Australia beat India 12-11 at sixes

1. On the one hand, fantastic batting. On the other, what does a match like this say about the balance between bat and ball in such ODI’s? Who’d be a bowler? I’m reminded of Geoffrey Boycott’s remark about. ‘Big bats, flat tracks and short boundaries’. Over 700 runs scored and 23 sixes in less than 80 overs – another example of cricket being turned into baseball?

2. I went to a baseball game for the first time a few weeks ago, and was amazed by how infrequently they actually manage to hit it. I think I saw about 5 ‘good hits’ (I think they’re called something else) in the whole 4 hour match. I spent a lot of time looking around in vain for food to buy, and trying to eavesdrop on the guys in front. It was more like first-class cricket than I expected.

   I was watching the Toronoto ‘Blue Jays’ though, and apparently they’re crap, so that might explain it.

   1. Good match report.

   2. Ta. I thought I veered a bit close to ‘mentioning the sport’, but I’ll learn.

   3. As a pretty much lifelong baseball fan, I am always confused when people compare T20 to baseball. The most common outcome in baseball is that someone hits the ball to one of the fielders, it gets thrown around a bit, and then back to the pitcher. Then they’ll pace around for a bit and call some things out to each other, and a new batter will come in. He’ll let a couple go by before tapping one to a fielder. Repeat.

      Chris Davis hit 53 home runs in 160 games this MLB season. Chris Gayle hit 51 sixes in just 16 IPL games. I think there’s a pretty big difference. T20 is cricket turned into arcade baseball, if anything.

   4. Baseball sounds BRILLIANT.

   5. Most baseball games I go to end up going to extra innings, usually after being 0-0 after 9.

      Baseball has substantially less successful hitting than cricket, by orders of magnitude.

   6. Duh. That is why a “strike” in baseball is defined as the batter not hitting the ball.

   7. I read an article years ago which compared cricket to baseball about 20 years ago which summed up the differences nicely.
      In baseball the batter is expected to fail. Their success rate is measured as a proportion of at bats by which they get on base. If you can do that for even 1/3 of your at bats you are doing phenomenally well.
      In cricket on the other hand the expectation is for them to succeed. An average under 40 is considered sub standard for a specialist. If you get a crap score in 2/3 of your innings you would likely be sacked.

3. It’s even more ironic that the ‘Big Bats’ approach to short format cricket has created mass 6 hitting scenarios which in baseball they might wish they did have as far as home runs.

   There is a parallel between cricket and baseball that so much of the enjoyment for the spectators is about the expectancy of what might happen – the build up of tension as the match situation unfolds is predicated on the changing nature of the possible scenarios at any given time.

   However, if they actually hit huge strikes into the outfield and / or home runs every ball, actually, it wouldn’t be the same. In fact it would spoil it.

   But this is what has happened in short format cricket with the big bats.

   For me, all formats of the game are at their best when there is ebb and flow; momentum is everything – not the number of maximums hit into unsuspecting fans eating their grub.

   (Man taken to hospital after egg and cress suphocation scare. ‘My sandwich literally exploded all over me. I’d have tried to catch the ball if I’d seen it coming’, said the spectator in Row G. I have always come to cricket with my food well packed but now, I’m going to come to the game with my helmit on and only drink liquids through a straw’)

4. Surely even Pakistan can’t screw this up.

   1. What a perfectly ridiculous thing to say.

   2. Phew!

5. well quite… 9/3? surely if there is one team who CAN screw up a chase of 40, it’s these guys right?!

6. ah yes. what an anticlimax

   (i see cricinfo have this down as a “huge upset”, but is it, really? it might be, if the match were taking place in south africa)

   1. By and large, every Pakistan result could be described as a huge upset one way or another – even when they live up to being favourites or down to being underdogs.

7. In fairness, Kohli looks extraordinarily angry whatever he’s doing

8. They were blaming the pitch in this match for the huge totals, but looking at the highlights I saw several low full tosses being deposited into the stands. Surely you can’t blame the pitch for that. I would have preferred a press conference where Bailey said “Yeah both teams got 360 because one bowling attack was led by Ishant & Vinay Kumar, while the other one had Doherty and MJ”.

9. comment on cricinfo tonight:

   “Pakistan team always puts in an performance that is opposite to what the odds expect. I think we all know why. ”

   good gracious me, what on earth is this (indian) reader implying?

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