Discussion on All Things British

Damian in London N2   Wed Aug 30, 2006 8:47 pm GMT
***It is notable for the Arab population on its far western border around Edgware Road***

Talking about the Edgware Road.....running up from Marble Arch towards Paddington Green and Paddington Green police station and then way up to the north west of London......all the way along the Edgware Road, which is miles long, every restaurant and shop and retail establishment is Middle Eastern....the spicy aromas coming from all the restaurants is so (BLEEP) yummy! Going there you feel like you need a passport...in your own country!
zxczxc   Wed Aug 30, 2006 10:55 pm GMT
The restaurants are mostly Lebanese, just to be specific, and have become increasingly popular in the last few years since shisha smoking has become popular. What makes me laugh is that at the same time the legalisation of weed is becoming equally sought, yet cigarette smoking in public places is going to be banned next summer.
Ben   Fri Sep 01, 2006 10:20 am GMT
Oh Damain, don't be apologetic over your reservations towards cricket. It's an acquired taste, I know. It's like poetry - not everyone is able to appreciate it.
British girls's manager   Fri Sep 01, 2006 10:40 am GMT
In my opinion, British girls are the most beautiful girls in the world.
Damian in London N2   Sat Sep 02, 2006 1:02 pm GMT
Ben...I will try and acquire a taste for the game.....it's just that for much of the time there's no actual action.....just thirteen blokes in white standing around looking as if they're at a loose end until one of them decides to stroll away from the rest, rubs a ball against his privates (why do they do that? couldn't it be dangerous?) turns round and then, at last, runs like hell towards the other blokes and hurls the ball with an overhead action at another bloke crouches over his bat trying to prevent it hitting wee bits of wood off the tops of the other bits of wood sticking up out of the ground behind him. If he's lucky he'll whack the ball right up to high heavens and perhaps he'll score a six or just a four or something, it depends how fast, or otherwise, some of the other blokes can either catch it or stop it go to far away from the (in)action.

It just never seems to end!.....if one of the blokes gets "out" he takes ages to stroll back to the pavilion while the spectators genteely applaud him as he walks up the steps, passing his replacement on the way up.

Just when it looks as if something interesting may happen this bloke called an umpire raises his arm and then all of the guys on the field stroll back to the pavilion as if they've all the time in the word.......they're all going off because it's teatime! Ha!

I'll try and summon up some enthusiasm for cricket as a game. I have to admit the scenery is often mega attractive....
zxcxzc   Sat Sep 02, 2006 3:16 pm GMT
They rub the ball on their thighs to add shine to one side of the ball to make it swing. You're not allowed to rub dirt in any more or to damage the other side to acheive the same effect as it's "unsporting", as seen with the whole Inzamam/Pakistan ball-tampering row.

Damian, a game of cricket is an excuse for a pint. Never turn down an excuse for a pint.
Damian in London N2   Sat Sep 02, 2006 4:55 pm GMT
***Damian, a game of cricket is an excuse for a pint. Never turn down an excuse for a pint***

As if....zxcxzc ! I get your connection between cricket and a pint.....just as the club bar is the nineteenth hole on a golf course, so the Bat and Ball or the Dog and Duck or the Queen's Arms is the ultimate destination of those twenty two blokes (and the umpire I reckon) and Uncle Tom Cobleigh and all (I'm learning English expressions every day...) once they decide when to end the bloody game they've been playing for hours and hours! :-)

Cricket will certainly not be an excuse for me downing a pint (or two or three or more.....) in about three hours' time..followed by a Ruby Murray (see, the rhyming slang is just coming oh so naturally now!)...then on to a club somewhere in Sin City.

Cheers!
Ben   Sat Sep 02, 2006 7:28 pm GMT
Lol. I've never seen cricket in such a light before, Damian, but you summed it up perfectly. Why do that do that, you ask? Well, footballers forming a wall in front of a free kick taker usually seem more interested in covering their privates than forming a watertight cordon in front of the goalie, do they?

Cricket is a low-intensity game that is spread out over a day (for limited overs), a few hours (Twenty20) or the modern Test format. It is an acquired taste, I feel. It is an analytical game where how the skipper arranges his fielders is very much akin to a general making his plans for troops formation.

Cricket is about courage. If you've ever handled a cricket ball before, you'd know what I mean. Fielders, usually at the slips position, are required to overcome their natural aversion to duck from a high-velocity hard leather ball that has a propensity to break your fingers if caught wrongly. Indeed, there have been fatal fielding mishaps before.

But even I don't watch all the matches. As with any sport, it becomes mind-bogglingly boring when none of the teams you support are playing and you're reduced to mere disinterested as well as uninterested spectator.

Ditto for footie. But as long as any club plays against Man United or Chelsea, I'd be supporting these plucky Davids in their fight against the over-paid and over-sized Goliaths.
Adam   Mon Sep 04, 2006 8:48 pm GMT
"They rub the ball on their thighs to add shine to one side of the ball to make it swing. You're not allowed to rub dirt in any more or to damage the other side to acheive the same effect as it's "unsporting", as seen with the whole Inzamam/Pakistan ball-tampering row. "


Only sweat and saliva are allowed to be rubbed into a cricket ball to polish it, although over the years bowlers have often sued illegal substances. In the 1930s-1950s when it was common for men to wear Brylcream bowlers, during a game, used to run their fingers through their hair to polish the ball.

A cricket ball is also divided into 2 hemispheres, joined together by a seam running down the middle of the ball. It's illegal for a bowler to pick at or lift the seam to try and get the required swing of the ball when it is bowled so that it suits the bowling team. But it's common knowledge that bowlers hide milk bottle tops in their pockets during a game so that they can scratch the ball and try and pick at the seam.
Adam   Mon Sep 04, 2006 8:58 pm GMT
It's all to do with physics and aerodynamics. Bowlers often polish one half of the ball and leave the other half rough and unpolished. So then when they ball the ball, they can get the ball to swing - swerve through the air - in the direction that they want by bowling the ball with its polished side either on the left or on the right depending on which they they want the ball to travel to the batsman. And it's illegal to tamper with the ball by using illegal substances to polish it, or to scratch it or to mess with the seam. In the recent England VS Pakistan game Pakistan were accused by the umpire of ball tampering when the ball began to reverse swing after the 50th over. The game was abandoned and England were declared the winners even though theyw ere on their way to losing the match.


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As wikipedia says -

Swing bowling is technique used for bowling in the sport of cricket. Practitioners are known as swing bowlers.

Swing bowling is generally classed as a subtype of fast bowling.


Physics of swing bowling
The essence of swing bowling is to get the cricket ball to deviate sideways as it moves through the air towards the batsman. In order to do this, the bowler makes use of four factors:

*The raised seam of the cricket ball.

*Asymmetry in the ball caused by uneven wear of its surface.

*The speed of the delivery

*Their action

The asymmetry of the ball is encouraged by the constant polishing of one side of the ball by members of the fielding team, while allowing the opposite side to deteriorate through wear and tear. Over time, this produces a marked difference in the aerodynamic properties of the two sides.

At speeds around 80 mph, the airflow around the ball is in transition between smooth, or laminar flow, and turbulent flow. At speeds of 90 mph and above, all the flow is turbulent. A medium-pace bowler, working at 75 to 80 mph, takes advantage of this. In this critical region, the raised seam and other minor imperfections in the ball's surface can induce turbulence while air flowing over other parts of the ball remains laminar. Turbulent air separates from the surface of the ball later than laminar flow air, so that the separation point moves to the back of the ball on the turbulent side. On the laminar flow side it remains towards the front. The result is a net force in the direction of the turbulent side.

Thus by keeping the seam and roughness to one side, the bowler induces the ball to swing in that direction. Skilled bowlers can even make a ball swing one way, and then 'break' the other way upon bouncing, with an off cutter or leg cutter hand action.

The swing of a cricket ball is not caused by the Magnus effect, which gives rise to a force perpendicular to the axis of rotation (in this case up or down). The deviation of a swinging cricket ball is parallel to the axis of its rotation

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Conventional swing
Typically, a swing bowler aligns the seam and the sides of the ball to reinforce the swing effect. This can be done in two ways:

Outswinger: By aligning the seam to the left and placing the roughened side of the ball on the left, the ball will swing to the left. To a right-handed batsman, this results in the ball moving away to the off side while in flight, usually outwards from his body.
Inswinger: By aligning the seam to the right and placing the roughened side of the ball on the right, the ball will swing to the right. To a right-handed batsman, this results in the ball moving in to the leg side while in flight, usually inwards towards his body.
The curvature of swing deliveries can make them difficult for a batsman to hit with his bat. Typically, bowlers more commonly bowl outswingers, as they tend to move away from the batsman, meaning he has to "chase" the ball in order to hit it. Hitting away from the batsman's body is dangerous, as it leaves a gap between the bat and body through which the ball may travel to hit the wicket. Also, if the batsman misjudges the amount of swing, he can hit the ball with an edge of the bat. An inside edge can ricochet on to the wicket, resulting in him being out bowled, while an outside edge can fly to the wicket-keeper or slip fielders for a catch.

An inswinger presents relatively fewer dangers to the batsman, but can result in bowled or leg before wicket dismissals if the batsman misjudges the swing on the ball.

An inswinger combined with a yorker can be especially difficult for the batsman to defend against, especially if used as a surprise delivery after a sequence of outswingers.

It is a common belief amongst both players and fans that balls swing more in humid weather conditions, although no objective research exists to bear this out.
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Reverse swing
Normal swing occurs mostly when the ball is fairly new. As it wears more, the aerodynamics of the asymmetry change and it is more difficult to extract a large amount of swing.

When the ball becomes very old—around 40 or more overs old (although Andrew Flintoff and Simon Jones have been known to produce reverse swing in balls as young as 15 overs old [1]),it can begin to swing towards the polished side rather than the rough side. This is known as reverse swing. In essence, both sides have turbulent flow, but here the seam causes the airflow to separate earlier on one side. The result is always a swing to the side with the later separation, so the swing is away from the seam. See External Links

Reverse swing is difficult to achieve consistently, as it relies on uneven wear of the ball, tends to occur mostly in hot, dry weather conditions, and requires bowling at high speed. Normal swing can be achieved at relatively moderate bowling speeds, but only the fastest bowlers can regularly produce reverse swing.

Reverse swing tends to be stronger than normal swing, and to occur late in the ball's trajectory. This gives it a very different character to normal swing, and because batsmen experience it less often they generally find it much more difficult to defend against. It is also possible for a ball to swing normally in its early flight, and then to reverse as it approaches the batsman, giving its trajectory an S-shape through the air.

Notable practitioners of reverse swing have mostly been Pakistani fast bowlers. Sarfraz Nawaz and Imran Khan are often credited as the first bowlers to produce reverse swing, and they have been followed by bowlers such as Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, Irfan Pathan, Aaqib Javed, Shoaib Akhtar, Ajit Agarkar, Darren Gough, Andrew Flintoff and Simon Jones. In the early days of reverse swing, Pakistani bowlers were suspected of using unfair means to achieve it, but today they are considered to have been simply ahead of their time. Such controversy is not entirely absent from the modern game, however, as shown by accusations of ball tampering made against the Pakistani team during the fourth test against England in 2006 when the ball began to reverse swing after the 50th over.

wikipedia.org
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So, unlike in baseball where the ball can be bowled any way, in cricket the ball is strategically polished in order for it to swing in different ways through the air.