How could this happen?

[Swervy]

August 1983 Essex vs Middlesex at Chelmsford

An odd game where Middlesex were bowled out on the first morning for 83, but then in their second innings they scored 634 for 7 dec, after Essex scored 289 in their only innings....

but the odd thing for me (apart from Gooch bowling 56 overs in that second Middlesex innings) is this (and I quote from Wisden 1984):

'In the first hour after tea on the last day, Pont and Gooch bowled 48 overs as Essex concentrated on improving their over rate and thus avoiding a statutory fine.'


How on earth could anyone bowl 48 overs in an hour...thats 288 legit deliveries in 60 minutes....I can't really get my head around that.

 

[Lillian Thomson]

That used to happen quite a bit in dead County matches. They sometimes collaberated with the other team and just bowled off one step and the batsman just patted the deliveries back. That way you could get through an over in 45 seconds or less.

 

[Richard]

Our club has done that sort of thing more than once - game's long decided, batsmen don't want to throw their wickets away, 15 overs or so still remain, bowlers don't mind getting their economy-rates down a bit, but no-one wants to stay out for another three-quarters of an hour to bowl those 15 overs. So you just bowl the overs really quickly. Probably not anywhere near 48 per hour, but I think we once got rid of 13 overs or so in the space of half-an-hour or so.

 

[stumpski]

That used to happen quite a bit in dead County matches. They sometimes collaberated with the other team and just bowled off one step and the batsman just patted the deliveries back. That way you could get through an over in 45 seconds or less.

Sounds like the sort of thing that would have spectators heading for the bar - or the exits. I have seen occasional bowlers used for this purpose before - a longish spell by Ali Brown comes to mind - but nothing lke that.

 

[Jono]

That used to happen quite a bit in dead County matches. They sometimes collaberated with the other team and just bowled off one step and the batsman just patted the deliveries back. That way you could get through an over in 45 seconds or less.

Our club has done that sort of thing more than once - game's long decided, batsmen don't want to throw their wickets away, 15 overs or so still remain, bowlers don't mind getting their economy-rates down a bit, but no-one wants to stay out for another three-quarters of an hour to bowl those 15 overs. So you just bowl the overs really quickly. Probably not anywhere near 48 per hour, but I think we once got rid of 13 overs or so in the space of half-an-hour or so.

That's fairly disgraceful.

Game has a bad enough reputation of being slow and boring, things like that, even though obviously very rare, are pretty awful.

 

[Lillian Thomson]

Sounds like the sort of thing that would have spectators heading for the bar - or the exits. I have seen occasional bowlers used for this purpose before - a longish spell by Ali Brown comes to mind - but nothing lke that.

Last session of a dead County Match..................spectators.....................does not compute.

 

[Richard]

That's fairly disgraceful.

Game has a bad enough reputation of being slow and boring, things like that, even though obviously very rare, are pretty awful.

Why? This is a club match, where the "spectators" (almost always exclusively friends and family) usually number about 20 or so, if even that, and would far prefer the game to be over quickly so the players can get in the bar with them than watch 15 overs which are completely devoid of all interest.

In any case, slow =| 15 overs in 35 minutes.

 

[Jono]

Apologies, I read club as county, flowing on from Lillian Thompson's post.

Can't both captains just agree to end the game though?

 

[vic_orthdox]

Apologies, I read club as county, flowing on from Lillian Thompson's post.

Can't both captains just agree to end the game though?

Nah, because not even a first innings result has been determined, because of the two day cricket that English cricket tries to fit into one day.

 

[Lillian Thomson]

That's fairly disgraceful.

Game has a bad enough reputation of being slow and boring, things like that, even though obviously very rare, are pretty awful.

This was the least of County Cricket's problems in the 70's and 80's. Far worse was the awful contrived settings of a fourth innings target where you would get part time bowlers in the third innings of the match diliberately looping up hitable balls to hasten the scoring and reach the agreed target level.

 

[Richard]

Apologies, I read club as county, flowing on from Lillian Thompson's post.

Can't both captains just agree to end the game though?

Nah, because not even a first innings result has been determined, because of the two day cricket that English cricket tries to fit into one day.

Well it depends - the cricket I play is mostly friendly stuff (only remotely competetive cricket I play is Sunday League, Third XI and Midweek XI are all utterly haphazard) so anyone can basically do anything they want. I've been known to move the boundaries out before the start of the game because I thought they were much too short (and they were!). But even so, no-one really likes to just "agree" to end the game, even if that's what more of the players than not want. At least, those of my generation tend to prefer that, the oldies (who make-up well over half the teams usually) tend to prefer to play on even pointlessly.

That sort of thing does happen in the First XI stuff too (though not anywhere near so often, I've only ever heard of it once involving our club) for the reasons Jack mentions - the cricket over here is almost exclusively one-innings stuff, whereas in Australia there's two-innings cricket even at club level. So even though you could just call-off the game because "there's no point playing" it doesn't look very professional on the scorecards, and it looks far better to just play out the remaining overs more quickly.