My God, no wonder you people lost the Empire.




edit:
I can feel an attack of the vapors coming on....

You take too much notice of your southern neighbours, or had too many injuries playing ice fighting, sorry, hockey.

And we didn't lose it, we gave it away because the locals got too bolshie.

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You take too much notice of your southern neighbours, or had too many injuries playing ice fighting, sorry, hockey.

Now you are skating on thin ice.
Which country came up with the idea of The Noble Art Of Self Defence?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kH_Aru8ymU

Now you are skating on thin ice.

I wish they would. Might get some of those crazy canucks to keep quiet ;-)

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DUCK A score of zero, named thus because a zero is shaped like a duck’s egg. A duck on the first ball is a golden duck. Two ducks in the same game by the same batter are a pair. Two golden ducks are a king pair.
GOOGLY O.K., pay attention. If a bowler who would ordinarily spin the ball away from a right-handed batsman instead spins it toward him (and vice versa for a left-handed batsman), that’s a googly. If a bowler who would normally spin the ball toward a right-handed batsman spins it away from him, that’s a doosra.

Indeed, cricket’s field placings are so esoteric, one might be forgiven for thinking English gentlemen invented them for the same reason they mispronounce the River Thames and Cambridge’s Magdalene College: just one more trick to separate the upper crust from the rest of the loaf.

For those of us who never went to Eton then (but more out of affectionate humour than egalitarianism), here is an explanation of cricket’s basic field positions. Let us begin with an easy one, so we don’t give ourselves brain damage, as we surely would, if we plunged head first into a deep gully.


Wicket-keeper

The simplest position in all of cricket, including those on the batting team, which includes the pair of openers, the strike and non-strike batsman, the tail-enders and even a possible runner for an injured batsman. Batsmen nowadays are also called batters. The wicket-keeper is only ever the wicket-keeper, or, to his close friends and colleagues in the slips, the keeper.
Slips

The position that sounds next most like what it is, except it is not the fielder who slips, but the batter, whose technique may let him down (though it may be to a very good ball) and cause him to edge a catch. There may be any number of slips, so much so that there is no singular of the position. If there is only one slip fielder, the position is still called “the slips”. If there are more than one, they are called “first slip”, “second slip”, “third slip” and so on. The greater number of close fielders, the more attacking the field is considered. With the current West Indies batting side, it is not inconceivable that the other team’s bowling field might consist of a bowler, a wicket-keeper and first to ninth slips.
Gully

Theoretically, when the slip fielders are too numerous, even for Australia bowling to the Zimbabwe number ten and 11, the number six slip (or so) will himself slip off the edge of slips and tumble into the gully. Sounds as reasonable as anything you might read in Wisden.
Point

Now this could be easily explained, but what would be the point? This position came into existence because it was the one right next to gully, close enough for the captain setting his field to say, “No, not there! There! There! There!” And then he would — wait for it — point.
Backward point

This would be a fielder who is not very clever generally and out-and-out bad in the point position, but who has to be picked because it’s his gear and he brings the beer for after the game. No, seriously — or as serious as this guide will get, anyway — the position of backward point evolved because some BBC commentator once, live on-air, forgot the name for square leg and had to think fast.
Silly point

All the positions prefixed with “silly”, such as silly point, are the most accurately named in cricket, not because it is silly strategically to place someone there, like punting on first down or playing defensively when the other team is three goals up, but because you would have to be silly in the head to stand there for a moment, far less bend over facing the end of the bat with your hands anywhere other than wrapped protectively around your head.
Cover point

This position, a little farther away from the batting crease, was the closest the first insurance salesmen would come to sell funeral coverage policies to a man fielding at silly point.
Cover

This was where the insurance policies would be signed, between overs.
Extra-cover

This position, as the name implies, was where insurance salesmen would explain additional insurance benefits, such as full permanent disability, to fielders. It developed in the 1980s when Clive Lloyd’s West Indian team with its fearsome four-pronged pace attack dominated the cricket world.
Mid-on

Actually, this is a fairly straightforward one, by cricket’s very confusing standards. The leg side is called the on-side, apparently because you always get on a horse from its own left side and the nobility, who first played cricket, because they had the time, because they didn’t have to dig their children out of collapsed mine shafts, looked at the wicket the way they looked at a horse. Or something. Anyway, mid-on is not in the middle of the on-side between wicket and wicket, as you might think. It’s not in the middle of the field, either. It’s just in the mid.
Silly mid-on

See silly point.
Mid-off

The off-side, of course, is the side that is not the on-side. It’s actually not as straightforward as it seemed a mere two paragraphs ago, though, because horses don’t bat or write letters or sign autographs or do anything with their hands. A horse’s on-side is therefore always its left side. A right-handed batsman will have his on- or leg-side on his left side; a left-handed batsman, however, batting the other way, will have his on-side on his right side. And if you have a right-handed batter and a left-handed one batting together (which is to say, at opposite ends of the wicket), the on- and off- sides are reversed every time they score a single, causing the field to be laterally inverted for potentially every other ball. This is the only time fielding at silly point becomes an advantage: it is a shorter walk. Pity the guy at deep mid-wicket; he is better off letting the ball run for four.
Silly mid-off

A marginally safer fielding position than silly mid-on in the Caribbean, if only because it is a natural West Indian tendency to play across the line — we used to do it well once, though our current struggles to play the line itself belies that — and a feisty Jamaican crossbat would open the skull of silly mid-on faster than a hatchet-wielding orc in Lord of the Rings.
Mid-wicket

Perhaps the only sensibly named position after wicket-keeper. This fielder stands roughly in the middle of the wicket, on the on- or leg-side.
Short leg

Cricket, though considered elitist, has always made space for the handicapable.
Forward short leg

Even the impolite ones.
Backward short leg

The more handicapped you are, the greater your options, like in the good old days of socialist governments.
Square leg

Again, this position was once literally and accurately called “peg leg”, but an early politically correct movement softened offence by sharpening the corners. Okay, okay, this position is at right angles, or square, to the batsman’s legs. It is usually occupied by the second umpire who is called the square leg umpire, except in Australia, where what he is called after giving an Aussie batter out cannot be printed in a family journal.
Leg slip, leg gully

These are mirror reflections of their off-side originals; they might just as easily have been called on slip and on gully; but they weren’t.
Fine leg

That a fielding position in an all-male game could end up with a name like this, proves cricket evolved in English boarding schools. No, all right, the “fine” here does not reflect an appreciation of a player’s well-built thigh. “Fine” refers to the delicacy of the glance the batsman would have to make for the ball to run to the boundary at such an acute angle to the wicket.
Long leg

This is called long leg because it is a long way from the wicket and the player fielding here needs long arms to throw it back, but even Victorian cricketers accepted that they couldn’t make the field even more confusing by bringing in a long arm, which would have led naturally to a short arm, forward short arm and deep backward square cover arm. No, okay, it’s a boundary or long position on the leg side.
Deep square leg

It’s nice to think there is something philosophical going on here, but there isn’t. The only thing deep about deep square leg is the daydream the fielder can fall into, so far away from the rest of the game. Yes, it is another boundary position, the farthest the captain can send a useless fielder square of the batting crease.
Deep mid-on

Same as deep square leg, except the fielder doesn’t quite get to the boundary. This is to ensure he can run backwards with his eye on a lofted ball, for a distance long enough for him to fall over and give the crowd a bit of a laugh.
Long-on

Even by cricket’s non-existing standards, mid-on and long-on were misnamed. Everything else on the leg side is named by reference to the leg, not the on-side. Strictly speaking, long-on should have been long leg, but that was already taken by long arm, so they decided to do something that would appear simple if you didn’t think about it too long, and just have long-on next door to long-off, its mirror reflection.
Deep extra cover, deep backward point, deep gully

Just like extra cover, backward point and gully, except not as dangerous and, therefore the players who field there are, relatively speaking, less shallow.
Long-off

Following the example of cover, extra cover and deep extra cover, and point, backward point and deep backward point, this position really ought to have been called deep extra bowler.
Third man

Another position that evolved because the captain kept shouting at the fine leg and deep backward point, the two guys covering nine o’clock to midnight on the clock face of the cricket ground, “No, no, not there! There! There! There!” And then he would get fed-up and send out — wait for it — a third man to show them where to stand.

So there you have it: most of what you need to know to find your way around a cricket pitch. Small wonder the batting side is restricted to two openers and batsmen number three through 11.
In any case, experienced weekend players will tell you the best position to occupy for all five days of a Test Match is first served, the first stool at the pavilion bar.

Well done there hilarious . I hope everyone now understands the game of Cricket .

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The simplified rules:

You have two sides, one out in the field and one in. Each man that's in the side that's in goes out, and when he's out he comes in and the next man goes in until he's out. When they are all out, the side that's out comes in and the side that's been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out.
When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in. There are two men called umpires who stay out all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out. When both sides have been in and all the men have been out, and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

Might get some of those crazy canucks to keep quiet ;-)

Does this mean that we're not friends any-more?

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Is Wayne Gretzky Running for President of Canada?
http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2015/09/29/Wayne-Gretzky-Canadian-President/

Might get some of those crazy canucks to keep quiet ;-)

Does this mean that we're not friends any-more?

Only when you sing the Spam song ;-)

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Oh, I am heart broken, oh, oh, oh.....

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Well done 171 ....

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It looks like finally getting rid of R. Marsh as Chairman of Selectors (and his so called hi performance coaching staff after the S.A. debacle) and an injection of some youth again has done wonders for our team since.

The Kiwi's were whipped.

Pakistan is providing no contest as I watch the last day of the last test (rain interrupted) and so far it's looking like a complete white wash.

The local men's and women's T20 Big Bash comps have been extremely entertaining as well.
Cheers.

Well I hope that Pakistan can do a hell of a lot better in the ODI's.

Cheers.

The Press Association just announced that Alastair Cook has been to Buckingham Palace & received the OBE from Prince Charles.

Well India's unbeaten test record at home hit a brick wall as the Aussies crushed them in 3 days during the 1st test.

Aussies 260 & 285 beat India 105 & 107 with Steve O'Keefe taking 6-35 in both of India's innings earning him the Man of the Match award.

Cheers.

India's start to the 2nd test on another questionable wicket (when arn't Indian wickets questionable?) ended badly for them on the 1st day being all out for 189.

Spinner Nathan Lyon went through the home side like a wildfire taking 8 wickets for 50 runs.

At stumps on Day 1 the Aussies were 0/40.

Cheers.

At stumps on day 2 the Aussies were 6-237 with a 48 run lead on a wicket that is fast becoming dangerous.

Virat Kohli has also continued to make a hash of the DRS.

Cheers.

COME ON AUSSIE COME ON, COME ON AUSSIE COME ON! :)

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I'm glad to see your back.

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Thanks bro. The AMD stuffed up a couple of months ago and I had to get a new mobo which I have only just got. Gigabyte 990-fx-ud3. Also it has been hot this summer and I have had to turn the Intel off 30c at midnight 42c by 10am BLOODY HOT!!!

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