Posted by Brace yourselves for this. It’s a good ‘un.
Here is the heading of the press release about how you can watch live IPL matches on YouTube. The asterisk is vital. We’ll come to that in a second.
Indian Premier League bowls wicked googly* to the world on YouTube
That’s pretty meaningless anyway, but wait for the footer that explains what a ‘googly’ is.
* A googly is a kind of pitch similar to a baseball pitch or a bowling throw in the game cricket; a wicked googly would be a really good pitch.
Almost anything to do with the internet is always written for an American reader. It drives us crazy, but this? This is about cricket. That’s nothing to do with the US, no matter what Lalit Modi might like to think.
The person who’s put their name to this atrocity of a press release is ‘Amit Agarwal, Strategic Partner Development Manager’.
Glad to see someone took the time to criticise it! I was so pissed myself :). That’s the sickest post title, and to beat it, the footnote!
The best bit was that for the first 12 overs or so, the server broke and no-one could actually watch it. They marketed the shit out of it and then didn’t bother to invest in enough bandwidth to cope with people actually watching.
What a fucking moron. First of all, bowling a googly would mean IPL board wants to get YouTube out. This does not make any sense at all.
I want KKR to win
Whatsup with the weird music at the fall of each wicket? It feels like they are trying too hard to generate some excitement.
17 off the last over. KKR bowled really well in the last few overs.
Commentary is largely crap.
Great first two bowls by Sharma.
I just realized I am the only guy on this blog at the moment.
And the American audience can’t even watch IPL on Youtube because Modi has sold it to the highest bidder. So, its pretty meaningless overall
Hello all.
I’ve been staying at a friends house in the UK and watching the IPL whlist she is at work. I think I’m really going to like cricket, it’s an amazing game and I can’t believe the over-the-top nature of the spectacle in India. I’d sort of watched a bit of a test before and although it was intriguing, I think this 20/20 stuff is better for the newbie. I intend to watch a bunch more and graduate to the tests when these ‘Ashes’ things arrive.
Anyway, I have a few questions that I’m sure you experts may be able to help me with.
1. when the commentators say ‘the middle of the bat’ as in, ‘he middled it’ do they mean middle from top to bottom or from side to side?
2. What is the difference between ‘clean balled’ and just balled?
3. When a pitcher has ‘genuine pace’, how is this better than ‘artificial pace’? I have yet to see anyone with this artificial pace.
4. Same question, except for genuine slow balling etc. (as opposed to any other kind of slow balling.
5. The man who looks like Clark Kent only more boring (I think his name is Ravi Shatrey or something, grunts after every statement. Does the mean anything?
6. Is a deeliff maximum the same as a boundary?
I look forward to any help with these, I can then impress my English friends with my knowledge.
What’s that trumpet thing they play that always gets the crowd cheering? It’s worse than those Yahoo! soundbites that kept getting played at the World Twenty20.
I agree – they should have been more specific. Like comparing the googly to a knuckleball or some such. I mean, come on, it’s baseball for goodness sakes.
“Indian Premier League bowls wicked googly* to the world on YouTube”
I don’t get it. What are they trying to say? Did the IPL suddenly say “You have to pay us a million dollars for each person who watches” or something?
We should start a Royal Society for the Prevention of Cricket being Americanised.
First step is to remove that Mongoose ‘bat’.
Sceptic Tank, for the sake of charity i am going to assume these questions are serious and answer them.
1. Both, the middle is essentially the part of the bat from which you will strike the ball the most cleanly and get the most power.
2. Its bowled! Again its essentially just part of the cricketing vernacular but you could be bowled of an inside edge or your pad/glove. Its not a technical term.
3. See above. As you watch more cricket you will see that some bowlers are naturally faster than others that really struggle to get to the mid eighties. For bowlers with genuine pace I suggest you watch the old school west indians.
4. Again… T20 encourages bit part cricketers that turn their arm over a bit but aren’t proper old fashioned slow bowlers.
5. No, the only cricket commentator that actually talks any sense is Matthew Hayden
6. DLF is a corporate sponsor, a maximum is a 6. Its a marketing term. Watch the ginger giant sir Paul of Collywobble if you want to see some proper six hitting.
I like your answers to #5 an 6, Chirpsy
Chowkster:
“It feels like they are trying too hard to generate some excitement.”
Are you taking the piss? Please say that you are.
Has anyone noticed the number of real batty bats flying around at these matches? You see them in the “let’s do an arty, slightly out of focus shot just about grass level” camera angles.
That’s a whole new group of animals totally indifferent to cricket.
Brilliant.
Thank you Chirpsy, I really appreciate your efforts. I was being a little silly but I did have genuine questions (see what I did there?) behind it all.
The honest questions were:
middled. (thank you)
genuine anything. (still don’t quite understand this, I guess it’s just a modifier that means more than so I’ll put this down to solved, thanks)
Clean bowled. I had assumed clean bowled was where the ball didn’t touch the bat on the way to the wicket but it seems that ‘clean’ is redundant based on it’s use by commentators. Any type of ‘bowled’ appears to be clean. Also solved, thanks.
I think Mr Kent with the grunt is one of the most annoying/enjoyable-in-a-masochistic-way speakers since Chris Berman, but you guys may not have had the pleasure of the comparison. Thank you for introducing me to the joys of Matthew Hayden who is a genuine prince.
Even as an American I find some of the raw commerce on show quite in-your-face, DLF maximums indeed. The IPL is certainly on the way to out Americaning Americans. There’s still something slightly amateur about it all but I guess that won’t last, based on the naked ambition of the thing.
And Jo, I shall watch out for the bats from now on.
re: The amazing trumpet thing. They were doing it at the France Italy rugby as well. I feel it’s something really important because EVERYONE immediately shouts “WEJHTW!!!” when it plays, and I have started doing that too because I fear being an outcast. Where did it come from?!