Cricket has rarely been accused of being the world’s most dynamically exciting game. It’s attractions are gentle, cerebral and cultural. Very occasionally it is athletically impressive. It was this week when England batsmen executed a reverse sweep and hit a six (US readers view below for illustration). And the first response of the authorities in their blue blazers? Look at banning it of course.
[tags] Cricket [/tags]
sixtysecondview.blog 
Absolutely typical of our cricket regulators. They really are a useless bunch. My worry is that cricket will turn into the new football and will be influenced by TV rights and money.
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I’m a Yank who likes cricket (particularly the Aussies, after living Down Under for two years), and I often get amused at some of the controversies. This is another case.
It seems to me that cricket has to evolve with the times. Twenty20 is one such evolution, and as much as I’m not the biggest follower of the format, there’s no disputing that it’s resonating with fans around the world.
And now we get some brilliant — and surprising — strokeplay from Pietersen, and some cricket bigwigs get up in arms about it. Too bad.
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Heard on the radio that they are OK with it…go KP (Shame he is foreign!)
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not only are the MCC bods okay with it, they think it’s “exciting for the game of cricket” though I expect that took a full day of deliberation to come up with such a well thought out statement 🙂
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They did get there in the end.
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To be fair, they didn’t just ‘get there’, they discussed it very quickly and came back equally quickly saying they endorsed it. There were issues, not so much with whether or not it should be banned, but what to do with other peripheral rules such as the LBW law and various fielding restrictions which are all to do with what constitutes the ‘leg side’ and ‘off side’ when a batsman changes stances. So I think this string has been unfairly harsh on the authorities, given their swift and fair response.
Now, we can look forward to bowlers switching hands as they approach the crease and whamming down left-arm chinamen …
I was wondering if you could switch hit like this in baseball? Problem would be if you picked a fast-ball instead of a curveball and copped it in the nether regions as you tried to change stance …
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