Thursday, June 19, 2008

cricket gets with it...

When I first read that cricket is going to allow switch-hitting, I thought how archaic is this sport?


Guardian blogger Richard Williams defends employing switch-hitting, citing Mickey Mantle's success switching to bat lefty so that he could pooch balls over the short right field wall in Yankee Stadium.

That was pretty revolutionary, progressive thinking...also happened over 50 years ago.

What these cricket ninnies - and cricket is a game played by ninnies - are actually talking about is if the batter (guh, batsman) jumping across the plate (errr, wickets) mid-pitch and then swinging. See for yourself:



Shoot, that was pretty hard core. After Kevin Pietersen hit those two sixes against New Zealand the other day (they look like garden-variety jimmy jacks to me) the MCC endorsed his improvisation.

One of the guvs was quoted saying: Indeed, the stroke conforms to the Laws of Cricket and will not be legislated against!"

That's great...and geez take it easy, will ya?

According to a Gaurdian poll, 87% of people are against allowing the switch hit (also called the reverse sweep, or the Dominic Monaghan - whose voice it is I hear in my head when I read the Guardian.)


One the commenters on Williams blog asked, who can forget Mike Gatting's disastrous attempt at [a reverse sweep] at the World Cup in 1987?

Gatting, bloody idiot.





Ah yes, there's the fancy lad effeteness we've come to expect from cricket. I feel much better.

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7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm sure that a lot of this is tongue-in-cheek, but you might want to understand the reason for the controversy before ranting.

This might look like switch-hitting in baseball but the similarities end there.

In baseball, the strike zone stays fixed once the batter picks the side that he is standing on. In cricket, this "switching" is done AFTER the ball is bowled, meaning that it is unclear about how LBWs & wides will be determined (because they are defined relative to the original "side" when the batsman took strike).

As Lincoln said, it's better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.

Anonymous said...

This is the equivalent of a batter switching sides after the pitcher begins his wind up.

Did Mantle ever do that?

Anonymous said...

"This is the equivalent of a batter switching sides after the pitcher begins his wind up."

Yes, and it would also be "equivalent" if baseball had a 360 degree fair territory (ie, no foul territory) and you had to adjust all your fielders to cover those 360 degrees of fair territory based on where you think the ball will be hit....and you can't change your fielders after the batsman switches, either.

Trying to make cross-sports comparisons like this (ie, baseball vs. cricket, gridiron vs. rugby, basketball vs. soccer, etc.) is a sure way to make yourself look foolish, unless you actually know what you are talking about and know BOTH sports intimately.

There's a reason why switch hitting hasn't come up in cricket before, and it has nothing to do with being "archaic" or a sport for "ninnies" or for the "effete". Frankly the posters before me are being too polite to you: I'm an American, and I'm pretty sure you weren't being "ironic" or "tongue-in-cheek".

Anonymous said...

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/cricket/england-3075-new-zealand-193-switchhitter-pietersen-leaves-hapless-tourists-bamboozled-847884.html

Without appearing to be curmudgeonly, however, the legality of Pietersen's shots must be questioned, as Michael Holding, a Sky commentator and a member of the ICC's cricket committee, suggested on air. If a right-arm bowler were to run up and bowl with his left arm without informing the umpire or batsman, it would be called a no-ball. Should it be OK for a batsman to change his stance so significantly?

Nobody questions the legitimacy of the reverse sweep shot, when the batsman's hands remain in their natural position throughout the stroke, but by becoming a left-hander Pietersen completely changes the context of the ball bowled. He plays the shot to open up areas he is struggling to find right-handed, but does the off side suddenly become the leg side? Does an umpire give lbws and wides as though a right or left-hander is facing, and should he call a no-ball if three fielders are found to be behind square leg when the batsman strikes the ball? Good luck to the rule makers.

Anonymous said...

Yawn....isn't cricket that game that goes like a week and doesn't always have a winner?

Anonymous said...

And if baseball is so enlightened and innovative, why the hell is this an issue now:
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3455201

You obviously don't know what you're talking about. Bloggers like you give some credence to that dolt Buzz Bissinger.

red65orange said...

switch hitting is a fantastic thing.Every player have to do such innovative things to make cricket better
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