Posted by Warwickshire’s Olly Stone bowled a bouncer and on the strength of that became the county player everyone’s talking about this week.
In the 18th over, Stone dismissed Luke Wells and then the very next ball he bounced out Luke Wright. If you play for Sussex and you are a Luke W, maybe try and avoid facing Olly Stone if at all possible.
The Wright bouncer was one of those “argh, avoid it – oh no, I’ve hit it while trying to avoid it” dismissals, which is very satisfying because the bowler has made the batsman both frightened and out, meaning the victim is doubly humiliated. It is also encouraging when England are looking for some slightly quicker bowlers.
After the third day’s play, Sussex’s Michael Burgess said: “Olly Stone bowled quite quickly and well.”
This seems relatively fulsome praise considering his team still had four wickets left at that time and he probably didn’t much want to motivate Stone any further, being as he’d already taken the first six (he finished with 8-80).
Encouraging the notion that Stone might be able to do some of the main things you want a bowler to do in cricket, Burgess added: “They just had one of those spells where we seemed to keep nicking them and they seemed to keep catching them.”
Without recent speed gun data, it’s hard to know whether Stone is officially fast or just a ‘brisk’ bowler who was having a delightful day. For what it’s worth, his Cricinfo profile page says that he bowled “in excess of 92mph” last year, which by our reckoning means he has previously bowled at least one ball at 93mph.
Further cause for optimism comes in the fact that Stone missed near enough two years of cricket thanks to an injury sustained while celebrating a wicket. That elite level of injury-proneness is the mark of a true fast bowler.
“He needs to learn to go through the gears and not bowl 100 per cent all the time,” said Stone’s captain Jeetan Patel, who appears to know a thing or two about the nature of county cricket.
Similar deliveries:
Olly Stone will maybe be a fast bowler for England some of the time
Two of those England Test selections are just about weird and surprising enough to talk about
Should England pick Luke Wright for the first Test?
We’re mostly talking about Ollie Pope again this week, with maybe a dash of James Hildreth and a soupcon of Keaton Jennings
I suspect it means he has bowled one ball at 92.1 mph. I await Bert’s diagnosis.
That’s almost certainly what happened. An oversight on our part really.
I was thinking 92.6
because 92.1 can be rounded to 92 but 92.6 cannot.
It is not 92.51 either, as normally we don’t use double digit after decimal points for speed guns statistics
It means he bowled at 30% of a badminton. This is really, really fast in any sport, except badminton, in which it is pedestrian.
This is second division cricket! On King Cricket! What’s going on? Everything I thought I knew is a lie!
The opening round of the County Championship was heavily weather-affected? Maybe not everything then.
Judging bowlers and writing off batsmen on the types of wicket that they will never in a million years see in Test cricket is one of the beauties of CC cricket.
With the obvious caveat that I clearly wouldn’t have moved and it would have just bashed me flush on the side of the head, but I watched the video and immediately thought “Luke Wright played that particularly badly, didn’t he?”
In mitigation, it was reportedly a rather slow pitch and the highlights certainly do not imply a bowler who was nibbling it about on-or-around off stump.
Fair. And I suppose being able to shove it up someone when they aren’t expecting it is preferable to the 5 bouncers an over that they told Wood to bowl a couple of weeks ago.
Shoving it up someone when they aren’t expecting it. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the prosecution rests.
Yeah yeah. We all know the England selectors will just recall Jake Ball.
SMH.
In what sounds like the battle of the Afghan aphrodisiacs, Amo have overcome Boost.
http://www.espncricinfo.com/series/18479/game/1137709/boost-region-vs-amo-region-22nd-match-afg-first-class-2018/
Ten wickets in the match for Sharafuddin Ashraf who has an absolute worldie of a name.
http://m.espncricinfo.com/afghanistan/content/player/633362.html
Joefuddin Root and Alifuddin Cook work best out of the current England team, to my ear at least, but for some unfathomable reason I can’t help but think of a recall for Michaelfuddin Vaughan.
Well if it’s second division splendour you are after, you need look no further than my Ogblog report from Day One at Lord’s:
http://ianlouisharris.com/2018/04/13/lords-related-lunches-6-10-april-2018-then-middlesex-v-northants-day-one-lords-13-april-2018/
Actually, the piece covers three Lord’s-related events and even covers some foolery about Lauds for Easter. KC readers who can be bothered to click through to the Lauds piece might enjoy the little vid and the “puzzle” it entails.
If we’re talking about second division cricket I can only imagine this is because Old Trafford was washed out similarly to Headingley.
That’s exactly what I thought, daneel, but strangely, when I went to the Cricinfo site to confirm that fact, I found this instead:
http://www.espncricinfo.com/series/8052/game/1127618/lancashire-vs-nottinghamshire–specsavers-county-championship-division-one-2018/
Odd, that.
I shall be checking out Lancashire in person on Friday, when I shall join Charley The Gent Malloy at Chelmsford for the day.
If you see Shiv Chanderpaul, give him a kick up the arse. He’s in my fantasy team.
Would you like me to deliver that kick when Mr Chanderpaul is expecting it or otherwise, sam?
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I put it to you that I was merely obeying orders.