Cricket Thread

[Rsdio]

Unbelievable stuff.. Seemed like such a damp squib after the final ball but Ponting didn't deserve to lose.

After watching years of England being crap until recently, it's hard to be downhearted. Even if we don't win the series the Aussies are gonna be more worried about us than they have been about any side in a long time.

[Kieran76]

Aye, I really did feel for Ponting, that slow mo that showed the look on his face when he was given out was painful.

[VR46]

fair result in the end I suppose, blooming rain on Saturday did us no favours either.

[Shoju]

Im convinced Brett Lee edged the ball from Flintoff towards the end, but wasn't given out because they didn't appeal fully. The noise in the ground made it hard to hear the nicks which you can hear on TV through the stump microphone, so players and umpire can miss slight nicks on a day like this. The same thing happened with Martin replays with the snickometer showed he edged a ball which nobody appealed for. I heard a sound when it past the bat and couldn't believe they missed it.

[DaiSuki]

While there's a cricket thread around, has anybody got a link to a video of Warne's "ball of the century", the one that took Mike Gatting? I've been trying to describe it to a mate of mine, but can't seem to impress on him just how good the delivery was. I can't believe it's not easier to find footage of it, but I've been trying all day and got nowt

[Rsdio]

Out of sheer boredom I've just spent a couple of hours looking, but not turned anything up . Did find a few other people who'd asked for it on other forums with no luck either.

Wikipedia describes that ball in such detail that you barely need a video of it though

[DaiSuki]

Aye, indeed It's just that he's fairly new to our national sport, so it doesn't mean as much to him as perhaps it might were he to see it. I've tried to describe it in plain North-East English ("ahhhh, man... he threw it, and about half way down it like bent off one way, and then when it landed, it bounced totally the other way, and put Gatting out. But it was that good, right, that Gatting didn't even realise what everybody was making a fuss about. Didn't realise he'd been bowled. It was beautiful. Even though it was for the convicts, like.") but that hasn't worked either.

I really can't believe it's not widely available everywhere on the net

[Rsdio]

I can't even see a DVD on Amazon that might have it, in fact it's depressing how little there is in general compared to most other sports.

[DaiSuki]

Indeed I could watch 3 hours of people leg spinning, truth be told, and if there was a bonus DVD of folk stepping up and hitting brave slogs, so much the better.

Still, I think it's quite nice that it's a bit of a niche sport... when I explained the rules to my office the other day ("You have to get more runs, yes... but you also have to put the other team out") something clicked with them all, and they saw the beautiful tactical nature of the game which they'd previously assumed to be a five day version of baseball. They've all had the BBC scorecard open for the last four days. I felt proud to have introduced them to it, although I suspect their interest will wane post-Ashes

[Rsdio]

Probably, but a few might stick around I bet. It was a mate of mine constantly going on about it at school that converted me. I went from always telling him to 'shut up about Mike bloody Atherton' to jumping around like a lunatic when we were listening to Dominic Cork's hat-trick in '95 whilst on a school trip .

Mind you, I think I'm the only person he dragged into it in over a decade so maybe they will just go 'right, when's the next World Cup qualifier then?' and forget all about it.

[Abhisara]

The Gatting ball is in this streaming link at about 1:25 (including a nice replay). It's got the Strauss one for good measure too. If someone knows how to capture from a file like this, then that would be great.

http://media01.news.com.au/foxsports/video/100805CriupdateWed.asf

[DaiSuki]

Yay, nice one. Cheers

[marcus]

Time to fire up that BBC scoreboard, England to bat first.

[Kieran76]

England looking good so far, also we seem to have luck on our side at the moment, we win the toss, McGrath out injured. Some decent fielding by the Aussies though. If we can get to lunch without losing a wicket I reckon we will be able to post a decent score.

[VR46]

The Gatting ball is in this streaming link at about 1:25 (including a nice replay). It's got the Strauss one for good measure too. If someone knows how to capture from a file like this, then that would be great.
http://media01.news.com.au/foxsports...iupdateWed.asf

only just noticed this post, as long as that URL is "unbusy" tonight I'll capture the Warne/Gatting bit and upload it as a .avi - it's got to be one of the top ten sporting moments ever.

Come on England let's see 400+ on the board today eh.