Posted by Dear The Internet,
You’ve never asked us if we felt you contained too much information. If you asked us now, we would say ‘yes’.
The Cricinfo Hawkeye tool lets us see the path of every ball of every over during the whole of a Test match.
We don’t WANT to see that.
The Cricinfo Hawkeye tool lets us see where every ball of every over landed.
Too much information.
We can also see where the batsmen hit each delivery.
What is wrong with the world?
We can even click any of those lines and relive the bowler’s delivery.
From five different angles!
Five!
Why, The Internet? Why? Why are you doing this to us? Dearest The Internet, when did you turn evil?
When Alastair Cook takes a single to mid-on off Abdur Razzak, we can barely stand to watch it live. We don’t want to know the speed of the delivery, the path of the ball, how high it bounced and where the batsman played it.
We have seen too much cricket. When you give us this amount of detail, we are actually THERE.
When Alastair Cook is nudging singles, by far the best way of enjoying it is by looking at a line of text that reads ‘AN Cook’ followed by a number that occasionally increases by one.
You had me at Dear The Internet
…1.lb
That’s all you need. That tells me all i need to know.
I even preferred it when you couldn’t use full-stops in telegrams STOP
That was the future STOP Less is more STOP
Where will it ever STOP
Well you might be right about the internet containing two or three pages of extra stuff that isn’t relevant, KC, I wouldn’t know about that. What I do know is that on TMS the trend is in the opposite direction. I prefer my audible cricket information to come at me in the format “…is up to the stumps now…turned away towards backward square…and there’s no run.” But recent additions to the TMS team regularly forget to add these last four words to their descriptions.
“WAS THERE A RUN?”, I am often found shouting at the radio. “WAS THERE A FUCKING RUN?” On Cricinfo I would at least know if there had been a fucking run, albeit that I would have had to work it out myself from the Hawkeye velocity vectors of all the players on the pitch.
Anyone following a test match on cricinfo rather than teletext is part of the problem.
The Internet is like genetic research and modern art- once begun it must inexorably proceed to its logical conclusion, the destruction of anything of value, or indeed of all of mankind.
Bert –
You’re right about the TMS problem. Sometimes they just miss out deliveries altogether because they’re too busy discussing that time Agnew dismissed Boycott back in the day.
Don’t get me wrong, Sam. I’m not against waffle. I read this website, after all. But there is a certain minimum information content that I require. The old pros could quite easily segue “up to the wicket… and there’s no run” into a discussion about My Favourite Trees with hardly a pause for breath. It’s the new boys, who seem to think that because TMS is famous for waffle, THAT’S ALL THEY HAVE TO DO.
In this light, perhaps Cricinfo ought to consider removing their Hawkeye rubbish and replacing it with a TMS simulation (only available in the UK). Using their text commentary model, they could have two virtual commentators who variously present random anecdotes from Wisden, interspersed with “up to the wicket… and there’s no run” and some linking phrases at the right moments.
I think this would pass a Turing test.
Bert
I’m glad you’ve raised this. I’ve been particulary disappointed with a lot of the recent additions to the TMS team. Vaughan is awful, Hoggard not much better, and i’ve rather not listen to Cork if it’s possible.
Also, i’ve noticed a trend to general ‘sports presenters’ hosting it, rather than an ex-cricketer. I don’t want to listen to Mark Pougatch.
I don’t listen to TMS but it sounds like they haven’t learned from the Ken Sutcliffe debacle (12th Man) in putting in a non cricket player.
Poor Internet. It gets blamed for everything.
First it was blamed for Y2K and trying to take over the world.
Then for destroying the moral fabric of the Western society by providing access to free porn.
Now for too much HawkEye.
What is next?
IPL on YouTube. That’s next.
I never thought I would say this but TMS with Mark Butcher is a small step forward – he actually seems to talk about the on pitch cricket at the time, in a way that I quite like.
As long as the commentary team don’t talk about golf or how bald the bald players are I don’t care too much. Mentioning either of these should mean instant vaporisation – that would learn em!
Describing Ishant Sharma’s hair is permissible.
SixSixEight – your baldist comments make me sad. But your reaction to Butch’s commentary make me happy. He’s very inciteful, especially when compared to Vaughan and Cork. I reckon the only reason that Cork does it is to increase his media profile ahead of an appearance on Strictly…
Quite like Vaughan and Cork.
Are we missing something?
Ronnie Irani – that’s who you’re missing from that rogues’ gallery.
Add him in and you have the perfect punditry team from hell.