The Ashes

I suspect that most EvC participants may not even know what "the Ashes" are. But I have been keenly following the cricket and made it to the pub at lunchtime to catch Englands victory today. Great stuff!!Any Aussies in the house? Anybody actually at Lords today?For the uninitiated The Ashes - WikipediaLike I said, I suspect that few EvC participants will know or particularly care but there might be one fellow fanatic out there......?

Poor you!! It is the best sport in the world!! Here in England/Britain it is the same. Since 2005 it is only on sattellite premium pay channels. This means I cannot watch at home but does give me an excuse to go to the pub. So it is not all bad....... A test cricket match lasts five days. In some instances a draw is the most tense result imaginable. "Saving the game" can be as important as, if not more so, than winning (much like debating I guess).So 5 five day matches over the course of the summer. You get to know all the characters involved. Each match, each day in many respects, is like the unfoldfing of a dramatic story. Rivalries both individual and team come into play. Some players crumble under the pressure. Some excel. It is as extreme a test of character as one can imagine. In short it is the epitome of what sport is all about.But no "fly by night" watcher of sport is going to get all that by watching 30 minutes or so of something they don'y really understand. Finding a knowledgeable enthusiast and getting them to pay while you watch is prbably the best (and cheapest) way for you to discover the sport.

Well boo sucks to the inter-galactic community!! That is what I say. Wadda they know anyway?The Earth as a planetary entity could be shunned for many things perpetrated by my nation of birth and home. But cricket is most definitely not one of them!!On a different note I have always been intrigued by the idea that I communicate (ir)regularly with an SF writer. Can you point me to any of your work online or otherwise? If not for reasons of personal obscurity or whatever else that is fine. I just thought I would ask.

I am a theist after all!!!

Fair comment. I had never thought of that potential confusion!! Test cricket - WikipediaIt seems that, as I suspected I am all but alone at EvC as a "disciple" (according to Granny M anyway) of the great game. Not even an Australian to gloat at!!

Two matches played. 1 - 0 to England so far. 3 matches left to play. The next match starts next Thursday.Englands best player, a blood and guts type fast bowling all rounder, is being held together with sticky tape and glue for this series alone. After this ashes series he will have to retire from all test cricket at the age of 32 due to his body literally collapsing under the exertions of repeatedly propelling a heavy wooden ball at 90+ MPH. Meanwhile the Aussies best fast bowler is set to return from injury for the last three matches.England lead the series but it all to play for.

As well as being very probably considered unsporting I suspect that whilst reducing the body strain and injury potential for bowlers, it might result in some career ending injuries for batsman. No. That's just cricket. But it is quite funny nevertheless.Latest news is that Englands best batsman (Kevin Pieterson) is out for the rest of the series with an achilles tendon injury. England has two genuinely world class players. One is out for the count and the other is falling apart at the seams. I am losing hope of winning the ashes and there hasn't even been a ball bowled since Englands last victory.

You may just have invented "Bowlerball". The violent upgrade to Rollerball (the film from the 70s for those who have no idea what my pun is alluding to). That was a little tooooo clever!! It ain't over till the fat lady calls "teatime"Yes in cricket they do still call the two daily intervals "lunch" and "tea" respectively. I realise this must seem very "twee".

Yes. But I know little about it. The England womens team I believe is quite good. But nobody pays it much attention. I think the "male" ability to absorb oneself in something to the exclusion of absoluetly all else (eating, sleeping, family, friends etc. etc.) whilst inarguably a source of conflict is much underrated. Many great achievements in art, science, literature etc. etc. would arguably be non-existant without the ability of the individual in question to forsake any pretense at multitasking and just "focus". And that is what is so funny about the image (and terminology) Vs the reality of the modern game. The notion that hard arsed ultra competetive professional Aussie sportsmen (for example) stand round sipping tea and nibbling biscuits whilst congratulating their opponents on putting on a "jolly good show" is laughable!! The same applies to players borne from the Indian slums, the ghettos of the Carribean or the rabidly sportingly intense South Africans. All are far more likely to be implying quite unsubtle things about their oponents mothers bedroom habits in an effort to wind up the player in question and cause him to do something stupid (sledging as the practise is termed - it is all but an accepted part of the game!!!!!!).And I am under no illusion that the English team are any less prone to such characteristics and practises depite the rather twee image of cricket as the epitome of old gentlemanly "Englishness".

Now that I can agree with. Just as a taster here are some of the terms used to describe cricket fielding positions:Silly mid-on
Silly mid-off
Cow corner
Long leg
Square leg
Short leg
Silly point
Deep backward square leg
Short backward square leg
etc. etc.And here are some equally bizzarrely named methods of bowling:Googly
Leg break
Doosra
Chinaman
Armball
Flipper
Wrongun
Beamer
Yorker
Full toss
etc. etc. etc. There is always room for more quaintness in the universe.Next Ashes match starts Thurs. Nobody here cares but if anything "interesting" happens I will post an update anyway. So if you don't hear from me here assume Australia are winning

Well fired up and fuelled by that near admission of not complete indifference I will endevour to do my best.

I am not all alone in the EvC universe after all.......! Hallelujah! I will do my best to update those interested whilst conveying the thrill, excitement and nail biting tension of the game to those more cynically minded amongst us (yes Oni - That means you) That is a sport I would like to understand.

The basic premise is reasonably simple. Two teams. Eleven players each. The fielding team has all 11 players on the field and their aim is to get the battting team out. The batting team has two players on the field at any one time (Yes two. I think this is where people start to get confused) and their aim is to score points ("runs") by hitting the ball with the bat. Each team has an equal number of turns at batting (called an "innings") and the team with the most points ("runs") at the end wins.There are a ridiculous number of exceptions, details and subtleties to the above but that is in essence the "aim of the game" as a team sport and spectacle. But it is the more dualistic nature of the sport that makes it interesting.There is a guy with a bat. There is a guy with a ball. There are three sticks in the ground that the batsman has to protect from being hit with the ball. He has to do this whilst scoring "runs" by hitting the ball. He scores 4 runs if he hits it to the edge of the playing field (the "boundary") and 6 runs if he achieves this without the ball touching the ground. If the ball does not reach the boundary he can also score by running to the set of three sticks that the second batsman occupies. It is this running between wickets that I think is confusing so I wouldn't worry too much about that unless the rest makes sense.Meanwhile the guy with the ball (the bowler) has to try and get the batsman "out" either by hitting those three sticks (called the "stumps" or the "wicket") with the ball or by making the batsman hit the ball to one of the bowlers teammates fielding such that they can catch it*. The ball (a piece of heavy wood coated in hard stitched leather) can bounce on the pitch before reaching the batsman and this is used to add all sorts of variation to the motion of the ball. Spin bowling is a subtle art whilst fast bowling is as much about forcing an error from the batsman by means of intimidation and forcing him to protect himself from the ball rather as it is about hitting the actual wicket.I am waffling now. But does that make any sense or enlighten at all?* There are other ways too, such as "Leg Before Wicket" or LBW as it is known but ignore those complications until the basics are in place. I have watched the Superbowl and played John Madden on the computer. I fully intend to take you up on that offer at some point though. It would be good to understand America's best sport.

There is no set goal. BUT in test cricket you cannot win unless you bowl out the entire opposition team twice. Simply batting for five days and amassing a ginourmous score is completely pointless. The game will just be a draw.In such a situation as you describe the superior batting team would amass as many runs as it considers able to defend over two innings of the opposition and then "declare" (i.e. stop batting and put the other team in). But what this defendable score is deemed to be is (officially at least) the judgement of the captain and may well be wrong.IF the second batting team manage to get within 200 runs of the original total the first team has to bat again thus increasing the target again.IF the second batting team do not get within 200 runs then they can be made to bat again. Thus giving the original superior batting team the chance to bowl them out for the second time for a combined total that is still less than the original ginormous total and thus win the game.In essence the answer to your question is no. It is instead a judgement as to how much is enough. And if that judgement is wrong you risk losing or, at least, not winning.YOU have to bowl out the opposition twice to win. NO matter how good at batting you team is "bowlers win matches not batsman" as they say in cricket parlance The two batsman swapping "ends" (or running between the wickets) is one run. This can be repeated indefinitely after the ball has been hit in theory but in practise fielders invariably get the ball back before more than three such swaps have been achieved. This "run" (or runs if more than one) is attributed to the batsman that actually hit the ball to cause this outcome. The team total is a combination of all of the individual batsmans contributions (plus "extras" which are basically dumb mistakes made by the fielding side and which I wouldn't worry about at this stage)Does that make any sense?

How do I add pics to posts? The pitch is the rectangle in the middle where the batsman bat. The field is the entire playing area containg all the fielders.http://www.abcofcricket.com/cfb1/cfb2/cfb3/fielding.gifThe batsman on strike is at the opposite end of the pitch to the bowler. The passive batsman is at the end of the pitch where the bowler is. The bowler essentially bowls from the stumps at one end to the on strike batsman at the other. This rectangle is called the "pitch" and the stumps are 22 yards apart. At the opposite end of the "pitch" is where the second batsman stands. The length of boundary is not fixed. The entire field is a sort of Oval shape so it depends which direction the ball is hit. Different crickets grounds are also different sizes (though there must be minimum and maximum limits). There are eleven players. You always have to have two batsman on the field. So an innings is effectively 10 people out.This is all getting a bit technical. I fear I am in danger of nerding even myself out