This continues the series of guest columns about how technology is reshaping people's hobbies and passions – fishing, basket weaving, community service – whatever.
This time it is my good friend, fellow blogger and Gartner analyst Thomas Otter. Years of living in Germany have not taken the South African or his love for cricket out of him. Or the use of “s” where it should be “z” – so credit or blame me for those edits:)
“Some of my earliest memories are of playing cricket in the garden with my younger brother. At junior school, I was never a particularly gifted player. At the age of 10 I bowled a ball, and the batsman drove it back down the wicket. The ball, a Kookaburra, hit me on the eyebrow. I can still feel the dent today, 30 years later. It was shortly after that that I decided to be the team scorer instead.
If I were to live in America, I would become a baseball fan. In many ways the games are different, but both games are bound by the common thread of bat and ball. Also, both games rely on extensive use of numbers and stats to provide both real time and historical data. By the way in the photo I am holding what seems to be a hybrid cricket/baseball bat – it’s actually something I carved to size for my 4 year-old son.
The shirt, if if you are curious, represents the Kolkata Knight Riders of the Indian Premier League (IPL). Cricket is a global sport, though interestingly, mutually exclusively from countries where baseball is played.
If someone mentioned that England were 34/5, it would enable me (or any cricket fan) to make a precise judgment about the state of the game. Several hours of play summarized in 2 numbers. From this, I can make some deductions about the wicket, the bowling and the brittle state of the English batting line up. It is this clever use of numbers to create an immediate summary of the game that makes it easy to follow a cricket game while getting on with the rest of your day. A test match can last 5 days, but cricket allows and encourages one to get on with other things while at the same time feeling part of the action. Cricket is the master of continuous partial attention, long before the phrase was invented.
As junior schoolboys our technology came in the form of a sneaked-into-class radio and a scrap of paper with the score passed around when anything happened. I think the teacher knew what was going on, but he understood that knowing the cricket score was a vital part of a good education.
But enough of numbers, I bring you my favourite cricketing moment, ever. Jonty Rhodes of Pietermaritzburg v Inzamam-ul-Haq in the 1992 World Cup.
As I'm now living in Germany, I have not been able to see much cricket on television. There is more chance of the above mentioned Inzamam-ul-Haq running a cheeky second than there is of German telly covering cricket, but thanks to the Internet, I have been able to listen to test match special (TMS) on the BBC.
TMS is an institution and cricket has a language of its own. Duckworth-Lewis, which you may know as a rather good band, is a statistical technique used to determine the required run rate in a rain-shortened game. The fielding positions have odd names, but to those who know them, when the commentator mentions 3rd man, silly mid off, gully, cover, cover point and short square leg and deep mid-wicket they can imagine the game in action. Flipper, googly, chinaman, doosra, leg break, off break, reverse swing, yorker and bouncer are bowling techniques.
Baseball sounds so bland in contrast with terms like curve ball and fast ball.
Cover drive, late cut, reverse sweep, hook, and the switch hit are batting strokes. A well executed cover drive is profound elegance. Front foot to the pitch of ball, high elbow and firm but balanced follow through. On right is Sachin Tendulkar in action, one of the finest batsmen in the history of the game.
Cricket can enjoyed via twitter, as Boycott, Aggers, Blowers and several players are now twittering. Here is Blowers, commentating on Australian Shane Warne's 700th wicket. Cricinfo has ball by ball text commentary, and when a significant game is on, it will gently inform me of a significant incident. The 2.0 version of the scrap of paper from my classroom days.
I'm still amazed how good umpires actually are, and unlike many sports, the players almost always respect the authority of the umpire. Referrals to a TV umpire are now allowed, for run outs and with catches close to the ground. I think the cricket governing bodies doing a good job of using technology without destroying the spirit of game.
Technological enhancements such as hawkeye on left give commentators and fans an awesome insight into the game - and at times second guess the umpires
In Cape Town earlier this year I attended a 20/20 game. This new form of cricket takes about the same time as baseball game. It is fast and furious, and it requires different tactics to the longer forms of the game. It is now big business, and it enables the best players to make serious, baseball like, money.
In lots of ways cricket is so different today than a century ago - 5 day, 4 day, day/night, 50 overs and 20/20, on the beach, in the street, and in a hotel corridor.
I enjoy them all.
But in other ways, little has changed, as my 1902 piece of memorabilia pictured below reminds me:
“In a word the spring of the coronation year found the British public on the tiptoe of expectation with respect to the doings on English grounds of the Antipodean cricketers who has so manifestly outclassed our representatives on Australian grounds.”
The Southern Hemisphere continues to be dominant :)
Im doing an assignment on a chosen sport. about the advances in technology used in playing the game, watching the game, umpiring and so on. give us some ideas please?
Posted by: point table | May 19, 2012 at 03:46 AM
if you enter terms like football, baseball, cricket, golf, scuba, chess etc in the Google search box on right it should give you results on posts on this blog on those sports
Posted by: vinnie mirchandani | May 21, 2012 at 08:53 AM