In one, the pitcher
generally hurls the ball at the batter; it doesn’t bounce. The batter tries to
whack it out of the park and if he makes contact, drops the bat and runs to
first base, or, if he gets lucky, makes a home run. The fielders wear mitts in
order to facilitate the catching of the ball. It strikes me as being not much more than glorified
rounders (a game I played in the park last Sunday).
Cricket’s equivalent of the pitcher, the bowler, comes in many guises: fast, medium-fast, swinging, seaming, leg-spinning, off-spinning. The ball almost always bounces of course, and deviates off the pitch: the batsman therefore can’t just whack it, but has a range of strokes, defensive and attacking, at his disposal. Of those in the field, only the wicketkeeper wears gloves. Add to that the influence of the weather conditions. And then there’s the fascination of the statistics: batting and bowling averages, immortalized in the game’s annual, Wisden.
I would rather watch somebody like David Gower stroking the ball effortlessly to the boundary – than some guy trying to slam it out of the park. And when it comes to poise and athleticism in bowling, what about the great Michael Holding in full flow.
The complexity and sophistication of cricket means that it simply has no peers. And as the current Test series between England and Australia shows, it can be pulsating over a full five days.
As for golf – a good walk spoiled as Mark Twain said – don't get me started.
- More Here
Cricket’s equivalent of the pitcher, the bowler, comes in many guises: fast, medium-fast, swinging, seaming, leg-spinning, off-spinning. The ball almost always bounces of course, and deviates off the pitch: the batsman therefore can’t just whack it, but has a range of strokes, defensive and attacking, at his disposal. Of those in the field, only the wicketkeeper wears gloves. Add to that the influence of the weather conditions. And then there’s the fascination of the statistics: batting and bowling averages, immortalized in the game’s annual, Wisden.
I would rather watch somebody like David Gower stroking the ball effortlessly to the boundary – than some guy trying to slam it out of the park. And when it comes to poise and athleticism in bowling, what about the great Michael Holding in full flow.
The complexity and sophistication of cricket means that it simply has no peers. And as the current Test series between England and Australia shows, it can be pulsating over a full five days.
As for golf – a good walk spoiled as Mark Twain said – don't get me started.
- More Here
No comments:
Post a Comment