- 08:12 AM
- 11/24/24
| Name: | Eoghan Felton |
|---|---|
| Member since: | August 16, 2005 |
| Last visit: | August 01, 2006 |
eoghanf has posted 0 links and 2 comments to SportsFilter and 0 links and 0 comments to the Locker Room.
Typically a cricket team for a test match would have at least four specialist bowlers. 11 players are selected for a team so a usual balance might be to have 6 specialist batters, 4 specialist bowlers (who do most or all of the bowling) and the wicket keeper. The situation is confused when you have people who can both bat and bowl well, these are called all-rounders and as you might imagine are much prized for the flexibility they bring to the teams. It might be instructive to look at the England and Australia teams for the recently completed match. England had: -5 out and out batters: Tescothick, Strauss, Vaughan, Bell and Pietersen -4 out and out bowlers: Hoggard, S Jones, Harmison and Giles -the wicket keeper: G Jones -1 all rounder: Flintoff Australia had: -6 out and out batters: Langer, Hayden, Ponting, Martin, Katich, Clarke -4 out and out bowlers: McGrath, Gillespie, Warne, Lee -the wicket keeper: Gilchrist (also an excellent specialist batter) You understand correctly about alternating the overs. But, a team needs to have several bowlers to bowl out the opposition. A pair pace bowlers might start the innings. Aggressive pace bowling is very tiring so the bowler might bowl a spell of 5 overs and then be rested. Later on in the innings as the ball gets older and the condition of the pitch changes it may be profitable to use spin bowling. Spin bowling is a specialist art (and very exciting to watch when done well). It is also much less tiring than pace bowling. It can be done for a long time (a spin bowler could bowl for 20 or more overs without being rested) and can be a good way to defend if necessary during long innings. For example, Warne the Australian spinner and Giles the English spinner both bowled more than any other bowlers. Bowling is very physically taxing and I think steps are taken to protect young bowlers, but am not sure of the specifics.
posted by eoghanf at 09:40 AM on August 16, 2005
Australia hang on for the draw,
From a look at the web these guys would be baseball pitchers, right? I think it might be an interesting analogy to explore... I will try but please bear in mind that I don't know a huge amount about the intricacies of bowling and know much less about baseball pitching. This article on Tim Wakefield tells me that his stock ball is the knuckleball. According to this article on knuckleball physics a knuckleball gets unexpected movement in the air by the pitcher imparting spin on the ball either holding up in the air or dropping away rapidly. It relies on the movement of the stitches on the baseball interacting with the air flow as the ball moves through the air. In cricket the art of generating movement in the air is called swing bowling. A cricket ball is different to a baseball having two "sides" separated by a prominent seam. But similarly to baseball the unexpected movement in the air is caused by the interaction of the surface of the ball with the air flow. So I think the knuckleball might be considered as equivalent to swinging the ball. Someone please help out if I've got this wrong. I don't think there is an equivalent in baseball to the spinner because of the role of the bounce in cricket. Spin bowlers attempt to deceive the batters by spinning the ball through the air so that it deviates sharply at the point where it bounces. The ball ages during the play and becomes softer and less bouncy. The bouncincess of the new ball is an advantage to the fast bowlers because it helps to generate pace from the pitch when they bowl. A fielding team is allowed replace the old ball with a new ball after a certain time (80 overs in test cricket I think). Finally, your question about fielding. Clearly you can't cover the whole of the cricket field with only 11 fielders. The captain is responsible for placing the fielders and will do this depending on the match situation, the bowler, the batter, etc. They can set attacking fields to try to pressure the batter by placing fielders close in to the batter to try to take close catches. They can set more defensive fields away from the boundary to cut down on run scoring. This can be changed after each delivery, for example if a right handed batter is replaced by a left handed batter.