Talk:Cricket/Archive 5

Proposed change in approach

I'd like to move Wikipedia:Wikiportal/Cricket here, so that it can act as a true portal for readers who want to know about cricket. (Cricket will be moved to Cricket (sport) or Cricket (main article) and will be very prominently linked on the portal.) Clearly the Wikiportal itself needs to expand, and I would welcome contributions by others. But thought I mention it here to canvass views.

Note that the other Wikiportals are designed for editors - I would like a cricket one to be designed for readers - and to allow it to show off our better articles as well as be a good route in to all of Wikipedia's cricket content, jguk 09:41, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'll give this approach a bash - see how it works, jguk 21:29, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

no, all wikiportals are in the wikipedia namespace, the main article on cricket should be at cricket, this violates all wikipedia naming conventions that the main article on a topic should be at the most common name, which is in this case is cricket. it also breaks the principle of least surprise: a link to cricket is assumed to take you to the main article. all other wikiportals are in the wikipedia namespace and so it breaks that too. this is highly non-standard. please change it back. clarkk 22:40, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I have changed it back. However, I have also inserted a new page at Cricket (portal) containing Jguk's edits and mine to the portal. Being bold on my own part, I have put a box that I created along the lines of Template:Sisterproject to go at the top of the page to reference the portal. Can this idea get consensus? Smoddy (Rabbit and pork) 15:58, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Specifically for making the wikiportals more accessible I created {{portal}} which links to the portal in much the same way that {{interwiki}} links languages to other wikis. Hopefully this will give the portal more visibility. -MarSch 14:11, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. Only it's not really a WikiPortal. A WikiPortal is mostly for editors - this portal is for readers - so it's not really comparable. In time, I hope we will have a formal Portalspace with its own guidelines - for now, we'll try a different approach, jguk 16:23, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Conventional and revised figures

For many old cricketers, the conventional (Wisden) figures differ from the modern (Association of Cricket Statisticians, used by Cricinfo and Cricketarchive) ones because ACS revised the first class status of some matches. For instance, Jack Hobbs has 197 hundreds according to Wisden and 199 as per ACS. Do we have a policy on which one to follow ?

Jack Hobbs' page mention both. Wilfred Rhodes had some from one and some from the other.

Tintin1107 12:41, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I don't think we have a preference - though obviously we should quote our source and, where relevant, explain the difference.

By the way, have you thought about signing up on Wikipedia:WikiProject Cricket? jguk 13:14, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Advertisements of messageboards

The user Neonw [[1]] has entered a link to a cricket messageboard in many pages. This messageboard was started just the other day and I can see the change only as an advertisement.

Do we tolerate such stuff ? There are a thousand cricket message boards on the net. IMHO, if we allow anything at all, it should be rec.sport.cricket and nothing else.

Tintin1107 21:16, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

Rec.sport.cricket

I would like to hear the opinions about adding external links to posts in rec.sport.cricket. People often post extracts from books. [link removed] is a superb (partly fictitous) piece on GL Jessop, especially the last few paragraphs. But the book from which this is taken is not in the public domain. Is it alright to add a link to posts like these - we are not breaking any rules ourselves ?

Tintin1107 15:04, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

I don't see why not - though there's always the option of putting extracts on Wikiquote. As long as an extract is not too long, there's no problem in putting it there. Kind regards, jguk 15:44, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

Length of the game

The second paragraph includes this:

a game can last six or more hours a day, for up to five days

Just thought I'd mention that the Australia v Rest of the World match this autumn is scheduled for six days. Loganberry 02:25, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

I know - plus, in the past, there have been games going on twice as long as that! jguk 05:39, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

True, but "timeless Tests" and the like may fairly be considered historical these days, whereas the six-day match is happening this very year and so is relevant to the game as it is currently played. I've changed the sentence slightly to reflect this; feel free to edit or revert it if you don't think it works. Loganberry 13:27, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

I've never got round to correcting the page fullt for its inaccuracies where it refers to things which are true nowadays, but were not true in the past. Ideally they'd all be corrected, jguk 20:10, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

Although the match is sceduled for six days it has only 5 playing days. Saying a 5 day match lasts 6 days due to the rest day would be akin to saying a football match lasts for 105 minutes.

Pictures of cricketers

In a bid to add pictures of cricketers to the various bigraphies - particularly historical persons, I wonder if anyone here knows what is the copyright status of copies of old cigarette cards. Companies such as Wills and Capstan produced huge collections of caricatures and portraits and these are widely distributed on the 'Net. - Ian 14:01, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

Blogs

A blog was deleted the other day and was added again by its author. It's probably time to decide something about including blogs.

Personally, I am not for or against this particular blog. But there are other blogs in the net which are quite good. For statistics, there are three notable ones

• Rajneesh Gupta
• Mohammad Asim and
• Charles Davis

About cricket in general, there are quite a few.

• Rajesh Ghai
• Anand Vasu
• Rick Eyre
• Mike Marqusee
• Amit Varma

are all quite good and the authors fairly famous.

We can add a section below External links for blogs, but there will be nothing to prevent people advertising their blogs.

Tintin 07:28, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

My problem with that policy is that it quickly gets too large if everyone should be allowed to add their blogs. IMO this guy just wants advertising of his site on wikipedia, which I thought we were not supposed to be. But perhaps stick to a few that might be useful Sam Vimes 08:40, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'd say get rid of them all, Wikipedia is not a web directory. Perhaps Dmoz or someone else has a decent directory of cricket blogs and other cricket-related links. The external links section is for information about the soprt cricket, not for discussion of current cricket events. --W(t) 03:35, 2005 Jun 2 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I concur absolutely. --Ngb 09:18, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Indeed - we don't need blogs. -- ALoan (Talk) 09:37, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Agreed. smoddy 09:41, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Ok :) Tintin 11:17, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Interwiki

I'm undertaking an interwiki addition. =Nichalp «Talk»= 08:13, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)

I've added quite a few stubbed interwikis. Any chance of a Greek, Russian Latin and Arabic stub? =Nichalp «Talk»= 12:15, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)

Added Greek and Russian =Nichalp «Talk»= 12:33, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)

I could do Latin, but it involves a lot of neologisms, not least in the title itself. The Romans didn't play the game (more fool them). smoddy 13:13, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

A sentence would be enough. Someone could take it on from there in the Latin wikipedia. =Nichalp «Talk»= 13:36, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)

Portal

I see there's a lot of moving around of the portal link. Personally, I think the cricket portal is slightly different from the other portals, in that it is intended for readers, not editors. Thus, it should be fairly reader-accessible - and the {{portal}} format - while being standardised wiki format for these things - doesn't quite lead people into clicking on it, they don't really know what it is. At least, I think so. Sam Vimes 21:12, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

That's true, but the top priority of wikipedia is an encyclopedia, an information resource, and we should keep forms of surrogate advertisement lower in the page. The portal in the strict sense is an external link, and should be accessed after the page details are read. =Nichalp «Talk»= June 28, 2005 06:55 (UTC)

Possibly. However, look at Music and Football (soccer) - there they've been allowed to put the portal link in the top right-hand corner, which I think is what usually happens with portal links like these. So either a link on the top to the wikiportal, or one at the bottom with something like "Wikipedia's central page on cricket"? Sam Vimes 28 June 2005 07:25 (UTC)

User:PeregrineAY has been promoting the link in most of the articles. Raul had recently removed the link from the India page saying that it should not be in the main namespace. I'm neutral on this, it doesn't make a difference to me, but on USA and Australia too they have the link at the bottom. =Nichalp «Talk»= June 28, 2005 09:12 (UTC)

I've only just been pointed towards this discussion. The portal is to assist readers and to allow them to easily locate our cricket coverage. A prominent (but discreet) link to the portal should appear on all our main cricket pages. (I already added such a message before being pointed here.) Remember, other portals are for editors and readers, the cricket portal is just for readers - and we follow what the Dutch and Polish WPs do with how we are treating our cricket portal, jguk 28 June 2005 22:27 (UTC)

1961

The section history has this line :

Cricket entered an epochal era in 1961, when English counties modified the rules to provide a variant match form that produced an expedited result:

Gillette Cup was started in 1963. The Midlands Knockout Cup - a 65 over limited overs competitions between four county teams - was used as a trial run in 1962.

But why is 1961 here ? Even if the decision was taken about one day competitions in that year, shouldn't the year of the first championship be given more importance ? Tintin 28 June 2005 10:54 (UTC)

I am changing it to 1963. Feel free to revert if you have a good reason Tintin 30 June 2005 01:44 (UTC)

Inning vs. innings

Isn't the singular of "innings" supposed to be "inning"? This is what we call a single baseball inning in American English. If not, a usage note should be added. -- Beland 4 July 2005 21:38 (UTC)

In American English, yes. In British English, and thus in cricket, it's called an innings. There is a note to contributors on top of the article and the section, plus a link to the word innings. I think that's enough personally, but perhaps it's worth adding a wee note. Sam Vimes 4 July 2005 21:47 (UTC)

I was going to point to the note to contributors and the contents of innings but you beat me to it. FWIW, I think they should be sufficient. -- ALoan (Talk) 4 July 2005 21:53 (UTC)

Both of you beat me to it too; the article makes it amply clear by usage, and I personally don't see the necessity to add a usage note here. Perhaps in American and British English differences. Ambarish 4 July 2005 21:53 (UTC)

I've added a small note in the appropriate place in American and British English differences. -dmmaus 05:17, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Large stadium pic

I see the request for a photo of a large stadium. I've just uploaded a wider angle shot of the Sydney Cricket Ground which may suit: Image:CricketSCG2.jpg. -dmmaus 23:04, 9 July 2005 (UTC)

Its a nice picture, but the players still look like "ants" (as a comment to the current image goes.) =Nichalp «Talk»= 08:51, July 11, 2005 (UTC)

united states?

anyone know of organizations or places in the united states where one could learn to play cricket? it's pretty damn unpopular here, sadly.

There are quite a few cricket clubs in the United States, mostly popular with the expats. Most of them are centred around Los Angeles and Philadelphia, but smaller ones are located in Omaha, Seattle etc. This is the home page of the US Cricket Association: http://www.usaca.org/ you can search for local clubs here. =Nichalp «Talk»= 04:49, July 14, 2005 (UTC)

Fours and Sixes

As an American, I am trying to figure out cricket and am, of course, baffled. I saw a little bit of discussion about fours and sixes at Boundary (cricket), but am still unsure about the difficulty of hitting sixes. This page says the boundary is generally between 450 and 500 feet (sorry, I'm a Yank and use feet). Using a cricket bat, wouldn't it be generally easier to hit sixes than home runs in baseball? The flatter bat seems like it would give an advantage to the batter. Who holds the record for most career sixes (and how many do they have)? Thanks to my friends from the other side of the Atlantic. --Lord Voldemort ^{(Dark Mark)} 18:05, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

Well - it depends on a few factors. For one, the boundary limits are different from pitch to pitch, so the ease of hitting sixes varies. Another is that batsmen in cricket tend not to try and hit the ball in the air too often, as a mishit gets punished more easily and has much more damaging consequences - in baseball I believe it's very difficult to hit it along the ground. As a result, an average Test match has about five sixes over five days of cricket. One-day internationals usually have about the same amount, as the point there is to get runs quickly and not bother too much about outs Sam Vimes 18:12, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

Hey, not all of us are the other side of the Atlantic to you! Cricket is popular in the Caribbean, the Indian subcontinent, South Africa, Australia... But I'm English. As to your questions: hitting sixes is very hard. The 400 feet or so uses a 5½ ounce ball, so it needs a lot of momentum. An additional difference is that a cricket match can last several days. This means that a batsman doesn't try to hit sixes all the time. Hitting fours is safer, as there is less chance of being caught. As to the record holder, the Test record (i.e. in international 5-day games) is held by Chris Cairns, who hit 87 sixes in 64 matches. In one-day international games, the record is held by Shahid Afridi, who has hit 207 in 208 matches. Hope this helps! smoddy 18:15, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

Sure, that's on the other side of the Atlantic... just the really long way. I didn't mean to stereotype or anything. I just know that Wikipedia is full of Brits, so I figured they would be the ones answering me. So there is no "Gentlemen's Agreement" about hitting sixes? Hitting them is not seen as "un-gentlemanly", "bad form", or "just plain rude"? I thought I remembered hearing that hit placement was much more important, and to just "swing for the fences" (as we say here) was not sportsmanlike. Perhaps I am making that up. Thanks again. --Lord Voldemort ^{(Dark Mark)} 18:22, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

Hmm, you have a point. Ah well, Sam's Norweigan. He is the only Norweigan cricket fan I know of, though. It isn't really "bad form" to hit sixes. Nevertheless, there is a high failure rate, so players rarely attempt it. Just "swinging for the fences" is actually fairly difficult, given that cricket balls have to bounce first. There are various techniques that can help a lot, though. All the same, I can't do it. Cheers, smoddy 18:28, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

1. To hit a six, most established batsmen try and hit the ball to a certain area of the ground (its usually a premeditated shot). A batsman can place it for around 270° of the ground. The remaining portion (behind the batsman) is also possible, but is usually never intended. It has occured largely due to the high speed at which the bowler had bowled, where the ball takes a deflection of the bat. As has been said before, hitting a ball up in the air is risky; if the bowler reads the batsman's body language correctly, he can bowl the ball differently – such as bowling it slower. This could lead to a batsman being caught in the field rather than it going out of the boundary for a six. Nevertheless, sixes are more entertaining than fours. In an ODI game the max hit is 11.
2. "Swing for the fences" – I assume you mean the batsman swings his bat in the air with the intention of hitting the ball as hard and as far as possible? It happens in cricket too. Its called a slog. Its considered blasphemous by purists, but entertaining by spectators. It usually happens at the end of an innings, when batsman takes more chances. Its also more common among the less accomplished batsmen.
3. Whether its easier to hit a six/home run... thats a BIG debate. =Nichalp «Talk»= 18:50, July 17, 2005 (UTC)

What? Max hit 11? Have I missed something here? Have the ICC introduced supersix, powerpunt, or some other Americanised (no offence to present company) neologism? Or have I missed some obvious law? It wouldn't be the first time... smoddy 20:18, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

I assume he means eleven sixes in a match...which seems low, especially when there's guys like Shahid Afridi around, but possible. I believe in Cricket Max (failed Kiwi attempt at Twenty20) at one point you could hit twelve runs, though (a six in the Max zone gave double the amount of runs). I also thought the record of runs off a single delivery was 19 - someone hit the ball to midwicket, it got stuck in the grass, and the batsmen just ran and ran and ran Sam Vimes 21:55, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

Afridi hit 11 sixes in a ODI in a match in 1996 in Singapore. I meant by a single person. I think the record has been equalled, but I'm not sure by whom. =Nichalp «Talk»= 07:04, July 18, 2005 (UTC)

Afridi hit 11 sixes in an ODI innings against Sri Lanka at Nairobi in 1996/97 [2]. Sanath Jayasuriya had previously hit 11 sixes against Pakistan at Singapore in 1995/96 [3]. In Tests, Wasim Akram hit 12 sixes as part of his 257* against Zimbabwe at Sheikhupura in 1996/97 [4]. --Ngb 07:58, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

Wow, all of a sudden the phrase "Two countries separated by a common language" comes to mind. Life is funny that way. --Lord Voldemort ^{(Dark Mark)} 12:49, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

Thanks to everyone. So a slog is kind of looked down upon by some? That must have been what I heard. I appreciate everyone's patience. I suppose I should actually try to see cricket played to really understand it. Reading about it does not seem to do it justice. Thanks again. --Lord Voldemort ^{(Dark Mark)} 19:28, 17 July 2005 (UTC)