Tag: england

Over the Broad walk

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…or none walk, as it were.

I’m catching up on a few blogs I should have read earlier. One of those is from Brian Micklethwait and it’s about Stuart Broad’s decision not to “walk”, ie. declare himself out when the umpires didn’t give him out in the first Ashes test.

That incident sparked howls of derision locally, cries of “cheat”, comparisons with Mr Suarez and somewhat desperate hopes for some sort of lengthy ban for Mr Broad. Despite being an England fan, I agreed with Brian:

England’s subsequent progress somehow didn’t really count.  That’s how it felt, to me.

But then I got over it. It might not be nice, but everyone’s at it, not just Stuart Broad, so let’s drop the exceptionalism, shall we?
When Adam Gilchrist walked again Sri Lanka in 2003,  Australian captain Ricky Ponting was actually rather annoyed:

Gilchrist staggered Ponting and the rest of the Australian side by walking off as umpire Rudi Koertzen was saying “not out” during the 48-run semi-final win over Sri Lanka at St George’s Park today.
Ponting’s deputy saw Koertzen’s rejection of the Sri Lankan appeal for a caught behind but he headed for the pavilion anyway despite the enormity of the occasion and the importance of his innings to the Australian cause.

“I won’t be encouraging any of our batsmen to do it,” said Ponting. “It’s up to them. I won’t tell any of our batsmen what to do – whether to walk or not. It’s how they see it on the day.”

So “cheating” is fine, depending on the day, then? Evidently, Broad chose a “not ok” day though.

Nowadays of course, there’s technology to help the hapless umpires out, but Australia had already used up their quota of referrals earlier in the day, having unsuccessfully tried to get England players out when they weren’t. However, even with this obvious handicap to the “cheating” batsman, Ponting continued to pick and choose his days:

During the Australian innings, captain Ricky Ponting clearly edged a delivery from Mohammad Hafeez into the gloves of wicket-keeper Kamran Akmal. Both men appealed enthusiastically, almost certain they had their man. Ponting held his ground.
Umpire Marais Erasmus deemed the Australian skipper hadn’t hit the ball and gave him not out. Inevitably, the Pakistan team requested a review of the decision and video replays confirmed the number three batsman did in fact make contact with the ball.
Ponting surely can’t claim he was uncertain as to whether he hit the ball, as the replay showed he got a lot more than a faint edge. In cricketing terms, he ‘hit the cover off it’.

But anyway, the umpires are there to decide if it’s in or out, not the players. Brian again:

…expecting batsmen to walk when they know (but the umpire doesn’t know) that they are out introduces an unfair imbalance.

After all, if you are given out, but you know that you are not out because you missed it by half a yard, but if your team has run out of referrals (as Australia had yesterday) or if no referrals are allowed in the first place, you aren’t allowed to say: “Ah well, you see, I know that I’m not actually out, so, actually, I’m going to have to over-rule the umpire on this particular occasion.  I’m going to stick around.  Sorry and all that.  Carry on everyone.”

This is not allowed, unless you are W. G. Grace.

On the other hand it would, I think, make perfect sense, if a batsman walks (Gilchrist style) having been given not out by the umpire, if the umpire were then to say: “Heh!  Where d’you think you’re going?  Get back here!  I said: Not Out.  How dare you over-rule my decision.  Outrageous dissent.  Totally against the Spirit of Cricket.”

Yet it would seem that The Spirit of Cricket, as expounded by all those who were saying yesterday that Broad had gone totally against it, says that the umpires are not after all the sole judges of fact.  Odd.

Indeed, some dichotomy there.

Perhaps Geoffrey Boycott summed it up best:

When you’re given out wrongly, you have to go.  So if the umpire makes a mistake in your favour, you should be allowed to stick around.  It’s up to the umpire not to get it wrong.

The umpires are only human, and though they have the help of technology, that option wasn’t available this time around, because the Aussies – being only human – had used up their referrals by making mistakes as well.And even then, as we saw with Jonathan Trott’s unjustified first innings dismissal, even that technology is only as good as it’s human operators. And who’s to say that Trott wouldn’t have added a lot of runs if he hadn’t erroneously been given out?

Either way, as we’ve seen before here and here, what goes around comes around. I just hope it comes around sometime after England have got the series all wrapped up.

Not just a river in Egypt…

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It seems that there is an element of denial in the national psyche over here after South Africa lost in the semi-final of the ICC Champions Trophy to England yesterday. Now, I don’t want to harp on about this, although the self-flagellation amongst the locals shows no sign of abating, so it’s obviously still relevant (and raw).

But there was this on the IOL news website:

crickTry, if you can, to ignore the formatting issues and look at those options. Because the blame game must be played.

Might I suggest a fifth option though (even though there’s blatantly not even room for that fourth one)?

How about “England“?

Maybe it wasn’t the best SA cricket performance ever, but then, maybe they weren’t actually allowed to play well. I mean, perish the thought that the opposition were actually better than them. We could never admit that though, could we?

Come to think of it, where is the story here? The Proteas lost to a better team, a team that is above them in the ICC rankings, a team that played better cricket than they did yesterday. ‘Choking’ (in this context, rather than a buxom celebrity cook context) is when you lose a game that you were expected to win – or you lose from a winning position. That didn’t happen here.

Oh – and Dale Steyn was injured, you say? – well, we’ll be sure to make a footnote in the history books for you.

Oleg some distance from reality

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So yes, England beat Ukraine and head happily into the quarter finals at Euro 2012 with absolutely no controversy surrounding their passage. Well, except for that perfectly legitimate goal scored by Marko Devic and not given by Hungarian referee Viktor Kassai.

Here’s the screenshot of that moment:

And here’s what Ukraine coach Oleh Volodymyrovych “Oleg” Blokhin said about it:

We scored a clean goal in the 63rd minute, as the ball crossed the goal line by over a metre.

Now, while I have heaps of sympathy with Blokhin and Ukraine (cos remember I have experience of this stuff here and here plus loads of other times I didn’t bother to document), I was unaware of the measurement of a Ukrainian Metre, which appears to be about twenty times smaller than a usual metric metre. Perhaps some hangover from the Soviet Union?

Incidentally, at the same press conference, Blokhin also had a pop at a journalist , saying:

Let’s go outside and have a man conversation.

Presumably, such man conversations involve a great deal of posturing, bravado and comparison of the length of their members; the size of which is something Ukrainian guys are famed for, although it now seems that they may have been measuring in local centimetres, thus diminishing the statue of their claims (and other things) somewhat.

Presumably there’s a Ukrainian Kilometre as well, then? Visitors to that country must think it’s HUGE, when Kiev to second city Kharkiv is listed as 9600km. That’s, like, bigger than Africa (but not if you measure Africa in Ukrainian kilometres, obviously).

But back to reality. Three things to ponder here:

1. Yes. There should be goal line technology in place and only now (that England have been advantaged by it) has Sepp Blatter seemingly woken up to that fact.
2. Were England cheating by having two goalkeepers on the field of play? Sky Sports suggests that yes, they were:

3. If the goal had stood and the match had finished 1-1, England would have gone through and Ukraine would not have gone through: pretty much exactly what happened anyway.

It’s all kicking off…

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Ah. The perils of supporting England in the Rugby World Cup.

Actually, there really aren’t very many of them. It isn’t that important to me: after all, this is just rugby, it’s not football. But there’s always someone that suggests that because I’ve moved to SA, I must support the Boks. Yeah right, because when you guys go over to do your two years of bar work in Wimbledon, you all instantly revert to your colonial roots and cheer on “the Poms”, don’t you?

Of course not.

You might not like to know it,
You may not think it’s right.
But within your sea of green and gold,
There’s some proudly red and white.

Please don’t take it personally,
Or refuse to shake me by the hand.
Cos while I live in Cape Town,
I’m born and bred England.

And yes, I have a soft spot,
For Johnny Smit and chums.
But I’ll be wearing red and white,
When the final comes.

Just to reiterate my stance here, once and for all:

I will happily support the Boks (or any South African national team)
unless they are playing England. 

I happen to think that that’s pretty fair, but if it still remains an issue for you, may Martin Johnson have mercy upon your soul.