In the plane on the way to Perth for the Big Bash final, I watched Moneyball, a movie about an American baseball manager who puts together a team capable of mixing it with the big boys on a shoestring budget. The core principle of the movie is computer analysis and statistics. Baseball games are broken down into component parts and players are selected based on their statistical suitability to each of those parts
...Unfortunately, he then pulled out the printouts. One of them was a map of where my deliveries had pitched and the other was a corresponding document showing how many runs had been scored from each of those deliveries.
John (Buchanan) excitedly told me that whenever I pitched the ball on off stump, the batsman wasn’t scoring. He generally took half an hour to make a point and, considering the tea break at a Test match is only 20 minutes, we were already walking back onto the field at the time. I turned to him and replied that the reason they weren’t scoring when I bowled that particular delivery was because the ball had been turning half a metre and they couldn’t actually reach it.
I thanked him kindly for his input and asked him whether or not he thought I should concentrate instead on getting them out. His blank face indicated that he would have to go back to the laptop before he could respond.
Incidentally, I did start putting them in the right place occasionally, picked up my only five-wicket haul at the MCG and we went on to win the Test. Computers have a huge role to play in cricket, all sport for that matter, but remember the basic principles of the game will always be of paramount importance.
Moneyball is a great film but the stats that matter in cricket are simple. Make more runs than the opposition and bowl them out twice.
Reader Comments and Retorts
Go to end of page
Statements posted here are those of our readers and do not represent the BaseballThinkFactory. Names are provided by the poster and are not verified. We ask that posters follow our submission policy. Please report any inappropriate comments.
1. Best Regards, Larry M. Posted: January 28, 2012 at 12:22 PM (#4048124)EDIT: according to this article, it was reading Moneyball that converted Andy Flower to this kind of thinking. Huh.
FTFY
Seems like cricket needs to fix its rules.
WTF is a boffin?
Basically an egghead.
An anglophonic nerd.
However, I don't understand why this was "the final ball". I thought the batter could just keep fending off these balls indefinitely and he'd still be up, thus forcing the bowler to throw a real ball.
The bowler usually delivers the ball so it bounces high enough off the ground so it can be hit.
He did not do that.. and although that type of move is legal, it's astoundingly rare, and quite offensive. Imagine someone hitting Bonds with a pitch rather than intentionally walking him.
#16 is right for normal cricket, but there are common versions where the number of balls are limited.
Doesn't seem to me to be too different from kneeling the ball to kill the clock in football.
Except that happens all the time.
Yeah, American athletes are funny about choosing a legal strategy that ensures that they win the game. So nutty.
Gentlemen shouldn't need rules to know how to behave.
Let's not turn this into 'the mindset of an American athlete' vs. the rest of the world convo. I'd hate to clutter this thread up with a billion soccer dives, then see some nimrod post links to the 3 times a season (at most) where someone pretends they were hit with the ball.*
*As far as I can tell, this is the closest analogy I can find in Baseball to that Cricket move. Not even just running to first when the umpire makes a mistake, but hopping around holding your hand when the ball wasn't even close. And even that gets a 7 on the outrage scale, while this Cricket Move seems an 11.
So why do you expect cricket players and fans to behave like their American pro-sports counterparts and not have their own culture?
#### I wish intentional walks were "taboo" in baseball in the same vein. I imagine they were once.
Would it really be so difficult to create a rule for this? If it's ultra-rare, I see how it's unnessecery though.
Personally I hate the foul-fest basketball games become. And the strategy of faking an injury late in a soccer game, and expecting your opponent to bring his offensive thrust to a screeching halt and kick the ball out of bounds.
"He's hurt He's hurt!"
"Is he dead? Did he collide with a goal-post? I don't see bones sticking out. He can limp the #### off like a billion Sunday-leaguers do every day."
I don't like the victory formation. I wouldn't mind a rule in football that did away with it.
There is nothing sporting about those incessant dives in soccer. It would be absurd for anyone to criticize kneeling to run out the clock as unsportsmanlike, but to accept that behavior. I'll assume no one will do so.
Dives are only lauded by cynical "win at all costs" types. But they're not an example of either position as they are clearly against the rules.
I plainly don't understand Cricket.
There's also am important point to be made WRT kneeling to run out the clock. A team could also run out the clock by having the tailback run up the middle with both hand firmly grasping the ball and fall upon the slightest contact. While the former has a 0% chance of a fumble, the latter is only microscopically more risky, and would not make a difference in more than 1 in a thousand or even fewer games. It is in no way comparable to any of these other so called unsportsmanlike deeds.
Once there is money on the line, all sporting ( except for flagrant written rules or law* violations) go out the window, as they should.
* I put that in so no smartass could claim that I think it would be fine to intentionally injure or maim a star opponent, or commit some sort of fraud, or any other extra legal activity to secure a win.
In the earliest days, it was the other way around, because strikeouts didn't exist. A batter could wait for a ball he wanted to hit, and it was common practice for for batters to wait and wait and wait until they got the perfect pitch, not coincidentally wearing out the pitcher.
One game in 1855 took 2 hours and 45 minutes to play the first three innings because batters played the 'waiting game'. In an 1860 match between the Brooklyn Atlantics and the Excelsiors, the two opposing pitchers threw 331 and 334 pitches respectively in the first three innings.
Once balls and strikes entered the game, so did intentional walks, and they were booed in the early days of baseball. At different times, banning them were debated, but that never went anywhere.
Are you unfamiliar with the Miracle at the Meadowlands? The Giants lost to their archrival the Eagles in 1978 on just such a play. That was a huge play that got excoriated in the media for years afterwards. That one play ensured that no football coach would ever run instead of kneeling again.
Not like an intentional walk at all as the game (match) can't end on an intentional walk.
Now if baseball had a limit of, say, 45 batters per game and the bases were loaded, down by 2, and the opposing pitcher intentionally walks that 45th batter to win by 1 ... that would be like the underarm bowler.
Kneeling to run out the clock is closer. Fouling in basketball is really only similar when you foul a guy in the last 1-2 seconds to give them 2 shots when they need 3. And both of those at least leave open the possibility of a miracle.
But one of the beauties of baseball is that the game can run forever so there is no way to use the rules to end the game "safely" ... with the possible exception of delaying the game when rain is on the way.
I love NZ but a sure way to avoid this sort of thing is: don't get down by 6 points in the first place.
Yes. Your not telling me anything I don't know. Just because it happened once doesn't mean that the kneel down is a vastly or even slightly safer procedure. The team that is kneeling probably wins 99.9% of the time if they run anyway. It's not that big a deal. Would anyone's enjoyment of football really be enhanced if teams were required to handoff instead of kneeling? Because the outcomes would be the same, and there is nothing inherently more entertaining about watching a fullback cradle the fall, make a few half hearted steps and fall down, that there is seeing the quarterback do the same thing.
How about when Uruguay handled the ball in the box as time ran out against Ghana during the last world cup? Was that sporting, or was that an example of "win at all costs?"
Of course, this used to be true in the days of cricket's 'timeless tests', too.
The problem is that if you hit that 0.1% of the time, the coach who orders the handoff that results in a turnover is fired the next day.
Wait, I thought you were arguing in favor of mandated handoffs because it wouldn't make a difference. My apologies.
According to the rules, any player with the ball can declare themselves 'down' at any time.
The QB kneel is somewhat of an exception as, by rule, the kneeling team doesn't lose any yardage despite the fact that the QB is behind the line of scrimmage when he kneels. A RB would not get the benefit of that rule.
That was something that just about all European soccer commentators condemned, even those that are okay with diving (under the guise of "embellishing" a legitimate foul). Meanwhile I literally had no conception that that might be wrong, based on all my years of playing soccer in the US. The coach told us, if you're in a position to block a goal from going in, and you have to use your hands, you use your hands. Decreases it from a 100% chance of a goal, to a 90% chance, and your team is then a man down. What was Suarez supposed to do, flail at it with his face?
And the point is that every tradition has rules for what's "unacceptable" that seem ridiculous to people in other traditions.
Like NFL's war against celebrations, to name one thing that utterly baffled me.
If there was any doubt before, the last 3 months have pretty definitively proven that Luis Suarez is a piece of garbage.
I've watched football for most of my life, and I never knew that. I've never heard a commentator say that or anything, I just assumed the ball is spotted where the quarterback kneeled.
I don't buy it. I've lost points in fantasy football when my QB kneeled for negative yardage at the end of the game.
He told you only to do that towards the end of a game, right? B/c otherwise, I don't see the payoff for going a man down. Given that it's a WC knockout game, it's pretty hard to set rules to discourage such a play (other than a forfeit). I guess they could have suspended him for the Copa America, but he'd probably still think it was worth it.
And small nit, I don't know the conversion % for pk's in your leagues, but in top level soccer, it's closer to 75-80%, I think.
I, too, was not aware. Maybe I just don't pay close enough attention to games once they get to the kneeling stage, but I would've sworn the ball was spotted where the QB knelt.
Wikipedia isn't specific; they say it generally results in loss of yardage but doesn't mention the NFL itself. Someone on Wikianswers claims that no defender gets credit for a tackle or sack but the QB is credited with -1 yards rushing.
I'm scanning/searching through the NFL rulebook, but can't find anything specific on the kneel so far.
Box Score
Play-by-Play
Philip Rivers has no credited runs until the last 3 plays of the game. He's then credited with 3 kneels, each for -1 yards, and the line of scrimmage also moves back 1 yard after each play. The box score also shows him with 3 runs for -3 yards.
I've actually seen it, recently. Usually they switch to a QB sneak in such situations, with the QB not fighting for any extra yards.
I'm nearly positive the kneel results in lost yardage.
Yes, it was when our main or only priority was to not give up any (more) goals.
That's nuts. Looking at this other Michael Holding, uh, at bat ("over"?), I'm amused by how many fielders are playing behind the batter. I assume that's not normal, and is being employed here because Holding is so overpowering.
There are different rules(something about the defender touching the quarterback) but I didn't think that ball was put back at the line of scrimmage(as others have pointed out, it seems like they credit a loss of one yard)
Yeah, I was arguing against.
If the team with possession has the lead, and there are less than 40 seconds for each down they have before fourth down (i.e., a scenario where they could run out the clock), and their opponent has no time outs remaining, any offensive play that ends behind the line of scrimmage stops the game clock. The team without possession can waive this rule before the play (so they don't have to do this when a team leads by 42 points).
Or a referee can declare a player down in curious fashion:
http://www.yardbarker.com/nfl/articles/video_questionable_call_on_whether_or_not_giants_wr_victor_cruz_fumbled_against_cardinals/7174663
"The New York Giants managed to rally against the Arizona Cardinals on Sunday after trailing by 10 late in the fourth quarter for a 31-27 win after Ei Manning found Hakeem Nicks for a 29-yard touchdown pass–but a controversial call has everyone talking about whether that play should have even happened. On what ended up being the game-winning drive for the Giants, Victor Cruz caught a 19-yard pass from Eli Manning and let the ball go because he assumed he was down by contact after a defender had touched him.
However, the Cardinals immediately jumped on the loose ball as they thought Cruz was untouched–but the ruling on the field was that he was down by contact. Unfortunately, this was one of those type of plays that Ken Whisenhunt wasn’t allowed to challenge and the Giants scored the go-ahead touchdown on the very next play."
I wouldn't go so far as to say without this call that the Giants would have lost this game (almost certainly) and therefore would have finished 8-8 (quite possible, but not as certain), leaving the Eagles as the NFC East champs. I'd also add that the Giants were on the short end of two TD plays (one called good by the Packers, the other called no good by the Giants) which just as easily could have gone their way in what turned out to be a 3-point loss. Neither occurred when the game was nearly over, however.
re the Cardinals/Cruz play, ex-NFL rules guy Mike Pereira said it was a fumble; the league claims it wasn't. The announcers called it a fumble, and even Eli Manning knew it was a fumble:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PnjhKFPZFQ
That just strikes me as a solution in search of a problem. Outside of a few on this site, I have never heard anyone complain about the "victory" formation.
Well, there's no point in getting pissy about it either.
No one has a problem with it, or at least very, very few do. That's the point.
The Ballparks, Bill Shannon (text) and George Kalinsky (photos), Hawthorne Books, 1975
The box score of the game can be seen here.
DB
That's a good example (I do believe Cruz gave himself up on that play, and the ball was down).
That was brilliant. Suarez doesn't do that and Ghana wins the game. But he does, and gives his team a chance.
If my personal preference is for 6 balls for a walk, is that something that can just be chalked up to to personal preference and we have to just agree to disagree? I'm not trying to pick a fight here. It's just that not all opinions are equally valid and worthy of consideration.
The ends don't even matter. If the penalty kick was converted, I would still say it was brilliant.
If Suarez does nothing, Uruguay 100% wins.
If Suarez uses his hand, there's a 20-something% chance of going to a shootout. (PK conversion rate is 80-something%).
Taking a penalty to stop a 100% sure score is the smart move in any sport. Whatever the result of the penalty (unless the punishment is an automatic rewarding of the score), the chances of scoring are less than 100%.
Don't they pretty much always? I know this gets tossed around a lot, and it's supposed to imply that ends should never justify the means, I guess.
But that's lunacy. The whole point of sacrifice is that the ends justify the means. As a rule I don't like guns or killing people, but would I shoot someone about to kill my kids? Without a second thought.
The ends don't ALWAYS justify the means, but I think they do enough that trying to shoot something down with the phrase is pointless.
If this were the opening minutes of the game, it isn't. I don't think trading a 100 percent chance at a goal for a) an 80 percent chance, plus b) being forced to play a man down for the remainder of the game, plus c) not having that player available for the next game, makes it a good choice.
The situation in this game rendered those last two penalties moot, which is what made it such an obviously good play for Suarez. It was the conditions of the game, not the rule or its consequences, that were ripe for exploiting in this particular situation.
"Until I saw it on a previous thread, I never realized there were people who believed there was something unsporting or fix-needing about the last-minute kneeldowns in football."
I recall articles about a mystified London crowd booing pretty vigorously when the "kneel down" was used a couple of times with well over a minute left in one of the first NFL games played there. They were stunned that after watching efforts to gain yardage all game, one team could simply run out the clock.
Yes, however the _true_ actual "ends" to an action are often hidden or not immediately clear. I think the saying has more to do with a "short-sighted" idea of what the "ends" are.
For this example, the pure pursuit of winning a single game may not be the ultimate "end" you want. If you destroy the sport (or at least severely weaken it) in the process, obviously you probably haven't achieved the ends you set out to achieve as a professional athlete.
If the penalty is being sent off, I agree. But I'm not just talking about soccer and not just talking ejections. If it doesn't result in an ejection, and rather it's just a penalty shot or a power play, free throw or whatever, it's worth it.
As to the last ball. Common forms of the game limit each side to either 20 or 50 overs. 6 balls to an over. (Why not 300 balls? Because a bowler can only be changed at the end of an over, and each over you also change which end the bowler comes from. Also, in limited over cricket there are limits on the maximum number of overs any given bowler can be used and there are generally limits on the number of overs spinners -- a particular type of bowler -- can be used)
And for those wondering why baseball lists 2/3 of an inning as .2, in cricket they list 4 overs and 3 balls as 4.3 overs.
And rugby has an equivalent to the kneeldown. A game doesn't end when time expires. You get to finish the phase of play. So if the team with the ball is leading (and has nothing further to play for such as a bonus point for tries scored) they'll just kick the ball into touch.
I find it ironic that Misirlou came down "pro-clarity" in the linguistics thread.
This is extreme. They have rule books you know. And the point made above only applies to situations where the penalty is ejection and your team then plays a man down the rest of the game. This is not what is given as a penalty in all situations.
Goaltender is out of his crease for some reason and the puck carrier is about to score an empty net goal. You can do nothing and give up an empty net goal, or you can throw your stick (or, if you're Scott Hartnell, your glove) at him and block the shot and give up a penalty shot. Which do you do? The decision is easy.
Or again, back to the original situation: Suarez can do nothing and with 100% certainty lose, or he can commit a foul and give his team, no matter how remote, a chance to win. This is a no-brainer.
The NHL finally added a penalty for diving, I think it was around the 1980s or so.
Bill Barber of the Flyers was probably the worst offender, back in the 1970s. He made Greg Louganis look like a kid on his first day of swim camp.
With camerawork these days, it doesn't seem like it would be that difficult to penalize the soccer players after the fact as well, as the NFL does with cheap shots that aren't spotted by the game-day officiating crew. It will be ambiguous in some cases, but not others.
By the time the 2nd team comes to bat, they are usually down by 200 runs or so (depending on format). I'm guessing coming to bat down only 6 would be an all-time record (by a few dozen runs).
Or maybe you just phrased it poorly? It is true that NZ kinda "choked" in the last 10 balls or so and should have been closer than 6 by the final ball.
There's usually very little time to think, you do it...accidentally, do it by impulse, or just 'flail your face or foot around'....regardless, you don't go after the guy or his family or his country. He committed a foul and paid the price. Don't like it, then score earlier.*
*Grew up playing when men were men...short shorts aside...with no mandatory shin guards and this wasn't even a foul.
It's probably safe to say that soccer fans don't complain as much as non-soccer fans. Leagues probably don't consider the problem to be so bad that it merits new rules that could have side-effects.
That said, MLS has handed out suspensions for dives (out and out dives vs. embellishment), and has done so after the fact by reviewing replays. Given that US soccer is still trying to expand from a relatively small audience, it probably makes more sense for MLS to do it than other leagues worldwide.
It's not really surprising to see him curmudgeoning in print.
You must be Registered and Logged In to post comments.
<< Back to main