I'm at a cricket match, for the first and very probably last time in my life. I will report back if anything exciting happens.
Weird... the lack of a follow up post could be construed to imply that nothing exciting happened...
Anyway, big drama in the Cricket World Cup today. In case any of you missed it, I'm referring to the Sri Lanka Vs Bangladesh game which featured a controversial wicket.
The incident came in the 25th over of Sri Lanka’s innings when, after the fall of the fourth wicket, Mathews walked out to the middle. Discovering his helmet had a broken chin strap after taking guard, the all-rounder gestured for a replacement to be brought out.
However, World Cup regulations stipulate a batter must be “ready to receive the ball” within two minutes of the fall of the previous wicket. With this time elapsed, Shakib, the bowler at the time, surprised Mathews and spectators alike by appealing for timed out.
It you don't follow cricket you may not know that to get someone out (ie to take the wicket) it's normally not enough for the situation to be technically one that would remove them, the fielding team also has to appeal to the umpire and say "How's that?" or similar, and then the umpire decides if it was indeed caught or an LBW* or whatever.
So here the scandal is cos the Bangladeshi captain seized on the technicality and appealed - very controversial in a sport which is supposed to be a kind of reference point for fair play and sporting manners (hence the expression "it's simply not cricket" which means that something has been done dishonourably or unfairly) apparently the umpires gave him two chances to withdraw his appeal, they probably said "Oh come on dear boy, that would hardly be cricket would it? And if you do insist o going ahead with it then the entire world will think you an absolute Berkshire".
But he insisted and so they lost a wicket, the first time it's occurred in this manner for 146 years. People are not happy. At the press conference the guy who was out called the opposing captain as absolute disgrace but he definitely wanted to say cunt.
*LBW is Leg Before Wicket, one of the ways to get someone out; following an
appeal by the
fielding side, the
umpire may rule a batsman out lbw if the
ball would have struck the
wicket but was instead intercepted by any part of the batsman's body (except the hand holding the
bat). The umpire's decision will depend on a number of criteria, including where the ball pitched, whether the ball hit in line with the wickets, the ball's expected future trajectory after hitting the batsman, and whether the batsman was attempting to hit the ball.