Hence, when watching Federer play Nadal, we watch Nadal win an epic rally at 40-40, 5-5 in the fourth set, and start thinking to ourselves “wow! Nadal turns up in the big moments!”. <br />
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However, if the so-called big moments really did exist in games, then all the preceding events in games (points in tennis, deliveries in cricket, attacks in football) which brought the big moment into being must be at least as big. Therefore, the big moment can’t actually exist.<br />
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Cognitive biases typically point to a problem of measurement. It is very difficult to remember every episode in a game simply by watching it either at the ground, from the press box or on TV. Until recently, these were the only modes of observation and measurement available to most viewers and journalists.<br />
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As Toni Kroos stood over the football in injury time, he knew the score like everybody else. He knew how much time was left. He knew that if they could score with that set piece, they would almost certainly win. In that moment of the Germany v Sweden game of 2018, just before he took the free kick, this was not just the biggest moment, it was the only moment, not only for Kroos, but also for everybody watching.<br />
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After the game, when one is no longer in that 92nd minute watching Kroos stand over the ball, and one is now evaluating the game as a whole, the only thing which can be said is that Germany scored a late winner. One has to shift standpoints from being in that 92nd minute with Kroos, to standing apart and examining the game as a whole. Germany had 76% of the possession and 18 shots on the Swedish goal. The game was shaped as much by each of those preceding 91 minutes as it was by that 92nd minute. The rules of football, and therefore the opportunity to score a goal, were identical in each minute. The game was not decided in the 92nd minute. It was decided equally in all 93 minutes. The 92nd minute was memorable and wonderful. But it’s not especially the reason for the outcome.<br />
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Finally, let’s consider the idea of the “clutch” player. Clutch players are generally better than other players. Therefore, they are more likely than other players to do memorable things. Some of those memorable things appear to us to be significant. But this is not because they are especially good in those moments which appear significant to observers. It’s because they are always better.<br />
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Better teams are made up of better players. Better teams tend to win more. Sometimes weaker teams win. These are upsets. The idea of a ‘clutch player’ - a player who is measurably superior in the ‘big moments’ than at other times - does not exist in sport. It exists in descriptions of sport due to the limitations of observers. It cannot exist in sport, because if it did, it would mean that short cuts exist in sport - that there are ways of winning without being excellent. “He’s average most of the time, but that one time, when it mattered, he came through.” This is a description of a fluke, not a skill.<br />
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Excellence in sport is ever present. We hang on to ideas about ‘big moments’ and ‘clutch players’ because excellence is exhausting. It is exhausting to contemplate, difficult to describe, and until recently, the type of systematic measurements which would show excellence were beyond the reach of the average sports watcher (and indeed, the average sports writer). Excellence was the domain of coaches and trainers who taught their wards methods and techniques. Methods and techniques are designed to produce good outcomes as a rule. The proliferation of measurements has made excellence accessible to spectators. As these become ubiquitous, perhaps we will learn to watch games differently. Our picture of sport will hopefully shift from today’s blood and guts chauvinism to a more humane one. Humane, not just in the nature of its criticism, but also in its capacity for precision.<br />
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Toni Kroos is one of the world’s best midfielders. He’s also a specialist in dead-ball situations. He was on the ball that day in injury time because of these facts. Not because he’s “clutch” in the “big moments”. That free kick was not a measure of his capacity to deliver when it matters. It was a consequence of his excellence as a football player.Kartikeya Datehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03512491310629949028noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21636894.post-60164287763957396692018-03-29T10:36:00.003-07:002018-03-29T23:48:30.452-07:00A Record Of Wisden's Smith Promotion OfferThe purpose of this post is to maintain a record of a promotional offer made by <a href="https://www.wisden.com/" target="_blank">Wisden</a> on the evening of March 29, the day Australian captain Steve Smith had his terrible public mea culpa in a press conference in Australia. Wisden posted a tweet of their offer. Their promotions page also (screenshot below <a href="https://twitter.com/aliusmani/status/979394060669550592" target="_blank">from here</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/greaserjam/status/979396120903405568" target="_blank">here</a>, with my thanks) detailed this offer. These details are as follows:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Terms & Conditions: This offer is valid until 23.59, Monday April 2. Subscriptions start with issue 6, out April 12. Subscription are valid for a minimum of 12 issues. Your subscription will continue until Steve Smith next plays for Australia or for 24 months, whichever is sooner. Telephone order line is open weekdays 9am-5pm. Calls cost 7p per minute plus your telephone company's access charge. Check with your service provider for call rates. Your subscription will start from the next available issue. Subscriptions are non-refundable. Cancellation is possible on expiry."</blockquote>
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Wisden evidently realized that this was being received poorly. They deleted their tweet and edited their <a href="https://wisdenmag.imbmsubscriptions.com/" target="_blank">subscriptions page</a> to remove the language about this subscription offer. This deletion was done without warning, and followed by a terse tweet saying <i>"Apologies for any offence in our previous tweet - a misjudgement", </i>which omits any information about what the previous tweet was about and why it was deleted.<i> </i><br />
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Wisden's very next post was of Steve Smith press conference.<br />
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Wisden has, to date, not provided any details about who thought up the promotions offer, or why the offer was withdrawn.</div>
Kartikeya Datehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03512491310629949028noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21636894.post-55797361731307614162018-02-09T04:04:00.002-08:002018-02-09T09:55:05.464-08:00On Common Sense And The Rules Of Cricket<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "consolas"; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">India bowled South Africa out for 118 in 32.2 overs in the 1st innings of the 2nd One Day International of their ongoing six match series in South Africa. This left them 119 to win. India’s run chase began immediately after a 10 minute interval since South Africa’s innings ended with more than 30 minutes left for the scheduled break. When it was time for the scheduled break, 15 overs of India’s innings had been completed and India were 26 runs away from their target. The Umpires decided to exercise rule 11.4.4 of the </span><a href="https://pulse-static-files.s3.amazonaws.com/ICC/document/2017/10/05/498b5049-f7cf-4adf-8562-6abe43cdae8f/ICC-Men-s-ODI-Playing-Conditions-2017-Code-FINAL-051017.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "consolas"; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">2017 standard ODI playing conditions</span></a><span style="font-family: "consolas"; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and extended play for a maximum of 15 minutes (or a minimum of 4 overs). This rule is as follows:</span></div>
“The umpires may decide to play 15 minutes (a minimum of four overs) extra time at the scheduled interval if requested by either captain if, in the umpires’ opinion, it would bring about a definite result in that session. If the umpires do not believe a result can be achieved no extra time shall be allowed. If it is decided to play such extra time, the whole period shall be played out even though the possibility of finishing the match may have disappeared before the full period has expired.”<br />
<div>
<br />
It took more than 15 minutes to complete the four overs. There is no provision in the rules to start a new over if the 15 extra minutes have already been played. India were 2 runs short of their target after four overs. The umpires duly took the players off for the scheduled break.<br />
<br />
This decision was universally condemned. It is worth examining the substance of this condemnation because this is an instance in which the umpires were condemned for following the rules correctly and precisely. In other words, those who condemned the umpires were completely wrong, and the umpires were completely right. And yet, the condemnation was universal.<br />
<br />
Essentially, the argument was that even though they followed the rules, the umpires were wrong because their decision defied “common sense”. Further, it was suggested that the rules were archaic, the decision was ridiculous and the situation was a farce. As the players walked away for the break, observers (commentators on television, various journalists on twitter) were darkly predicting that there would be nobody left at the ground when the players returned from their break. On a video show for ESPNCricinfo the former India wicket-keeper Deep Dasgupta even invented a provision in the rules to the effect that if both captains agree, play can continue! Such a provision does not exist in the rules. He was not alone. Dozens of ex-players and journalists were unanimous about the ridiculousness of the decision and awfulness of the situation.<br />
<br />
Who exactly was being inconvenienced by the umpires’ decision? The television broadcasters, who got to run innings break programming and the commercials which go with it? The press in the press box, who were served lunch as per the usual custom by the hosts at the ground, and got an extra talking point which they otherwise might have been short of in a one-sided game? The spectators who had come prepared for a leisurely day at the cricket, expecting a 100 overs game which would last until evening? The vendors at the ground who got to serve customers over lunch? Who exactly was inconvenienced by the umpires decision?<br />
<br />
The decision was perfectly correct according to the rules, and apart from the fact that the game was run correctly, everybody associated with the game did better thanks to the decision compared to what they might have done had the umpires ignored the rules and played extra overs.<br />
<br />
The one testable prediction in all the outrage, that nobody would be around at the end of the game, turned out to be wrong. As ESPNCricinfo’s live ball-by-ball commentator <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/series/18065/commentary/1122280/south-africa-vs-india-2nd-odi">reported</a>, “My colleague Sid Monga tells me there is still a decent crowd hanging around at the stadium”<br />
<br />
Rarely has there been such an unanimously held view which was based on no observable external reality. The conventional wisdom in this case was absolutely certain that the decision was “farcical”, “ridiculous”, “stupid”, “unbelievable”. The basis of this certitude is this notion of “common sense”. It was the common sense decision to play the extra over(s) even though the rules did not permit this. It is worth examining the notion of common sense.<br />
<br />
Laws govern and bring order to our lives. But life would still exist even if there were no laws (or some completely different set of laws). It would not exist in the way it exists today, but it would still exist. Games are different from life. Games are not governed by laws, they are constituted by them. Without the rules of a game, there is no game. Life precedes laws, while laws precede games. Games are completely defined, closed systems. Any move by a participant in a game (be it cricket or chess or football) can be identified unambiguously as being either a legal move (i.e. something permitted in the game) or an illegal move (i.e. something not permitted in the game). The goal of the game is predefined. This means that conditions which have to met so that the goal can be said to have been achieved, are known in advance. Games begin and end. This distinction between games and general life is important because it places a strict limit on the applicability of things which might be applicable to general laws to the laws of games.<br />
<br />
There is no concept of “natural justice” in a game. Games are structured as a competition - someone is supposed to lose by design. The set of rules which constitute (again, not govern, but constitute) a game is arbitrary. This set does not exist for any reason, other than the fact that it constitutes the game. The laws of games are not supposed to have silences. Whenever events occur whose legal status is truly disputable, the laws of games are amended to end such disputes (for example, the switch hit, or Ajay Jadeja’s exploitation of a loophole in the short run rule when batting with a tailender).<br />
<br />
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_sense#cite_note-1">Common sense</a> is defined in the Cambridge dictionary as “the basic level of practical knowledge and judgment that we all need to help us live in a reasonable and safe way.” It consists of “common sense consists of knowledge, judgement, and taste which is more or less universal and which is held more or less without reflection or argument.” Webster’s dictionary defines it as “sound and prudent judgment based on a simple perception of the situation or facts.” This is distinct from the idea of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conventional_wisdom">conventional wisdom</a> which refers to ideas or explanations which are considered to be true.<br />
<br />
In games, there is no underlying order which the rules attempt to encode. The idea of the merit or goodness of a rule exists only in the sense that the rule might contradict or be redundant in relation to some already existing rule. In life, the idea of "common sense" is necessary precisely because it refers to some underlying order which can be adopted even without explicitly written instruction or rules. There is no basis for such common agreement about a game. Cricket does not occur in nature. Games themselves are not social or natural phenomena which the rules attempt to explain, they are completely formal entities which rules construct.<br />
<br />
The common sense view is that the umpires should have relaxed the rules and allowed the extra over to be played. According to those who hold this to be the common sense view, the umpires decision was not just ridiculous adherence to archaic laws which should have been avoided, this was obviously so. Those who hold this common sense view misunderstand the basic idea of what a game is.<br />
<br />
But even if one were to accept the mistaken terms adopted by the adherents of this common sense view, they are wrong. Had the umpires relaxed the rules, they would have explicitly favored India, even if both captains agreed to continue to the game (lets ignore the fact that agreement between captains is irrelevant in the situation at hand). This is something umpires are not supposed to do. The veteran cricket statistician Mohandas Menon <a href="https://twitter.com/mohanstatsman/status/960124615396818944">observed</a> that “[w]ith only 19 overs bowled, South Africa can still save this ODI match, if it now rains the whole day!” It is not clear if Mr. Menon intended this observation to be in support of the common sense view. But it proves the exact opposite. Objectively, had the umpires ignored the rules and extended play beyond what is permitted in the rules, they would have eliminated this possibility. The remoteness of this possibility is irrelevant. The whole point of having an umpire - an entity which is (a) disinterested in the outcome of a contest, and (b) expert in the rules of the contest - is to avoid favoring one team or another in any way.<br />
<br />
An essential point of a game is that while the game is in progress, the contest is technically always on. The fact that one side may be significantly closer to a win compared to the other side, even if this is overwhelmingly the case, is irrelevant. To say that the umpires should have relaxed the rules and allowed the extra over(s) necessary for India to score the 2 runs is identical to saying that they should have stopped after 15 overs (or 16 or 17 or 14), since it was it was clear (or common sense) that India were going to win. Yet, nobody would think that this would be an acceptable common sense decision, would they?<br />
<br />
Now, one could argue that the ICC should revise the rules and give the umpires some extra discretion. Instead of specifying a maximum of 15 minutes and a minimum of 4 overs, the rule could leave this entirely up to the umpires. But we all know how well observers react to umpires exercising discretion. The reason why the ICC has made the rules so explicit is to protect umpires from being accused of bias or “inconsistent application of rules” when they exercise any discretion which the rules might grant them.<br />
<br />
The conventional wisdom about the common sense view of the umpire’s decision is wrong. The rules are not archaic. They came into force on September 28, 2017. The rules were applied correctly. There was no reason, none at all, to think that the situational was farcical, except that lots of people who either did not know the rules or did not grasp the implication of what they were suggesting created an echo chamber which said that the situation was farcical. Mockery is wonderful when it is underpinned by some significant truth. In this case, the only truth it revealed was not about the game, but about its pundits.<br />
<br />
The umpires, as they usually do, got it exactly right.</div>
Kartikeya Datehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03512491310629949028noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21636894.post-74747477068445270762016-09-10T14:30:00.002-07:002016-09-11T05:24:19.139-07:00On Ed Smith And Marathon Running<div class="tr_bq">
The New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman, who inspired the creation of the <a href="http://thomasfriedmanopedgenerator.com/about.php" target="_blank">Thomas Friedman column generator</a>, once explained his work as an opinion writer by saying that he did pictures, not pixels.</div>
<br />
Pictures are easy to wing, and easier to fudge, as Ed Smith <a href="http://cricketingview.blogspot.co.il/2016/08/ed-smith-pulls-melania-trump-but.html" target="_blank">demonstrated</a> in his ill-fated essay about the role of stress in elite sport. The essay was withdrawn, thanks mainly to the persistent inquiries of Subash Jayaraman (<a href="http://thecricketcouch.com/blog/2016/07/28/ed-smith-pulls-a-melania-trump/">1</a>,<a href="http://thecricketcouch.com/blog/2016/07/30/follow-up-on-ed-smith-pulls-a-melania-trump/">2</a>,<a href="http://thecricketcouch.com/blog/2016/08/02/follow-up-2-on-ed-smith-pulls-a-melania-trump/">3</a>,<a href="http://thecricketcouch.com/blog/2016/08/08/follow-up-3-on-ed-smith-pulls-a-melania-trump-espncricinfos-double-standard/">4</a>)<span style="background-color: #fafafa; color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: justify;">. </span>Whenever such things occur, the gossip machine in the community in which it occurs is attracted to this new subject like a moth. Among the things which have been widely observed about Smith in the underbelly of the cricket writing world is his tendency to "recycle" or, less charitably, "self-plagiarize". Given the sheer volume of Smith's output, it is not surprising that he does this. The merits of this practice are debatable.<br />
<br />
The idea of repeating oneself does not worry me. One of the most effective ways to drive home ideas is to keep restating them (and in the process, developing them).<br />
<br />
In April 2015, Ed Smith wrote <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/863607.html" target="_blank">an essay</a> for <i>ESPNCricinfo </i>in which he compared the development of Kenyan long distance runners to the development of cricketers. His thesis in the essay was based on a book marathon running by Ed Caesar titled <a href="https://books.google.co.il/books?id=86__BgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Two+Hours&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Two%20Hours&f=false" target="_blank">Two Hours</a>. I got interested in this subject when I read a two part story about the researcher Yannis Pitsiladis's ambition of developing a runner who can run a marathon in under two hours by Jere Longman in the New York Times (<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/15/sports/two-hour-marathon-yannis-pitsiladis.html" target="_blank">1</a>, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/16/sports/two-hour-marathon-kenenisa-bekele.html" target="_blank">2</a>) earlier this year. Since then, I've followed this subject in <i><a href="http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/309105/the-sports-gene-by-david-epstein/9781617230127/" target="_blank">The Sports Gene</a> </i>by David Epstein, and, thanks to Smith's <a href="http://www.thecricketmonthly.com/story/1027027/batting-3-0" target="_blank">cover story</a> in the July 2016 issue of <i>The Cricket Monthly </i>entitled <i>Batting 3.0, </i>Ed Caesar's <i><a href="http://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Two-Hours/Ed-Caesar/9781451685848" target="_blank">Two Hours</a>.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Smith does not cite either Caesar or Epstein in <i>Batting 3.0. </i>But it turns out that the portion on running in this cover story draws heavily on his earlier essay from April 2015. Here is the portion from <i>Batting 3.0</i><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
In 2015, <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/863607.html">I wrote for ESPNcricinfo about marathon runners</a>. Nearly all the best are drawn from a particular Kenyan tribe, the Kalenjin, an ethnic group of around five million people living mostly at altitude in the Rift Valley. The best of them grow up running without shoes. The debate about whether other athletes should try to mimic the barefoot running technique remains contested and unresolved. However, it is overwhelmingly likely that the unshod childhood of the Kalenjin does contribute to their pre-eminence as distance runners.<br />
And yet it is also true that as soon as Kalenjin athletes can afford running shoes, they buy them. They know that the protection offered by modern footwear helps them to rack up the epic number of hours of training required to become serious distance runners.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
So here is the conundrum. If an athlete wears shoes too often and too early, when his natural technique and running style are still evolving, he significantly reduces his chances of becoming a champion distance runner. But if he doesn't wear them at all in the later stages of his athletic education, he jeopardises his ability to train and perform optimally when it matters.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Put simply, the advantages of modernity and technology need to be first withheld and then embraced. Most Kenyan runners begin wearing trainers in their mid-teens. Some sports scientists argue that if they could hold off for another two or three years, they'd be even better as adult athletes. But no one knows for sure exactly when the "right" time to start running in shoes is.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Logically there is a further complexity. Imagine two equally talented developing athletes, one with shoes, the other barefoot, neither yet at their athletic peak. Wearing shoes, by assisting training and recovery, would yield an advantage at the time. But that short-term advantage would leave behind a long-term disadvantage, by depriving the athlete of the legacy that barefoot runners enjoy when they begin wearing shoes at a later stage. In other words, building the right foundations during adolescence is more important than doing whatever it takes to win at the time.</blockquote>
<blockquote>
What else can cricket learn from the Kalenjin? The analogy is obviously inexact. It is possible to run well with zero coaching, though that is less likely in cricket (as we saw with the grip). But the deeper point holds. For developing cricketers, early specialisation and over-coaching - though it may apparently yield an advantage at the time - turns into a disadvantage over the long run. De Villiers might have been a "better" cricketer aged ten if he'd played only cricket. But at 25, the rugby and tennis inside him helped him to go past the players stuck in a cricketing ghetto.</blockquote>
<blockquote>
One constant danger in the era of ultra-professionalism is that our sport falls prey to the delusion that educating cricketers can be turned into an exact science, with the latest fads and theories imposed on the next generation across a worldwide network of "expert" and "professional" academies. This problem is exacerbated by cricket's tendency towards hobby-horseism. A good idea is turned into a mantra that hardens into rule. You must do this, you can't do that, there is only one way. A fad breaks out that takes on a momentum of its own. In fact, we are increasingly learning that the best players usually develop (though not always) through a complex, intuitive and often mysterious mixture of informal and formal learning, with informal education - "no trainers" - dominating the conversation in the early years.</blockquote>
<blockquote>
Who are the Kalenjin of batsmanship? In terms of the number of players possessed of superb technique, I think India leads the world. Part of this, admittedly, is the sheer volume of candidates. Another factor is that fewer Indian players - compared to English ones, for example - experience a structured or official learning environment at a very young age. They play. So their batting accidentally benefits from the Kalenjin pattern - technology and science first withheld, then embraced. As Indian cricket gets richer, the challenge, ironically, will be to escape the damage that follows from meddling, over-interventionist systems and coaches.</blockquote>
Here is the same portion from his 2015 essay:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Nearly all top marathon runners are Kenyan. In fact, they are drawn from a particular Kenyan tribe, the Kalenjin, an ethnic group of around 5 million people living mostly at altitude in the Rift Valley.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Here is the really interesting thing. The majority of top marathon runners grow up running without shoes. The debate about whether other athletes should try to mimic barefoot-running technique remains contested and unresolved. However, it is overwhelmingly likely that the unshod childhoods of the Kalenjin does contribute to their pre-eminence as distance runners.*</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
And yet it is also true that as soon as Kalenjin athletes can afford running shoes, they do buy them. They know that the protection offered by modern shoes helps them to rack up the epic number of hours of training required to become a serious distance runner.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
So there is a paradox about long-term potential and running shoes. If an athlete wears shoes too often and too early, when his natural technique and running style are still evolving, he significantly reduces his chances of becoming a champion distance runner. But if he doesn't wear them at all in the later stages of his athletic education he jeopardises his ability to train and perform optimally when it matters.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Put simply, the advantages of modernity and technology need to be first withheld and then embraced. Most Kenyan runners begin wearing trainers in their mid-teens. Some sports scientists argue that if they could hold off for another two or three years, they'd be even better as adult athletes. But no one knows for sure exactly when is the "right" time to start running in shoes. We glimpse the ideal athletic childhood, but its contours remain extremely hazy.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Logically, there is a further complexity. Imagine two equally talented developing athletes, one with shoes, the other barefoot, neither yet at their athletic peak. Wearing shoes, by assisting training and recovery, would yield an advantage at the time. But that short-term advantage would leave behind a long-term disadvantage, by depriving the athlete of the legacy that barefoot runners enjoy when they begin wearing shoes at a later stage. In other words, building the right foundations during adolescence is more important than doing whatever it takes to win at the time.</blockquote>
If the first essay was written by A, and the second were written by B, this would be a textbook case of mosaic plagiarism. Since A and B are the same person, it isn't. It could be considered a case of <a href="https://www.aaas.org/news/fresh-look-self-plagiarism" target="_blank">self-plagiarism</a> (a vexed issue), and there's certainly recycling involved, but lets set aside the ethical implications of all this.<br />
<br />
There is also the question of citation which is more serious. In <i>Batting 3.0, </i>Smith simply refers to the April 2015 essay by saying "In 2015, I wrote for <i>ESPNCricinfo</i> about marathon runners." While this is perhaps literally true, it leaves out the bit where, in 2015, Smith wrote about something he read in a book about marathon runners. As he put it in that essay<br />
<blockquote>
When I read about the strange influence of first learning barefoot then using the latest technology - in the admirable and thought-provoking book <i>Two Hours</i> by Ed Caesar, published this July - I wrote in the margin: just like cricket coaching.</blockquote>
Having read Caesar, Epstein, Gladwell, and being familiar with some of the work of K. Anders Ericsson and his collaboration with Herbert Simon thanks to my day job, I'm not convinced that Smith's version of what any of these writers are saying is plausible.<br />
<br />
Smith's central thesis in his 2015 essay is that Caesar's account tells us that "the advantages of modernity and technology need to be first withheld and then embraced." He bases this on his reading. in Caesar's work, of the use of shoes by Kenyan marathon runners. In Smith's words, the proposition is as follows:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Here is the really interesting thing. The majority of top marathon runners grow up running without shoes. The debate about whether other athletes should try to mimic barefoot-running technique remains contested and unresolved. However, it is overwhelmingly likely that the unshod childhoods of the Kalenjin does contribute to their pre-eminence as distance runners.*</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
And yet it is also true that as soon as Kalenjin athletes can afford running shoes, they do buy them. They know that the protection offered by modern shoes helps them to rack up the epic number of hours of training required to become a serious distance runner.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
So there is a paradox about long-term potential and running shoes. If an athlete wears shoes too often and too early, when his natural technique and running style are still evolving, he significantly reduces his chances of becoming a champion distance runner. But if he doesn't wear them at all in the later stages of his athletic education he jeopardises his ability to train and perform optimally when it matters.</blockquote>
I looked hard to find this argument in Caesar's work. I could not locate it. Smith sets up an opposition between "sports science", "modernity", "technique and science" on the one hand (these, of course, are the bailiwick of modern western coaches/trainers/shoe companies etc.) and "natural technique", "folk wisdom and feeling", and "homespun training methods" on the other (these belong to the Kenyans). Apart from being nauseatingly paternal, this view also misunderstands the idea of "science". A science provides reliable explanations of things and involves the development not only of these explanations, but also the methods and theories which can be used to form reliable explanations.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Here is what Caesar actually says. His major source is Yannis Pitsiladis, who also figures in Epstein's chapters on running in <i>The Sports Gene</i>. In the notes, on page 207, Caesar writes:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
'At the time of writing, Yannis Pitsiladis and several other scientists were preparing to publish new data that proved what Pitsiladis himself had long believed: that kids who grow up running in bare feet develop better "foot health" - stronger, more responsive feet and ankles - than their shod counterparts in Kenya and other countries. This might be one factor to help explain Kenyan running dominance. By the time "habitually barefoot" kids start running in sneakers, in their teens, their tendons and muscles are already well developed, their bone strength is superb, and they are less likely to problem arches in their feet. Their form, meanwhile, is rock solid. As a follow-on from this discovery, Pitsiladis told me it would be interesting to see whether a runner might ultimately develop stronger if he trained without shoes, for longer, before switching to sneakers.'</blockquote>
<div>
In the main text, the debate about barefoot running occurs in a specific context which Smith omits altogether. While describing the history of the development of shoes used by long distance runners, Caesar reports that at one point the conventional wisdom of the industry was that runners wanted a shoe which basically felt like running barefoot - "Less than a hundred grams, not a lot of cushioning" as Andy Barr, a designer for Adidas tells Caesar. To their surprise, they found that elite runners wanted the exact opposite. This motivated Adidas to design shoes against the prevailing conventional wisdom. This conventional wisdom had come about thanks to Christopher McDougall's <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Born-Run-Hidden-Superathletes-Greatest/dp/0307266303/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=" target="_blank">Born to Run</a> </i>and, in Caesar's words, "the explosion of the barefoot running movement."<br />
<br />
Caesar reports that the Italian physiotherapist Vincenzo Lancini believes that Kenyan runners feet propelled them faster than other athletes with a smaller loss of energy. Lancini believes that this is due to the large amount of time Kenyan runners spend barefoot as children and as young teenagers. Caesar himself points out that even top runners keep "micro-training" the muscles of the foot and lower leg by training on rough, uneven roads. Caesar notes that the central character in his book, the runner Geoffrey Mutai for instance "doesn't spend a minute of his working day on a flat surface, and so his muscles are always working to balance and respond." As Lancini puts it, "They learn to listen with their feet."<br />
<br />
Unsurprisingly, what is common to Lancini and Pitsiladis's accounts (and to Caesar's reporting of these accounts) is that they are careful, narrow explanations. At every stage in their accounts, both Epstein and Caesar take great care to avoid sloppy generalizations. It is not surprising that very little time is spent in the two books mulling over the apparent "conundrum" which seems to have captured Smith's imagination. It's worth quoting again. Smith says<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
So here is the conundrum. If an athlete wears shoes too often and too early, when his natural technique and running style are still evolving, he significantly reduces his chances of becoming a champion distance runner. But if he doesn't wear them at all in the later stages of his athletic education, he jeopardises his ability to train and perform optimally when it matters.</blockquote>
There isn't any actual conundrum in that paragraph. Where's the contradiction between not wearing (or rather, not being able to afford) shoes when on is a kid and wearing them when one is no longer a kid? For that matter, what is "natural" about learning to hit a golf ball against a circular water tank (as Bradman did), and what is unnatural about being coached? If the shoe is the modern "technology" of running, what is its counter part in Smith's cricketing analogy? Bats? Or coaching technique?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In Smith's lackadaisical semantic universe, technique, technology, science and natural things are all interchangeable. They mean whatever he means they mean every time he uses them.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
It continues in the latter half of Smith's 2015 essay. He writes</div>
<blockquote>
"Connected to the question of impairing natural development is the problem of over-training and specialising too early. The now debunked "10,000 hours theory" - which holds that genius is created by selecting a discipline as early as possible and then loading on mountains of practice - is being replaced by a far more subtle understanding of nurturing talent."</blockquote>
<div>
The 10,000 hours theory has absolutely nothing to do with "genius". It has to do with expertise. K. Anders Ericcson was responding <a href="http://projects.ict.usc.edu/itw/gel/EricssonDeliberatePracticePR93.pdf" target="_blank">in his study</a> to the idea that expertise in predominantly down to "innate talent". (See Gladwell's <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/news/sporting-scene/complexity-and-the-ten-thousand-hour-rule" target="_blank">response</a> to Epstein, who has a careful argument complicating the 10000 hour rule in <i>The Sports Gene</i>) In their study, the authors conclude the "elite performance as the product of a decade or more
of maximal efforts to improve performance in a domain
through an optimal distribution of deliberate practice." (p. 400). There's nothing there about "specializing too early", or about "selecting a discipline as early as possible." All they're saying is that contrary to the proposition that expertise down to <i>immutable</i> innate talent, it is actually down to putting in about 10 years of deliberate effort. The argument they make is about the immutability of innate talent (i.e. the idea that innate talent is the invariant property of expertise). Deliberate practice has nothing to do with "specializing too early". It simply refers to "a highly structured
activity, the explicit goal of which is to improve performance". Under this definition, AB de Villiers from playing organized hockey, or some other sport would still be "deliberate practice" and would still be included in the ten thousand hours.<br />
<br />
Smith is considered to be a writer who explores ideas beyond the traditional scope of the cricket writer. Yet, the evidence suggests that he doesn't really care about what words mean. Nor does he seem to take ideas particularly seriously. Ideas seem to be merely a vehicle to producing the massive volume of writing he churns out on a monthly basis for multiple publications. Perhaps he would say, like Friedman, that he does pictures, not pixels. But even pictures have to be meaningful and coherent, not glorified loose agglomerations of semi-technical terms.<br />
<br />
Smith's audience, and here I refer to readers who enjoy his work, seems to enjoy the painless stories he spins. If you take ideas and the things words mean seriously, Smith's discussion of marathon runners, like his <a href="http://cricketingview.blogspot.co.il/2016/08/ed-smith-pulls-melania-trump-but.html" target="_blank">discussion of stress</a>, ought to give you a splitting headache.</div>
Kartikeya Datehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03512491310629949028noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21636894.post-65957280681796321772016-08-12T12:07:00.000-07:002016-08-12T12:18:16.076-07:00Ed Smith Pulls A Melania Trump (But Not As Well As Melania Trump)<div class="tr_bq">
Over at the Cricket Couch, Subash Jayaraman has been doing stellar work (<a href="http://thecricketcouch.com/blog/2016/07/28/ed-smith-pulls-a-melania-trump/" target="_blank">1</a>, <a href="http://thecricketcouch.com/blog/2016/07/30/follow-up-on-ed-smith-pulls-a-melania-trump/" target="_blank">2</a>, <a href="http://thecricketcouch.com/blog/2016/08/02/follow-up-2-on-ed-smith-pulls-a-melania-trump/" target="_blank">3</a>, <a href="http://thecricketcouch.com/blog/2016/08/08/follow-up-3-on-ed-smith-pulls-a-melania-trump-espncricinfos-double-standard/" target="_blank">4</a>) scrutinizing Ed Smith's <a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:bPJ33YZizOMJ:www.espncricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/1039087.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=il" target="_blank">July 25, 2016 essay</a>* for ESPNCricinfo. Subash shows that the parts of this essay which laid out a brief history of the scientific consensus about stress were drawn, almost verbatim, from an essay published in the Economist on <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/international/21702463-new-research-shows-even-severe-stress-can-have-upside-what-makes-us-stronger" target="_blank">July 23, 2016</a>.</div>
<br />
Thanks to Subash's work, Smith's essay has now been withdrawn by <i>ESPNCricinfo</i>. As many readers will already know, I have been a freelance contributor to Cricinfo's Cordon weblog since July 2013. I have also contributed articles to Cricinfo's monthly magazine <i>The Cricket Monthly. </i>This is also one of the reasons why the frequency of my posts here has declined in recent years.<br />
<i><br /></i>
This post is about two of Ed Smith's appropriations from the essay in <i>The Economist. </i>I noticed these a week ago, but needed to look up the original work to confirm my suspicion. Today I did so.<br />
<br />
The Economist's article describes Hans Selye's work on conceptualizing stress at the University of Montreal in the 1930s.<br />
<blockquote>
[For] centuries physicists have used the word stress to describe force applied to materials. It was not until the 1930s that Hans Selye, a Hungarian-born endocrinologist, began using it of live beings. Selye injected rats with cow hormones, exposed them to extreme temperatures and partially severed their spinal cords to prove that all these sorts of maltreatment affected the rodents in the same ways: they lost muscle tone, developed stomach ulcers and suffered immune-system failure. He used the word for both the abuse of the rats and the health effects. Later on, it started to be used for psychological suffering as well.</blockquote>
Here's Ed Smith's version of the same<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
For centuries, it belonged to the language of physics: the force applied to materials. Only in the 1930s did Hans Selye, a Hungarian endocrinologist, transport the idea into the realm of live creatures. He exposed cows and rodents to extreme physical deprivation and suffering in order to study the effects on their immune systems and musculature. Subsequently, the word started to be used in the context of psychological as well as physical suffering.</blockquote>
Selye's original note in <a href="https://www.sfn.org/~/media/SfN/Documents/ClassicPapers/Stress/selye.ashx" target="_blank">Nature</a>(pdf) from 1936 begins as follows:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Experiments on rats show that if the organism is severely damaged by acute non-specific nocuous agents such as exposure to cold, surgical injury, production of spinal schok (transcision of the cord), excessive muscular exercise, or intoxications with sublethal doses of diverse drugs (adrenaline, atropine, morphine, formaldehyde etc.), a typical syndrome appears, symptoms of which are independent of the nature of the damaging agent or the pharmacological type of the drug employed, and represent rather a response to the damage as such"</blockquote>
Selye subjected rats (not <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodent" target="_blank">rodents</a> - squirrels, hamsters, and porcupines are rodents too) to various harmful things, and found that they demonstrated symptoms which were independent of the specific harmful thing they were subjected to. (The bit about cow hormones is also to be <a href="https://books.google.co.il/books?id=0mcZBgAAQBAJ&pg=PT50&lpg=PT50&dq=what+did+Selye+do+to+cows&source=bl&ots=5jzIM8mIXj&sig=aAVlVw_yfko7S6rEUSnFwU22XnY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi2n6e2ubzOAhXDVxoKHYpWBlgQ6AEILTAD#v=onepage&q=what%20did%20Selye%20do%20to%20cows&f=false" target="_blank">found</a> in Kelly McGonigal's book <i>The Upside Of Stress</i> which is quoted by the Economist, and by Smith)<br />
<br />
In Smith's retelling, Selye subjected 'cows and rodents' to extreme physical deprivation and suffering'. Selye did no such thing. I'm no expert in the field of endocrinology, but I've read enough undergraduate essays to know a clumsy effort at appropriating another person's work when I see it. Even discounting the appropriation side of things, it is clear that Smith's description of Selye's work is flatly wrong.<br />
<br />
After Subash published his first story, Cricinfo added an update to Smith's post which said<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"The author, who has taken an interest in the study of stress and written on the subject for many years, wanted to acknowledge the Economist's survey of the subject"</blockquote>
<br />
You'd think that someone well versed in a subject would be able to describe <i>the </i>pioneering study on the subject less clumsily.<br />
<br />
Let's move on. Later in the essay, Smith writes<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
We're learning that the way we perceive stress changes how it affects us. A study by Alia Crum at Stanford University showed that, once the association became established that stress enhanced performance, professionals found "stressful" circumstances led to heightened engagement and diminished ill-heath.</blockquote>
Here's the same study in the Economist's words<br />
<div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
People who have a more positive view of stress are more likely to behave in a constructive way: a study by Alia Crum of Stanford University’s Mind and Body Lab and others found that students who believed stress enhances performance were more likely to ask for detailed feedback after an uncomfortable public-speaking exercise.</blockquote>
The Economist and Smith are not saying the same thing. Smith says "the way we perceive stress changes how it affects us". The Economist refers to people having "a more positive view of stress".<br />
<br />
The <a href="https://mbl.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/crum_rethinkingstress_jpsp_2013.pdf" target="_blank">paper</a>(pdf) by Crum and her colleagues from 2013 says the following:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
[T]he line of research reported here is designed to question whether this focus on the destructiveness of stress—this “stress about stress”—is a mindset that, paradoxically, may be contributing to its negative impact. Our research suggests that improving one’s response to stress may be a matter of shifting one’s mindset. In the context of stress, one’s stress mindset can be conceptualized as the extent to which one holds the belief that stress has enhancing consequences for various stress-related outcomes such as performance and productivity, health and wellbeing, and learning and growth (referred to as a “stress-is-enhancing mindset”) or holds the belief that stress has debilitating consequences for those outcomes (referred to as a “stress-is-debilitating mindset”).</blockquote>
As defined in Crum's paper, a 'mindset' is <i>"a mental frame or lens that selectively organizes and encodes information, thereby orienting an individual toward a unique way of understanding an experience and guiding one toward corresponding actions and responses" </i>(p. 717)<br />
<br />
Sensory information has to be present in order for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perception" target="_blank">perception</a> to occur. We perceive things about instances of concepts, not concepts themselves. Mindsets, as Crum's definition shows, are different. For example, it is not possible to perceive that for his <i>Cricinfo</i> essay, Ed Smith appropriated <i>The Economist</i>'s essay without the two essays being available for comparison. However, after perceiving this about Ed Smith's essay, it is possible to develop a particularly skeptical mindset towards his future essays.<br />
<br />
What Smith has done to <i>The Economist</i>'s (accurate) description of Crum's work is similar to what he has done to their (accurate) description of Selye's work. He has, it appears, replaced a word here and there, and done so in such shabby fashion that it ended up misrepresenting the original work. Even if we discount the probable plagiarism, Smith's account is wrong. Anybody who bases their understanding of the modern account of stress on Smith's account will get an incorrect picture. Smith does say towards the beginning of the piece <i>"First cricket, then a little science." </i>A little science is a dangerous thing.<br />
<br />
The most astonishing aspect of this episode is Smith's total silence in the matter. In the days since July 23, he has, according to his own <a href="https://twitter.com/edsmithwriter?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor" target="_blank">twitter feed</a>, published multiple articles, including one for Cricinfo. Further, he continues to work as a live commentator for BBC's prestigious Test Match Special radio commentary team during the on going Pakistan v England series. It is clear, that outside of Cricinfo, who have removed the article from their website, no other publication or platform in the cricket journalism and/or presentation profession (with the exception of a brief note in the <i>Daily Mail</i>) has a word to say about this subject.<br />
<br />
Notwithstanding the title, it has not been a pleasure to prepare this post. Cricket writing is not my day job. I do it because I enjoy writing and arguing, and because I love cricket. It is disappointing to see these things being treated so squalidly by a person in Smith's position. I hope he will explain himself soon, and I really hope the explanation turns out to be innocent.<br />
<br />
<br />
*This link shows a cached version of the essay from google's cache. Smith's essay has been removed from the Cricinfo website.</div>
Kartikeya Datehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03512491310629949028noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21636894.post-80378775835763357652016-05-26T12:12:00.000-07:002016-05-26T12:24:16.012-07:00Farewell Couch TalkToday Subash Jayaraman (<a href="http://thecricketcouch.com/couch-talk/" target="_blank">The Cricket Couch</a>) announced that after 189 episodes, he has discontinued his highly regarded podcast series 'Couch Talk'. Since I <a href="http://cricketingview.blogspot.co.il/2013/01/on-couch-talk.html" target="_blank">wrote</a> about it early 2013, Couch Talk has gone from strength to strength. It became a <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/content/story/genre.html?genre=490" target="_blank">regular feature</a> on <i>ESPNCricinfo </i>and the great and the good from the cricket world appeared on it.<br />
<br />
It goes without saying that my review had little to do with these developments. As I pointed out then, my view of Couch Talk appears from a privileged standpoint. Subash has shared with me the guests he wanted to invite, his efforts at pursuing the many superstars who appeared on his show, and the lessons he learnt about the complicated world of agents, contracts, embargoes and egos. He has discussed how he imagined the shape of many of his interviews and would often go through many drafts of both individual questions, and the sequence in which they were to appear. Not only was there a sequence, there were often subjects he absolutely wanted to broach, and the subjects which he was willing to forego should the conversation develop in an unforeseen but interesting direction. I bring this up to illustrate the careful, methodical preparation which formed the basis of every single interview. The hours spent in pursuing and persuading guests, preparing interviews, editing and transcribing the recordings and working with editors meant that every 20-40 minute interview easily involved 20-30 hours of work.<br />
<br />
It is impossible to be a professional cricket journalist. Given that the game is a monopoly (called the ICC), nobody whose living depends on this monopoly can ever hope to have anywhere close to the required leverage to commit journalism (this would involve scrutinizing the monopoly). As a result, the world of professional cricket reporting, despite being financially rewarding (increasingly so with the advent of the franchise game) contains very few lifers. The veterans of the field tend to cover sport and even other beats. Other talented writers and reporters tire of the job and move on to other fields within a few years. Unlike the Government, there is no "Right to Information" act, nor is there any democratic expectation of disclosure from private societies and associations like the BCCI and the ICC, let alone from the vast private corporations which make vast profits from the game by broadcasting it on TV. Despite its pretentions, the ICC is not an adversarial body by design (like the Government) and does not really owe anybody any answers.<br />
<br />
As a result, much of what passes for journalism consists, in effect, of serving as a third party publicist for the game and its stars. It is a truism that celebrity is more profitable than controversy and controversy is more profitable the argument. So published material must, as a rule, be shiny and simple. Complexity, inconvenient foundational questions ("how much money is too much money?", "Is T20 cricket?", "to what extent does cricket have a place in it for women?", "does the power in cricket lie with the Boards or the TV companies?") and the complicated responses which might do justice to them are not the every day bread and butter of the cricket media. As a rule, podcasts have to be loud, must consist of at least two participants who have wisecracks ready-at-hand. As a rule, longer stories must be features about players, and should steer away from mundane day to day material reality in favor of peddling nostalgia ("how did you feel when you reached a hundred that day?"). This is not the case because the reporters are stupid or unimaginative, it is the case because it is what sells. One only has to listen to them in private conversation to know how they really feel about much of this.<br />
<br />
All this makes a podcast like Subash's extremely unlikely. Nurturing it for 189 episodes is about as difficult as a 189 on a bad pitch against an all-time great Test attack.<br />
<br />
It remains to Subash's eternal credit that once his podcast grew into a regular feature on Cricket's biggest home on the internet, he remained (to a great extent) true to his amateur, outsider's beginnings. Even though he did shows with big stars (which were popular and eagerly anticipated by listeners, readers and editors alike), he also stayed true to his original idiosyncratic interests in the margins of the international men's game. The West Indies Under 19 coach, <a href="http://thecricketcouch.com/couch-talk/transcript-couch-talk-with-graeme-west-west-indies-u-19-coach/" target="_blank">Graeme West</a>, India all-rounder <a href="http://thecricketcouch.com/couch-talk/transcript-couch-talk-with-shikha-pandey/" target="_blank">Shikha Pandey</a>, Edward Fox, "Archi" Archiwal and their dream of building a <a href="http://thecricketcouch.com/couch-talk/transcript-couch-talk-with-edward-fox-and-archiwal/" target="_blank">home for cricket in Kansas</a> and <a href="http://thecricketcouch.com/couch-talk/transcript-couch-talk-with-peter-chismon/" target="_blank">Peter Chismon</a>, the world traveller cricket fan have been on Couch Talk, as has <a href="http://thecricketcouch.com/couch-talk/transcript-couch-talk-with-oli-broom-cycling-to-the-ashes/" target="_blank">Oliver Broom</a> who cycled from London to Brisbane to watch the 2010-11 Ashes.At the same time, Curtly Ambrose, David Gower, John Buchanan and nearly every major superstar you can think of also feature in Subash's 189 interviews over five years.<br />
<br />
Want to know the ins and outs of the Supreme Court of India's rulings on the corruption in the IPL? You couldn't do better than to listen to Subash's interview with two lawyers - <a href="http://thecricketcouch.com/couch-talk/transcript-couch-talk-with-suhrith-parthasarathy-and-aju-john-on-indian-supreme-court-rulings-on-bcciipl/" target="_blank">Suhrith Parthasarathy and Aju John</a> - on the subject. Want to learn of the difficulties of reporting on spot fixing? Listen to the former editor of Sports Illustrated India <a href="http://thecricketcouch.com/couch-talk/transcript-couch-talk-with-kadambari-murali/" target="_blank">Kadambari Murali</a>. Here is another wonderful interview with <a href="http://thecricketcouch.com/couch-talk/transcript-couch-talk-with-ebba-qureshi/" target="_blank">Ebba Qureshi</a> who is married to the Pakistan and Surrey all-rounder Azhar Mehmood. This interview with <a href="http://www.thecricketmonthly.com/story/762393/-one-has-to-listen-to-that-inner-voice" target="_blank">Saqlain Mushtaq</a> for The Cricket Monthly is, in my opinion, Subash's finest interview with a player.<br />
<br />
Umpires, writers, editors, filmmakers, administrators, franchise executives and cricket fans all appeared on Couch Talk during its five year run. Many of them appeared multiple times. Together, they constitute an immense corpus - a record of the game in this time which only the biggest portals with their massive budgets and writing/reporting staffs can claim to match. If one wanted, for example, to instruct Subash's fellow Americans in the history and the art of cricket, Couch Talk would form the perfect documentary backbone of a first class graduate seminar on the subject.<br />
<br />
Knowing Subash as I do, I'm confident that this is not the end. Cricket is changing in radical and often unwelcome ways. Having called off his regularly scheduled programming, Subash is now freed from having to conduct the bread and butter interviews with the standard issue international cricketer. These were, in my opinion, his least interesting and least significant interviews (having discussed this with him, I know he does not entirely agree). If there is a genuinely significant development in the game, I have no doubt that Subash's interest will be piqued again and Couch Talk will approach and pass its double century in only the most exquisitely crafted singles.<br />
<br />
In anticipation of these, farewell Couch Talk.Kartikeya Datehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03512491310629949028noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21636894.post-49678223373587636762016-03-30T09:39:00.002-07:002016-04-07T20:46:12.119-07:00On Kohli At MohaliLast week, I <a href="http://www.thehindu.com/thread/article8388782.ece">showed</a> that the perception of Virat Kohli as a great finisher as opposed to that of Tendulkar as a great batsman but an ordinary finisher, was an illusion. The difference in their records was an artifact of what batsmen at the other end were producing. Since then, he has scored a fine 82 not out to lead India’s run chase against Australia at Mohali on Sunday.<br />
<br />
The end game in India’s chase developed more or less as Kohli (and every experienced limited overs batsman since the 1970s who has found themselves in a similar position) must have imagined it - a stiff asking rate for a small number of overs. Just how stiff was the required rate over the last 5 overs? India needed 61 to win after the end of the 15th over.<br />
<div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieN-mubBwp840OX4jfrSHtrhrOsj2iwHuPB_JdUYtjBoIUlPqh3CiJEuhyphenhypheny8sopKJgKcXsZHz1km59G4UyAk-8ic3v-DPOFg1DcwCv2wEFK80il7YzFElLNcqwfiDwV3OG7Ydq/s1600/SRBO_1_2.png" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieN-mubBwp840OX4jfrSHtrhrOsj2iwHuPB_JdUYtjBoIUlPqh3CiJEuhyphenhypheny8sopKJgKcXsZHz1km59G4UyAk-8ic3v-DPOFg1DcwCv2wEFK80il7YzFElLNcqwfiDwV3OG7Ydq/s1600/SRBO_1_2.png" /></a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-f234fcca-c861-e47d-9be4-ce7523b7d80e">The figure above shows the average scoring rate for each of the 20 overs over the five most recent IPL seasons depending on the number of wickets which fell in the over. Losing wickets depresses the scoring rate. These are combined figures for teams setting and chasing targets.<br /><br />To evaluate what the average scoring rate is, depending on number of wickets lost during an over, let’s look at the first innings of these games. It is reasonable to assume that here, teams are looking for every last run they can possibly muster. It will provide some idea of what the upper limit for scoring is in the last 5 overs of a T20 innings. The record shows that in the IPL over the last five seasons, the average batting line up facing the average bowling line up scores 57 runs over the last 5 overs of a T20 innings is they don’t lose a wicket in any of these 5 overs. If they lose 1 wicket in each of the 5 overs, they average 40 runs.</span><br />
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-f234fcca-c861-e47d-9be4-ce7523b7d80e"><span style="font-family: "consolas"; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFeCkkKTErJHtIELufmjmxo6vAMGVEQNqnmILgYll2yLcXBNbfr3J1E_X-o2JJzuSY7EJR9GCgBloatWwxwn99lz8PYNsqoYNq2ESfIRMLhuQUTKXCLHQv3piLqLMJw241Qa9f/s1600/SRBO_1.png" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFeCkkKTErJHtIELufmjmxo6vAMGVEQNqnmILgYll2yLcXBNbfr3J1E_X-o2JJzuSY7EJR9GCgBloatWwxwn99lz8PYNsqoYNq2ESfIRMLhuQUTKXCLHQv3piLqLMJw241Qa9f/s1600/SRBO_1.png" /></a></span></span></div>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-f234fcca-c861-e47d-9be4-ce7523b7d80e">
<br /><br />Kohli and Mahendra Singh Dhoni are not your average IPL quality batsmen. They’re accomplished, international quality players. As the Test captain, Dhoni did better with the bat than Ganguly, and the latter was a specialist batsman, while Dhoni was also India’s first choice specialist wicket keeper. Australia’s attack at Mohali was decidedly average overall (by IPL standards, let alone international), and in the spin department, arguably below average.<br /><br />There were, basically, two really good bowlers in the match - Ravichandran Ashwin for India, and Josh Hazlewood for Australia. The others were either veteran T20 specialists (Ashish Nehra), newcomers who may or may not progress towards the more difficult challenges of ODI and Test cricket (Jasprit Bumrah, Adam Zampa, Hardik Pandya, Nathan Coulter-Nile), and all-rounders who would not make most international sides if they were bowlers alone (Ravindra Jadeja, Shane Watson, James Faulkner and Glenn Maxwell).<br /><br />This Australian attack lacked the pace of the Test attacks Kohli mastered in Australia in 2014-15. It lacked the guile of Saeed Ajmal (before his suspension) or the left arm pace of Junaid Khan, whom Kohli has played brilliantly many times. Even the match situation never really got out of hand for India. There was an opening stand, and as bad as Suresh Raina’s form has been, he scored quickly while he was in. India had two players with non-trivial batting credentials to spare when Dhoni scored the winning hit.<br /><br />There is a tendency in cricket to favor batting innings which occur on the winning side. But on batting alone, given the quality of opposition and the match situation Angelo Mathews’ 73 not out on Saturday ought to rank above Kohli’s effort. Sri Lanka’s situation was dire - their target was more difficult, and their top order suffered a genuine collapse. Finally, Sri Lanka do not have anybody comparable to Dhoni in their middle order. Chris Gayle’s remarkable ability to deposit modest bowling out of the ground must also figure in the discussion.<br /><br />61 in the last 5 overs, for this pair, against this bowling, was nowhere near an exceptionally difficult challenge. Australia seemed to play into Kohli’s hands. What is more likely, is that Australia simply did not have the bowling to challenge a top class batsman. They would still get wickets, because it’s the nature of the T20 game. Batsmen take chances which are suicidal by normal batting standards. They take them because a team has 10 wickets to spend over 20 overs, so if, out of half a dozen suicidal chances, 2 result in dismissals but the other 4 go to the boundary, that’s not such a bad return. In an ODI game, it would be a terrible return.<br /><br />Until about the 16th over of the innings, Kohli’s wicket was not challenged by Australia. The field was set back and he was offered an unchallenged run every ball. He took it. Even when Australia did challenge a batsman, it was a gesture rather than a serious ploy. The short-leg and the slip that Yuvraj Singh faced symbolized Australia’s (probably correct) opinion that Yuvraj is past his peak. But even today, the medium pace of Shane Watson and James Faulkner is unlikely to test his defense.<br /><br />The descriptions of Kohli’s innings in the press have been astonishing. It is as though the greatest hits from the cliches of cricket writing over the last 40 years exploded over the page. The facts suggest that it was a professional effort of an elite batsman against a decidedly modest opponent.<br /><br />Privately, most people I speak to admit that they know that these T20 games are not producing cricket of a high quality. They say they know that, for example, Kohli’s 141 on the 5th day at Adelaide was a vastly more difficult examination of his skill, competitive temperament and concentration because it was longer, the conditions were more difficult and the bowling was better and he had to concentrate for far longer. It is obvious, they tell me privately, that not making a mistake for 174 deliveries on that wicket against the serious pace of Mitchell Johnson, the sheer mastery of Ryan Harris, the control of Peter Siddle and the accurate off spin of Nathan Lyon, was, by many orders of magnitude more difficult than the situation Kohli was faced with at Mohali on Sunday. They also say that they understand that the fact that India lost that Adelaide Test will unfairly tarnish the way Kohli’s batting that day will be remembered, however often Ian Chappell reminds us about it on commentary.<br /><br />But this is what they are willing to say privately - that T20 is not merely different, but inferior in quality as a cricketing proposition compared to the longer game. Publicly, the collective roar of acclaim belies occasional the calm, accurate <a href="https://twitter.com/DGoughie/status/714147198603235328">observation</a> made by the former England fast bowler Darren Gough “Average bowling from<a href="https://twitter.com/CAComms"> @CAComms</a> but<a href="https://twitter.com/imVkohli"> @imVkohli</a> was brilliant. Proper player”.<br /><br />In 1998, after Sachin Tendulkar played a couple of innings which were received similarly, the writer C.P. Surendran encapsulated what Sachin Tendulkar meant to India. “Batsmen walk out into the middle alone.” Surendran observed. “Not Tendulkar. Every time Tendulkar walks out to the crease, a whole nation, tatters and all, marches with him to the battle arena. A pauper people pleading for relief, remission from the life-long anxiety of being Indian, by joining in spirit with their visored savior.”<br /><br />Nearly 20 years later, not much has changed has it? Indians are richer, more powerful and perhaps more narrowly nationalistic. There were no national anthems at the beginning of games as there are now in 1998. There was no twitter or facebook or internet comment forum to amplify the march of nationalistic jingoism. But there was, often, the same impatience with confounding detail, the same aversion to complicated reality. We are still, by and large, interested in one thing, and one thing only - winning. Cricket for its own sake does not seem hold popular interest in the way India winning does.<br /><br />Virat Kohli is already a top class batsman who is currently in fantastic form. Nothing he did at Mohali adds to his reputation, or tells us anything about his batting which we did not already know. But the way we reacted to the effort ought to tell us plenty about ourselves, and none of it flatters either the professional cricket reporting community or those among us who would describe themselves as cricket fans.<br /><br />Kohli is only 27. He’s going to get better, and before he’s done, will probably build a truly great body of work which any past all-time great would be proud of. If we don’t start looking soon, we’re going to miss most of it.</span></div>
Kartikeya Datehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03512491310629949028noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21636894.post-58767137320455916942016-01-09T04:29:00.000-08:002016-01-09T04:30:58.458-08:00On The Response To Chris Gayle In The Big Bash League<div>
<i>Here is the full version my post which appeared on Cordon on <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/blogs/content/story/959435.html" target="_blank">January 8, 2016</a>. Cordon's editor reviews posts and makes sure that they adhere to Cricinfo's style guide and other standards and even preferences. The title and the one sentence summary which appears on top of the piece are provided by the editorial staff. This is not a whim on the publication's part. The way titles are composed follows an easily discernible pattern. I've found that the editor's work improves pieces and sharpens them. </i></div>
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<i>In this case, I think it will be useful to present the full post, which is longer (too long to fit Cordon's standard expectation) and in which I've attempted to use rhetorical devices to make points because I had some pre-conceptions about the audience (pre-conceptions which the comments to post on Cricinfo and on Cricinfo's Facebook posting have substantially confirmed, even via the edited version). Basically, my sense was that the mostly male audience would think that this whole matter was blown out of proportion, have great sympathy for Gayle and have no interest whatsoever of the larger structures which enabled this episode.</i></div>
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<i>All good publications have their own voice, and I think this is a great thing, even if, at times, it means that the individual contributor's voice is knocked into shape to fit the publication's voice.</i></div>
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<i>Cordon's editor is aware that I'm posting the full version here. I consulted him before deciding to do so. We went back and forth over this post 3 times. I worked on this after work during this week, and this is the final version that I sent him. My original intention was to write about the official reaction to Gayle and the larger structures which shaped the episode. The news during the week that the authorities were basically going to do nothing about it informed my original idea.</i></div>
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On January 4, 2016, the West Indian opening batsman Chris Gayle decided, in his wisdom, that a live post-match television interview was an appropriate place to make a crude attempt to flirt with Mel Mclaughlin, a television interviewer working for the broadcaster Ten Sports. Mclaughlin is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mel_McLaughlin">an Australian television presenter</a> who specializes in sports programmes.<br /><br />It was a terrible advertisement for the Big Bash League, which has been systematically trying to build an audience among female viewers. The condemnation from the authorities has been swift, and ultimately toothless. Gayle will not be thrown out of the 2015-16 BBL. He won’t even miss a single game. Cricket Australia and the BBL have not sanctioned him at all. His team has fined him $10,000.<br /><br />At first, Mclaughlin’s employer publicized the interview with Gayle on it’s twitter feed with the hashtag #smooth. They deleted this tweet, but <a href="https://twitter.com/lhilakari/status/683986453345386496/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">screenshots</a> are available. Later, <a href="https://twitter.com/tensporttv/status/683966484381474816">they tweeted</a> “Well played to our very own<a href="https://twitter.com/Mel_Mclaughlin"> @Mel_Mclaughlin</a> for staying professional during the interview. What a pro”. Their head of sport David Barham <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/big-bash-league-2015-16/content/story/957951.html">covered up</a> later, saying "We won't be using him in the game anymore. Unless things change in the next few days, it's not happening. It was totally inappropriate behaviour. Mel's a working journalist doing a job."<br /><br />In the commentary box, the first audible reaction was sniggering as they heard Gayle’s words. A few minutes after the interview, a commentator on Australia’s Channel Ten, Mark Howard <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/sport/cricket/big-bash/chris-gayle-comments-cause-uncomfortable-big-bash-interview-with-mel-mclaughlin-20160104-glz986.html#ixzz3wMGXZGVt">said</a> “It must be pointed out that Mel is a wonderful, professional, informed sports broadcaster and a valued member of Network Ten and on reflection, I don't think that's appropriate for what's required in that format….Chris is an entertainer and he's a joker, but I think he probably went a bit too far there. I hope we don't see any of it again, and Mel will be back for her next interview, prepared and ready to go as she always is."<br /><br />The horrific nature of Gayle’s conduct becomes clear when you consider what his position in the evening’s spectacle compared to Mclaughlin. Gayle is one of the international superstars of the BBL, while Mclaughlin has the marginal duty of conducting extremely short celebrity interviews so that viewers get facetime with the big stars of the day.<br /><br />As a result, Gayle’s penalty for misbehaving crudely is barely a rounding error in his annual income. Mclaughlin’s lot, apart from being placed in an impossible situation, was to have her male colleagues in the commentary box snigger when they first heard Gayle’s remarks, and then, via Mark Howard, mildly admonish Gayle for being naughty. As if the fact that Gayle is “an entertainer and a joker” is even remotely relevant to what happened. If anything, Howard’s considered observation that Gayle “probably went a bit too far” ought to get him fired. What was Howard implying? That a more good natured, more humorous, less obnoxious flirtation from Gayle would have been entertaining or funny? What would have happened had Mclaughlin played along? It would have made for “quality TV” I suppose.<br /><br />The initial reaction from the commentary box, Howard’s ridiculous subsequent apologia, the initial description of the interview by Channel Ten on twitter (“smooth”), and their subsequent clumsy attempt to hide behind Mclaughlin’s professionalism reveals just how structurally hostile Mclaughlin’s professional work environment is.<br /><br />What is Ten’s response to the very public initial reaction to Gayle’s performance from the commentary box, which betrayed the fact that the commentators first audible instinct was to think Gayle was being funny, not insulting? Will the person who runs their official twitter feed be fired? Will the commentators in commentary box at the time be fired? Keep in mind that Mclaughlin, whose professional fortitude was so lauded, showed up to work the next day to work with these guys. She may well have taken it in her stride, but does that make it right?<br /><br />Cricket Australia’s boss James Sutherland seems to understand this. He <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/sport/cricket/anyone-who-sees-humour-in-gayle-comments-delusional-says-cricket-australia-boss-james-sutherland-20160105-glzhf2.html">observed</a> that anybody who saw humour in the situation was delusional. He has not ruled out sanctions against Gayle. When and where will the possibility of such sanctions be discussed? Will the professional cricket press (dominated as it is by men) maintain pressure on Sutherland to initiate action against Gayle? If Gayle’s conduct is beyond the pale, then there must appropriate punishment to make the point stick. His team, which clearly has an interest in winning, cannot be expected to fire or suspend him. That must come from the BBL or Cricket Australia, or failing this, from the ICC. Will it? Or will they wait for the season to end so nobody’s interests are hurt? Will Cricket Australia and the BBL to consider sanctions against Channel Ten? Such sanctions would give teeth to Mr. Sutherland’s view of the matter.<br /><br />Perhaps the damning initial reaction from the commentators and Ten’s twitter feed, and the fact that this reaction has not received either official attention or sanction can only be understood by considering the roles women are granted in cricket broadcasts. George Orwell once observed that “Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.” It is a stretch to describe a television sports presenter as a “journalist”. The veteran journalist Sharda Ugra observed <a href="http://thecricketcouch.com/couch-talk/transcript-couch-talk-with-sharda-ugra/">in an interview</a> with Subash Jayaraman about women in cricket broadcasting and journalism, “I don’t think those girls that come in as colour reporters or whatever they are called, come there for a particular purpose of journalism. They come there to be seen. It is a stepping stone for them to get a film or television or a presentation programme.”<br /><br />It is far from clear how well Ugra’s observation, which was made in the context of the Indian Premier League, applies in the Australian context. Women professionals may well be taken more seriously there on the whole, but it is clear from the composition of commentary boxes at the BBL and in the Australian Test and ODI summer, that live cricket commentary is a man’s game. Further, it is no longer even a serious, thinking cricket fan’s game. The journalist Geoff Lemon of The Guardian <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2015/feb/13/channel-nine-destroying-cricket-legacy">described it</a> wonderfully as being “all about being the matiest mates who ever mated.” Marginal interviewing duties are granted to women television presenters who are then described as “journalists”. They exist for the world of TV show-business because, to paraphrase Channel Ten, they provide a “smooth” show.<br /><br />Chris Gayle was wrong. He let himself and others down by showing contempt for the fact that he was professional speaking to another professional. When it comes to evaluating Gayle’s actions, it is irrelevant that the interview was purely about giving viewers facetime with one of the big star performers of the day. It is equally irrelevant that there was no significant information to be exchanged in the interview.<br /><br />It is a truism that celebrity is more profitable than argument on television. As a result, under the show-business of model of presenting sport which all the franchise league broadcasters and organizers have embraced, a cricketing version of the red carpet interview at the Oscars is integral to the presentation. It is a matter of saying the usual routine banalities, to the usual routine questions. Mclaughlin was performing a chore, and as a professional she was doing her duty with the necessary diligence.<br /><br />The structural demands that show-business creates on an individual in Mclaughlin’s position are deeply complicit in what happened here. Cricket Australia, the Big Bash League, and the Melbourne Renegades have played the public relations game to perfection. But their real sympathies are evident from the ridiculously trivial punishment they’ve meted out to Gayle. Gayle would draw a bigger fine and possibly even a suspension for disagreeing vehemently with an Umpire’s LBW decision than he has for violently invading the personal space of a fellow show-business professional on live television.<br /><br />If the only place in the cricket broadcast for women is as a presenter whose tedious duty it is going to be to perform pointless celebrity interviews, then women will never be equal, empowered participants in the sport. There is no shortage of women in the cricket playing world who are expert observers of the game. The Big Bash League or Cricket Australia would do well to insist that some of Mel McLaughlin’s sniggering male colleagues be replaced by some experienced women cricketers who are the cricketing equals of the Waughs and Nicholases. Had there been an experienced woman cricketer in the commentary box as Gayle was being interviewed, would Mark Howard would have gotten away with his ridiculously sexist, patronizing observations?<br /><br />Sadly, one fears that the show will just go on. It is too profitable not to. Women will continue to feature marginally in cricket. The Gayles of cricket will continue be let off by cricket bosses. Perhaps, as a concession to the times, they will add “how terrible!” in the end.Kartikeya Datehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03512491310629949028noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21636894.post-44322637532741080522015-10-10T01:18:00.001-07:002015-10-10T02:18:33.797-07:00Umpiring In The Age Of Cable TV<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In recent years, I’ve been struck by a strange feature of the way cricket is discussed. On the one hand, the discussion of tactics, technique and the playing conditions is more sophisticated than ever before. On the other, the discussion of umpiring is less nuanced than ever before. It is as if there is an emerging consensus in cricket that the game is complicated, but refereeing it is not, and decisions made by umpires would be self-evident to anybody else who might fill their shoes. Why might this be? The simplest explanation is that umpires are rarely present in commentary boxes or on the sports pages to explain what they do, while former players, captains and coaches proliferate. This may explain why the umpire’s point of view is not presented to cricket fans by umpires. But it doesn’t explain why those who do explain the game to us, who otherwise understand its texture so well, seem increasingly lost when it comes to explaining umpiring decisions. This essay is my attempt first, to illustrate this problem, and second, to explain why it exists. I argue that the the game has been enchanted by technology, ultimately to its detriment.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">********************</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Hold on Gunner. I’ll let you know when you are on the screen so you can give your decision.”</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Steve Davis sat in the third umpire’s box as he spoke these words into Ian “Gunner” Gould’s ears. And ours. “You can give your decision now. You are on the screen.” </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gould confirmed a not-out decision he had given a few seconds earlier. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Right-arm-over, fast-medium, to lefty from over-the-wicket. The ball pitched somewhere around the line of leg stump, beat the inside edge of the batsman’s forward stroke and hit the pad at knee height. There wasn’t much movement. If it was going to be LBW, it would be tight – pitched on leg stump, hit off. The batsman was playing forward too. Put together, all this meant that a good umpire might not be convinced that it was out. It was uncontroversially a close appeal, not an obvious one. One defining feature of a close appeal is that partisans on both sides simultaneously think it is obvious. In the moment, a good umpire might be sufficiently convinced to give it out. But then again, maybe not.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Once the decision was made, television commentators had their say. A former batsman said that it should have been given out. Another said the batsman was extremely lucky. Still another said that the technology had vindicated the umpire. There was something for partisans of every stripe, including the new ones on the technophile-luddite fault line. The large range of opinions confirmed that the appeal was marginal. That between the bowler, the batsman, the umpire and laws designed more than 130 years ago, the best that could be said about the matter was: “It could have reasonably gone either way.”</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We have become incapable of living with this conclusion. What’s more, the game has become fearful of it. Considered expert judgement has become anathema and is being replaced by impersonal bureaucratic box-ticking. When reality defies these boxes, cricket has taken to constructing more rules that take autonomy away from the umpire.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This development is not simply the result of a desire for better rulings. The media-administrative-complex which engulfs the playing fields of professional cricket these days can no longer tolerate the idea of any one person, however accomplished, being able to exercise the discretion in a situation which “could go either way”. Discretion is the right to make a choice in a given situation. The range of situations within which umpires are allowed the right to make make a choice is declining. The game is poorer for it. Let me explain why.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">****************************</span></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As I heard umpire Davis’ monotone, I couldn’t help wondering what was going on in his head. Here was an expert looking at a delivery on a television screen. Here was an expert capable of evaluating an umpiring decision better than anybody else in the world. Now he was reduced to ticking off a checklist. “Let’s look at the no-ball. Yes, that looks fine.” “May I see spin-vision when you are ready.” “Lets see the ball-tracker when you are ready.” “Pitched outside leg.”</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A part of me wanted umpires Davis and Gould to discuss Gould’s original decision. Not because the ball-tracker showed the ball pitching a hair’s breadth outside leg stump, but because it was marginal based on the available replay, regardless of what the ball-tracker said. I wanted these two veteran umpires to explain to the world how an </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">umpiring judgment</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is arrived at. I would have given a lot just hear Gould say, “Steve, I thought it was a close shout, but there was just too much going on with where it pitched and where it was heading for me to be certain.” And for Steve to reply, “You’d have to guess correctly on too many 50-50 calls in order to be sure about that one. If you weren’t sure about any one of them, I agree with the not-out decision.”</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gould’s decision would still have been correct even if the ball-tracker had shown the ball to be pitching a hairs breadth to the right, on leg stump. This is because we are dealing with two methods of evaluating the course of the ball which are fundamentally incompatible. If you think about it, the ball-tracker’s predictive element performs three basic steps. The unit of the ball-tracker's results is distance.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">1. The ball-tracker estimates where the ball will cross the plane of the stumps.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">2. It evaluates whether or not this location meets a condition. The condition could be "pitched outside leg-stump", or "pitched on leg stump" or "hitting leg stump" or "hitting 30% of leg-stump" and so on. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">3. Then the ICC-specified conclusion based on the ball-tracker's evaluation is provided to viewers. At the stumps, for example, the options are "Hitting", "Missing" and "Umpire's Call". The conclusion "Missing" is self-evident. The conclusion "Hitting" or "Umpire's Call" depends on a standard set by the ICC. Currently, the standard for "hitting" is "50% of the ball hitting at least 50% of the stump." Anything which lies between missing and hitting, falls under “Umpire’s Call”.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The unit of the umpire's work is not distance. It is categories. Umpires do not conclude "Missing by 2mm" or "Missing by 3/8th of an inch". They pursue factual observations. "Tall batsman", "Hit above the knee roll", "Pitched outside off, impact on middle-and-leg", "batsman well-forward.", "batsman batting outside his crease.", "batsman caught on the crease", and so on. It can be observed that umpires systematically give more LBWs which are tight on leg-stump when the batsman is playing back, than they do when a batsman is playing forward. Umpires put these observations together to reach one of two conclusions "sure" or "not sure".</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So Gould, making his decision in real time, would be correct to decide "not sure" for a ball which pitched (according to the ball-tracker) one hair's breadth outside leg-stump, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">for a ball which pitched (according to the ball-tracker) one hair's breadth to the off-side of leg-stump. The difference is infinitesimal. If Umpires are going to be judged to have made a mistake for being unable to discriminate between these two cases, then no human being has a chance of ever being a good umpire. More importantly, to expect umpires to evaluate LBWs like a ball-tracker is to misunderstand not only umpires, ball-tracking and the LBW law, but also the very nature of evidence and proof.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Umpire Gould once found himself at the other end of a review. Think of the LBW decision he gave against Sachin Tendulkar in the World Cup Semi Final at Mohali in 2011. There was nothing obviously wrong with the decision, but Tendulkar reviewed it (his wicket was important to his team). The review went against Gould by a hair’s breadth. One hair to the left, and it would have been clipping leg-stump and classed as ‘Umpire’s Call’. Tendulkar would have been Out. In the moment, Gould was convinced that Ajmal had trapped Tendulkar. Was it Out? Arguably yes. Before Tendulkar reviewed Gould’s decision, even Ravi Shastri conceded in the commentary box that the appeal looked very close.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="343px;" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/ZsAETmpJthqv5RcwjD7czwz1I2c5Z53ZIeWYJ_4z4UtDjpUciqxuxij7rLFNRDHXuKuQnnYZkX5UFOMWKiUkZzXiHrAOaR1hn-Q-dYcvW2DETkprLWAKeT1EzDaLKE4XqG0t7TQ" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="614px;" /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After the game, there were conspiracy theories about the ball-tracker being doctored. This is not surprising given the stakes. Hawkeye Innovations Ltd., the company which makes Hawkeye, issued two documents clarifying the decision and dismissing these conspiracy theories. There was talk of how Tendulkar had been saved by technology. While the appeal was being made, commentators were more or less unanimous that it was very close. This is commentary jargon for “batsman will be lucky to survive.” After the review, the commentators turned their attention to the spectacle of the big wicket being reversed in India’s favor because of Hawkeye. There was very little discussion about Leg Before Wicket.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It wasn’t always so. Before the ball-tracker provided its box-ticking apparatus, commentary about umpiring decisions used to be enriching and informative. Sachin Tendulkar was given out LBW ducking against Glenn McGrath in the 2nd innings at the Adelaide Oval in 1999 by umpire Daryl Harper. The LBW appeal is </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47jhkGWbt5E" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">available on YouTube</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in edited form thanks to </span><a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/697347.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rob Moody</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">’s superb archive.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">McGrath delivered a short ball which pitched outside off stump and moved inwards. Tendulkar ducked and turned his back to the ball. He was hit on the left shoulder. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ian Chappell was on commentary with Sunil Gavaskar and even as the Australians appealed, observed “You don’t want to be ducking too much here at Adelaide..”. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Umpire Harper was making up his mind and as he motioned to raise the finger, Chappell continued, “And he’s been given out LBW to a ball that didn’t rise. (pause) I think it got Tendulkar on the arm, but obviously Umpire Harper thinks that it was right in front.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gavaskar was on commentary alongside Chappell. His first reaction came a few seconds after Chappell had called the delivery. “An attempted bouncer from Glenn McGrath. He’s got that fielder at forward short-leg and there’s one at backward short-leg as well. And, it’s hit him on the shoulder. Took a long time, Daryl Harper, to think about it. And then [gave] the Indian captain out, Leg Before Wicket. He’s got a duck. Big disappointment for him as well as for the crowd here. India four for twenty seven.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We heard these first thoughts on our screens as we saw the dismissal live. Tendulkar pursed his lips and looked, not at the umpire, but down at the wicket. The sort of glance a batsman gives when he knows he’s been done in by the pitch. He was not wrong. The ball had misbehaved by about 3 feet in the vertical dimension. Tendulkar walked away ruefully.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now, this was a controversial decision. But the controversy was fully described by Ian Chappell during play. Nothing that was said after the game added any information or insight to the issue. Here is Chappell’s comment (made as the delivery was replayed on our screen) in full:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Dangerous LBW decision for an Umpire to give because there are so many moving parts. It’s not like the batsman being hit on the pad. There’s a lot of movement when the batsman’s ducking like that. It’s hit him up under the back of the arm. (pauses as the ball leaves McGrath’s hand and reaches Tendulkar) Oh, it’s not the easiest decision to give at all. Because with all those things moving, you’ve got to be very sure.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">During the recap next day, it fell to Richie Benaud to verify the decision. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“And then, Tendulkar. This was contro.. it’s been made to be controversial, but the shots I saw yesterday indicate to me that the ball definitely wouldn’t have gone over the stumps. There’s a very good picture this morning in the local papers and in papers around the world.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The comments by Benaud and Chappell, and Gavaskar’s wonderfully disciplined observations on live commentary illustrate the complexity of the decision. Of course, each of them, and probably every other player and umpire who was alive has an opinion about that decision, and must have, at one point or another, expressed it. On Cricinfo (as it was then), Partab Ramchand wrote a </span><a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/content/story/78982.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">wonderful short article</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> on the reaction to this dismissal. Ramchand wrote</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“There are two ways of looking at Tendulkar's dismissal. One view is that the ball was going over the stumps and so he was not out. The other view is that the ball would have hit the stumps and so he was out. It's as simple as that.”</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The live commentary by Chappell and Gavaskar is much richer than that. Chappell was trying to describe the circumstances which shape whether or not an umpire is able to give an LBW decision to the bowler. Benaud (much like Ramchand) gave his view after the fact, on whether or not Umpire Harper was right.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Chappell’s point, had he made it to Benaud, would have been, Umpire Harper may well have been proven right in the end, but it was still a bold decision to give it out given what he had to go on. Chappell’s point was not to say that Harper was wrong. It was to say “He may well be right, but I fail to see how he can know for sure. Bold decisions imply at least some element of guesswork. I’m not sure that that’s a good way to give LBWs. Having said that, in the moment, he may well have been sure and may well have been right.”</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If Gould’s decision against Tendulkar was arguably the right one even if it was reversed, Harper’s decision against Tendulkar was arguably wrong, even if, a ball-tracker (had one been available) had returned three reds and confirmed it. The best that can be said is, that in the moment, Umpire Harper seemed to be sure that it was Out and ruled accordingly.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Chappell’s commentary was exemplary. He did not simply condemn or praise the umpire, he actually explained why he thought it was a bold decision to give. Not only that, Gavaskar and Chappell both alluded to the field, to the line of attack, to an explanation of why Tendulkar ducked and why it was a bad option. The complex context they built up provided a rich picture to anyone who was prepared to listen.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the 2015 World Cup quarter final, instead of a discussion about a subtle umpiring </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">judgement </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">by two of foremost experts in the contemporary game, we heard Ian Gould and Steve Davis telling us about the superficially obvious pictures on our screen.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How often have you seen it? An interestingly close LBW decision gets an ex-player in the commentary box all excited. Then the bureaucratic box-ticking of DRS takes over and thinking stops.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">**********************************</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You may well ask if some umpiring decisions really are as nuanced as I’m suggesting they are. What if the ball-tracker is right, and using its superior accuracy to verify the umpire is in fact justified. Technology is not just used for LBWs (even though a high majority of player reviews are for LBWs). It is also used for catches. Surely, in the case of catches, where only events which actually take place are at issue, the technology can do better than an umpire.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Perhaps so. The question of the technology being “better” than the umpire is a vexed one. As we saw with the three LBW decisions i’ve discussed so far, using the ball-tracker to verify the umpire’s work, even if we assume that the ball-tracker is objectively both more precise and more accurate than an umpire, is of questionable merit. If we look under the hood of the ball-tracker and other technologies, matters become even murkier. There are limits to the extent to which we can do this given that the technologies are proprietary. Let’s consider the ball-tracker first.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The ICC is responsible for the adoption of ball-trackers for umpiring. Within the ICC, the Cricket Committee is charged with considering this question. Nearly 7 years after the ball-tracker was first used under DRS (or UDRS as it was known then), the technology has not been field tested by the ICC. The International Tennis Federation, which also uses technology developed by Hawkeye Innovations (which is one of the vendors of ball-tracking technology in cricket), has </span><a href="http://www.itftennis.com/media/118786/118786.pdf" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">an elaborate protocol</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> for field evaluation line-call technology. If nothing else, the detail with which it has been laid out for the public to see suggests that the ITF wants people to believe that it takes testing seriously.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img alt="Screenshot from 2015-04-28 23:51:18.png" height="693px;" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/Z0nzCD2kjUgyDVQmjKL3c_j4nU3jRsTEs1KuSp8VqIDpFxtUh05Hl6oyL7730wM0qlpZRV9z_IQyMdWXfFoJxEuOQQoF3A10GwTfYom4ChNUPV71KDkYXbtDkFpqeelE6XO1sHg" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="473px;" /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Consider the following episode from the ICC’s treatment of ball-tracker testing from 2012 as a point of comparison. The ICC commissioned Dr. Edward Rosten, a Cambridge expert in Computer Vision, to evaluate the ball-tracker. In a media release dated June 1, 2012, the ICC reported the following:</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Following some concerns about the accuracy and reliability of the ball tracking technology, ICC engaged Dr Edward Rosten, a former Cambridge University lecturer and an expert in this field, to provide an independent evaluation of the accuracy of the two ICC DRS accredited ball tracking suppliers.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The committee was presented with a provisional report covering a review of ball trackings provided in the recent South Africa v Australia series. In the 14 examined sequences Dr Rosten said that his company's results were in 100 per cent agreement with the ball tracking system in use in that series.”</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“The Cricket Committee re-iterated its view that, depending on the ability to finance the technology, that DRS should be implemented universally in Test and ODI cricket.”</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The ICC asked Dr. Rosten to examine 2 accredited vendors. He reported back to them provisionally about one of the two. Based on this, the ICC recommended that DRS should be implemented “universally” - that both vendors products should be used even though only one had been evaluated. I asked the ICC about this in an email at the time. Their response was a remarkable feat of bureaucratese in which they sought to separate the ICC from its cricket committee.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“It is correct that the Rosten report considered by the Cricket Committee only covered one of the two accredited ball tracking systems. It was a provisional report. Dr Rosten is still busy with his research on the other accredited supplier and will furnish ICC with a final report once he is finished. The Cricket Committee recommended the mandatory use of the DRS on the basis that accredited ball tracking suppliers will be used. The Cricket Committee does not itself accredit the ball tracking companies. This is ICC’s responsibility (in practice, the ICC cricket operations department). At this stage, two ball tracking companies are accredited by ICC.”</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This problem is exacerbated by the fact that the two vendors of ball-tracking use different methods to produce the ball-track, and have disagreed publicly about the merits of each other’s methods</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. What’s more, they disagree about the extent to which ball-tracking should be used to determine the predictive path in LBW decisions</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Paul Hawkins of Hawkeye told me in an interview in 2011, and said again in 2013, that cricket had adopted ball-tracking without adequate field testing</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My point here is not to place the ICC in the dock about its cavalier attitude towards scientific testing. What I’ve recounted here is old news. It may well be, just as it was with Daryl Harper’s LBW against Tendulkar in 1999, that the ICC has guessed right about the reliability of ball-tracking. My point is only to say that we don’t know how good ball-tracking is in the specific context of cricket, in which, unlike other sports like baseball or tennis, a counterfactual has to be evaluated (“if the pad was not in the way, would the ball would have gone on to hit the stumps?”). Using DRS the way it does, the ICC is engaged in bad science.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Like ball-tracking all other technology which is part of DRS today came into the game as a feature of the broadcast. Even today, the contract to provide the technology exists between the vendor of the technology and the broadcaster. The beautiful beguiling pictures are a mixture of what looks good on the broadcast and what is scientifically sound. That’s the polite way to put it. The pictures are bad science masquerading as accurate descriptions of reality. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To this day, I have never seen a snickometer with units marked along the vertical axis. Nor have I ever seen any data which might help viewers (and umpires) distinguish systematically between types of contact (bat on ball, glove on ball, bat on pad, bat on ground and so on) by sound signature. The tolerance of snicko is not revealed to viewers either. What is the minimum sound that snicko can record? If snicko doesn’t record something, does it mean there was no contact? Or does it only mean that there was not enough contact for snicko to be activated?</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Absolute silence exists only in theory and there are limits to the extent to which a signal can be separated from noise. There is, doubtless, a lot of optimization which has gone into the development of the system, but the presentation of the results on TV is poor. This is not a trivial problem. A brief digression into swimming may be useful here.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the 2008 Olympics, Michael Phelps won the 100m Butterfly final by 0.01 seconds over Milorad Cavic of Serbia. Later, Omega, the company which provided the timing system at the Olympics, clarified that while Cavic touched the wall first, Phelps was the first to touch with sufficient pressure to stop the clock.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> In swimming races, the clock is stopped by the swimmers, not by officials (whose only duty is to monitor legality of stroke and turn).</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A similar problem exists in cricket in compounded fashion. When umpires use the snickometer technology, they typically use it along with other evidence - visual evidence of a deflection, or of distance between and ball at the right moment in time. Matters get even more complicated when snicko and hotspot are both used. Snicko uses a sound signature to record contact and hotspot uses a heat signature. It’s not clear that the minimum contact each method can detect is the same. Unsurprisingly, in many instances one shows contact while the other shows nothing. Other problems about hotspot have been reported as well</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">All this suggests that introducing technology into umpiring introduces new problems. But cricket today adds a special problem to all these difficulties. It is that all this technology has meant that commentators are no longer experts when it comes to umpiring. How could they be? Understanding the ins and outs of ball-tracking, heat signatures, sound signatures and their many combinations would require a substantial understanding of applied mathematics, or at least, of the nature of statistical evidence at the very least. A more general understanding of the nature of scientific evidence, perhaps the ability to discuss Popper, Kuhn, Feyerabend and Polanyi intelligently might be useful as well. This is material which most engineers would have to work at learning, let alone professional cricketers turned commentators who have gotten where they have by being dedicated to the game in single minded fashion for most of their lives.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">*************************************</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One commentator I spoke to said that commentators “praise umpires when they are right, and criticize them when they are wrong.” This seemed to be a fair approach to this commentator. This is a dangerously simplistic approach which would justify nearly anything that is said or done under the guise of criticism. In the case of both players and umpires, critics have a duty to give fair respect to their expertise. When you criticize an expert action, you have to first describe that expert action and demonstrate that you understand the terms of that expertise, not just the results of such actions. Commentators have a duty to actually describe what the umpire might have been trying to do. What facts were available to the umpire and how might the umpire have put them together? What did the umpire miss? Or was it simply a very difficult appeal?</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What I have described in the previous paragraph is not that complicated. Replace umpiring with say, opening batting on a green wicket, and the same commentator would be capable of endless nuance. We would be treated to a disquisition on footwork, on late adjustments with the wrists, on what it really means to see the ball early and play it late and many other things. We might hear how all these points about footwork and still heads are really about one thing - balance. Test players in the commentary box rarely “criticize batsmen when they get out, and praise batsmen when they score runs”. What’s more, if the commentator I spoke to heard a lay journalist speaking about a batsman’s innings on that green wicket in the same cavalier fashion, saying something along the lines of “When the batsman fails, he deserves blame, just as he gets praise when he makes a hundred.”, we would probably see a disapproving frown on his face about the journalist’s ignorance.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The irony in all this is that in an age in which umpiring has been closed off to commentary, the evidence from DRS suggests that today elite umpires are highly competent experts who rarely make mistakes. This is so not because of technology, but simply because umpires are better paid, better trained and the best ones do the job full time. The ICC, which seems to be so cavalier about adopting technology, tracks the performance of elite Umpires in painstaking detail. Every single decision is recorded. Under the laws of cricket, a decision is said to be made whenever an appeal is answered. Any appeal must either be upheld or be denied. The ICC classifies every appeal into one of three categories - “easy”, “hard” and “very hard”. For many dismissals, like clean bowled, or an outfield catch or even most slip-catches, no appeal is answered. Batsmen walk for such obvious dismissals. Umpires do not have to make decisions in these cases.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">According to the ICC’s official figures, Umpires made 663 decisions during the 2015 World Cup. Of these, 583 were made on the field and players reviewed 84 out of the 541 reviewable decisions (or 1 in 5 decisions). 20 reviews were successful. All in all, one in every 27 umpiring decisions was reversed.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-left: 0pt;">
<table style="border-collapse: collapse; border: none; width: 624px;"><colgroup><col width="*"></col><col width="*"></col><col width="*"></col><col width="*"></col><col width="*"></col></colgroup><tbody>
<tr style="height: 0px;"><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1px; border-left: solid #000000 1px; border-right: solid #000000 1px; border-top: solid #000000 1px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Type of Decision</span></div>
</td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1px; border-left: solid #000000 1px; border-right: solid #000000 1px; border-top: solid #000000 1px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Total</span></div>
</td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1px; border-left: solid #000000 1px; border-right: solid #000000 1px; border-top: solid #000000 1px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Umpire Review</span></div>
</td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1px; border-left: solid #000000 1px; border-right: solid #000000 1px; border-top: solid #000000 1px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Player Review</span></div>
</td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1px; border-left: solid #000000 1px; border-right: solid #000000 1px; border-top: solid #000000 1px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Reversal due to Player Review</span></div>
</td></tr>
<tr style="height: 0px;"><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1px; border-left: solid #000000 1px; border-right: solid #000000 1px; border-top: solid #000000 1px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">LBW</span></div>
</td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1px; border-left: solid #000000 1px; border-right: solid #000000 1px; border-top: solid #000000 1px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">312</span></div>
</td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1px; border-left: solid #000000 1px; border-right: solid #000000 1px; border-top: solid #000000 1px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">0</span></div>
</td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1px; border-left: solid #000000 1px; border-right: solid #000000 1px; border-top: solid #000000 1px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">57</span></div>
</td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1px; border-left: solid #000000 1px; border-right: solid #000000 1px; border-top: solid #000000 1px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">8</span></div>
</td></tr>
<tr style="height: 0px;"><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1px; border-left: solid #000000 1px; border-right: solid #000000 1px; border-top: solid #000000 1px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Caught</span></div>
</td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1px; border-left: solid #000000 1px; border-right: solid #000000 1px; border-top: solid #000000 1px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">229</span></div>
</td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1px; border-left: solid #000000 1px; border-right: solid #000000 1px; border-top: solid #000000 1px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">8</span></div>
</td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1px; border-left: solid #000000 1px; border-right: solid #000000 1px; border-top: solid #000000 1px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">27</span></div>
</td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1px; border-left: solid #000000 1px; border-right: solid #000000 1px; border-top: solid #000000 1px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">12</span></div>
</td></tr>
<tr style="height: 0px;"><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1px; border-left: solid #000000 1px; border-right: solid #000000 1px; border-top: solid #000000 1px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Run Out</span></div>
</td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1px; border-left: solid #000000 1px; border-right: solid #000000 1px; border-top: solid #000000 1px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">34 (on field)</span></div>
</td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1px; border-left: solid #000000 1px; border-right: solid #000000 1px; border-top: solid #000000 1px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">55</span></div>
</td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1px; border-left: solid #000000 1px; border-right: solid #000000 1px; border-top: solid #000000 1px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">0</span></div>
</td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1px; border-left: solid #000000 1px; border-right: solid #000000 1px; border-top: solid #000000 1px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">0</span></div>
</td></tr>
<tr style="height: 0px;"><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1px; border-left: solid #000000 1px; border-right: solid #000000 1px; border-top: solid #000000 1px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Stumped</span></div>
</td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1px; border-left: solid #000000 1px; border-right: solid #000000 1px; border-top: solid #000000 1px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">8 (on field)</span></div>
</td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1px; border-left: solid #000000 1px; border-right: solid #000000 1px; border-top: solid #000000 1px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">16</span></div>
</td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1px; border-left: solid #000000 1px; border-right: solid #000000 1px; border-top: solid #000000 1px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">0</span></div>
</td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1px; border-left: solid #000000 1px; border-right: solid #000000 1px; border-top: solid #000000 1px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">0</span></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Total On-field decisions: 583</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Total Umpire Reviews: 80</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Total Player Reviews: 84</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Total Successful Player Reviews: 20</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Total Errors: 32</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Errors not corrected because Review was unavailable: 2</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Errors not corrected because Review was available but not taken: 10</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Total Errors during Umpire Review: 1</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Total Errors during Player Review: 0</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Correct Easy Decisions: 263/263 (100%)</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Correct Hard Decisions: 260/279 (93%)</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Correct Very Hard Decisions: 28/41 (68%)</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The data shows that players are wrong three times out of four when they use the player review. In 48 matches (1 match was washed out), there were 22 errors, of which 20 were corrected because of the player review. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In these numbers are instances in which the technology, thanks to the arbitrary but ultimately wise concept of “Umpire’s Call”, gives some limited leeway to the umpire’s judgment. There are other instances in which , much like Ian Gould in the 2011 World Cup Semi Final against Tendulkar, an umpire is deemed to have made a mistake by a fraction of a centimeter. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">*****************************************</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Given the evidence of the last 8 years, the idea that the ICC has implemented DRS simply because it wants to eliminate obvious umpiring mistakes is implausible. By definition, obvious mistakes ought to be obviously evident. If it takes a combination of arbitrary thresholds defined by the ICC and a suite of technologies compromised by the imperative to produce imprecise but beautiful pictures to say “maybe the umpire wrong by a fraction of a millimetre”, then clearly, the umpire is not obviously wrong. Further, a system which requires, as it turns out, that 4 unsuccessful reviews be made for each successful review has to be bad at correcting umpiring decisions, especially when the same system shows that the umpires are already right at least 9 times out of 10.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">No, the only explanation for the persistence of DRS in its current form, other than bureaucratic, institutional inertia, is that DRS was designed primarily to create rules and systems to limit umpiring discretion. Its chief ambition is to manufacture truth without anybody being responsible for exercising expert judgment.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Why did this happen? Here is a brief sketch of an answer in conclusion to this essay.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The cable broadcast, which brought so much money into the game, also brought new gadgetry into it. Umpires began to look foolish as their rare mistakes were magnified thanks to increasingly partisan commentary and forensically sophisticated gadgetry. But far more significant, were the ways in which the gadgetry provided ammunition for partisan commentators (partisanship being a professional necessity for commentator employed by cable TV), both during the game and in later accounts, to challenge the discretion of umpires in situations where no obvious mistakes were evident. The set of obvious umpiring mistakes varied for each side. For the first time, this set came to be systematically built on the broadcast. The pressure on umpires and the ICC built up over time and could have only one consequence, given the game’s dependence on revenue from television - the gadgetry would be invited inside the tent. Under the circumstances, ‘Umpire’s Call’ is a sophisticated compromise which preserves the umpire’s discretion to a limited extent even if it disfigures it in the process.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; line-height: 1.2; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Not surprisingly, ‘Umpire’ Call’ is also the one part of DRS which attracts the most adverse attention from commentators. Scrutiny of the technology is beyond them. Should teams lose a review is “Umpire’s Call” is returned? How many unsuccessful reviews should be permitted per innings? These two questions form the universe of things commentators can argue about with reference to DRS today. The second question is not particularly interesting. But the first one does get to the heart of the matter. It effectively asks whether players should be penalized for questioning the umpire’s discretion and failing? Many distinguished former players like Shane Warne and Ian Botham think that players shouldn’t be penalized for this. Their view results inescapably in the argument that in a system ostensibly designed to correct obvious mistakes, players who request reviews in situation where no obvious mistake has been made should not be penalized.</span><br /><br />It is said that big decisions should never been taking when one is scared or angry. DRS is a system born in fear. It is as much about media-management as it is about umpiring. It is an effort to produce truth without judgment. In the process it has muted expertise and impoverished cricket as a venue for thoughtful observation. The game and its fans are poorer for it.</div>
Kartikeya Datehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03512491310629949028noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21636894.post-35869372655715270572015-09-08T06:18:00.000-07:002015-09-08T06:57:51.171-07:00Ben Stokes Was Out Under Law 37Ben Stokes was given out Obstructing the Field under Law 37 in the 2nd One Day International at Lord’s on <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/the-ashes-2015/engine/match/743979.html">September 5, 2015</a>. The decision caused great controversy and made headlines. Some reports even suggested that Australia’s win had been “overshadowed” by “drama” or “controversy”. In fact, there is no controversy. The law is clear, as are the amendments to the law and guidance provided by the ICC’s cricket committee about how the law should be interpreted. Disagreement in this instance exists only because some people don’t know the law. <br />
<br />
The decision against Stokes was governed by 2 sets of laws. Law 37 defines “Obstructing the field” as a mode of dismissal. And 2.4 of Appendix 6 of the 2014-15 ICC Playing Handbook. This is the rule which governs how Law 37 is to be evaluated in the case of an Umpire Review.<br />
<br />
Several facts have to be considered.<br />
<br />
1. The actions of the on-field umpires reveal that they were not sure that Stokes was out, but leaned towards not-out (Eoin Morgan revealed this after the match). This is normal in the case of an “Umpire Review”. In a “Player Review” under DRS, the Umpire makes a final decision on the field which the players then have the option of reviewing. In the “Umpire Review” a final decision is withheld, but a “soft” decision is made to give guidance to the TV Umpire.<br />
<br />
2. When the TV Umpire reviewed it, his decision was governed by clause 2.4. The original “soft” decision by the umpires on the field would have stood only if the TV Umpire reached found that the TV evidence was “inconclusive”. This is what the rule specifies and there is no reason to think that the umpire did not follow the rule.<br />
<br />
3. In <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci-icc/content/story/520924.html">2011</a> the ICC made Obstructing the Field stricter by changing the way it was to be interpreted by Umpires. According to the new interpretation, the batsman could be given out Obstructing the Field even for changing direction while running in response to the throw. The ICC’s June 27, 2011 media release stated that the ICC had decided that “batsmen should be dismissed (obstructing the field) if they change their course while running to prevent a run-out chance”<br />
<br />
In the flurry of reaction from reporters and former players (<a href="http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/cricket/34165449">BBC</a>, <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/the-ashes-2015/content/story/918081.html">ESPNCricinfo</a>, <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/cricket/englands-ben-stokes-responds-obstructing-6392081">Mirror</a>, <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/cricket/international/england/11846891/England-vs-Australia-match-report-Stokes-out-for-obstructing-the-field-as-row-overshadows-Australias-win.html">Telegraph</a>, <a href="http://www.cricketcountry.com/news/brendon-mccullum-says-steven-smith-might-live-to-regret-obstructing-the-field-dismissal-against-ben-stokes-326841">Cricket Country</a>, <a href="http://www.skysports.com/cricket/news/12351/9980755/ben-stokes-obstructing-the-field-decision-strange">Sky Sports</a> and <a href="https://news.google.com/news/story?ncl=dNnCgaeZXTr4-cM-fW9S9x_YAv4SM&q=Ben+Stokes+obstructing+the+field&lr=English&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCoQqgIwAGoVChMIpIShlrrnxwIVxLQUCh1uNQxA">dozens of others</a>), no reference to the ICC’s amendment of 2011 is to be found. Ben Stokes’ comments on the matter have been contradictory. ESPNCricinfo’s story about Stokes’ reaction starts with the following amazing sentence<br />
<br />
<i>England allrounder <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/england/content/player/311158.html">Ben Stokes</a> has insisted there was no wilful intent when he gloved away Mitchell Starc's throw at the stumps at Lord's and that he was purely thinking of protecting himself.</i><br />
<br />
So Stokes was trying to protect himself from being hit by a cricket ball, but only accidentally thrust his hand out to stop the ball!<br />
<br />
The point here is not to poke fun at Stokes. Its entirely reasonable to think that someone in his position, caught 5 feet outside the crease after having hit the ball back to the bowler and finding the alert bowler trying to throw the stumps down with him in the way, would instinctively brace himself to be hit by the ball. Its irrelevant whether or not Stokes was actually trying to prevent being run out by stopping the ball.<br />
<br />
If Stokes is in the way of the stumps and the ball hits him, and there is any evidence at all that Stokes changed direction and thereby interrupted the path of the ball, then he’s out, no matter what his intentions.<br />
<br />
Evasive action must involve trying to get out of the way of the ball. In this specific instance, the facts are as follows:<br />
<ol>
<li>Stokes (left hand batsman) hit a ball back to the bowler (left arm over) down the off side of the pitch.</li>
<li>The bowler threw the ball at the stumps.</li>
<li>Stokes, in the process of turning back towards the stumps, slapped the ball away with his gloves.</li>
<li>The ball was not thrown back at Stokes, it was thrown back at the Stumps.</li>
</ol>
Under Law 37 (keeping in mind the 2011 guidance), this has to be considered a case of Stokes setting off for a run and getting back into his crease to avoid being run out. In the process of trying to get back into his crease, Stokes tried to stop the ball. Therefore he’s out.<br />
<br />
Was Stokes unlucky? Yes. In the same way that a non-striker who is run out at the non-striker’s end after a straight drive deflects off the bowler and hits the stumps is unlucky. He was unlucky that his follow through dragged him so far out of his crease. He was unlucky that the ball was hit back to Starc at a height which was perfect for Starc to make a quick throw at the stumps. All these things happened too quickly for them to be deliberate either.<br />
<br />
But was the decision correct? Under Law 37 it was, especially keeping in mind the 2011 guidelines which have made the interpretation in favor of the fielding side. The worse that can be said about the decision that it could, under certain intepretations of what Stokes did, be considered<br />
<br />
What of the reaction? The fact that dozens of eminent, professionally employed, full-time cricket reporters did not even mention an amendment to the interpretation of the rule which was made just 4 years ago (while nearly every story includes the text of Law 37, often with very nice formatting), does not say very good things about these people’s professional abilities. Does it?Kartikeya Datehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03512491310629949028noreply@blogger.com2