It's a gentleman's game. Like in golf, there are expectations of behavior.
They didn't think they needed a rule.
This was what made me certain they were wrong--the commentary of their own older brother, who's hugely respected:
> As the ball was being bowled, Ian Chappell (elder brother of Greg and Trevor, and a former Australian captain), who was commentating on the match, was heard to call out "No, Greg, no, you can't do that"[10] in an instinctive reaction to the incident, and he remained critical in a later newspaper article on the incident.[11]
I suppose my fundamental misunderstanding is that an underarm bowl just seems like the obvious defensive move, not unsportsmanlike.
I said this in another comment and it seems relevant: "I know they're different, but in baseball the pitch is part of the game. Not being able to make good use of a pitch is a problem for the hitter, not the pitcher."
I think my baseballed mind simply cannot warp itself to your gentlemanly ways lol
Imagine the strike zone was just convention and pitchers were technically allowed to roll the ball if they were more bothered about preventing home runs than getting the opponent out. Think your baseball mind would be annoyed when someone did it, and the lawmakers would have to step in pretty quick to stop it being a regular thing...
(Think there's also a general prejudice against underarm play in professional sport as it's for kids who can't throw properly and feels like mockery. Underarm serves in tennis are frowned upon, even though an alert opponent has plenty of chance of scoring a point from them)
I don't think there's a rule against rolling the ball to a batter; it would be called a ball. It would be similar to a wild pitch or an intentional walk (when you had to actually throw the 4 balls).
I'm beginning to feel like Americans trying to understand cricket trying to understand the tactical permutations of intentional walks :D
The equivalent would be bowling a ball rather than a strike in a baseball variant where each innings ended after a fixed number of balls regardless of the number of outs (which is effectively what One Day variants of cricket are). Specifically, walking the batsman when they needed to score a home run or at least a double. I think fans would get upset!
The sporting thing to do is to give the batsman a chance to score but to defeat him using skill. There is no skill in bowling and underarm ball, the batsmen is not being defeated by skill.
That said, never did I imagine that cricket would interest the HN audience.
I think it is the violation of centuries old conventions and gentlemen’s agreements that maybe should have been, in hindsight, codified, that has our attention piqued
This wasn’t only underarm, but also rolling the ball over the ground.
Imagine that, in baseball, rolling the ball over the plate were considered a strike. If so, wouldn’t pitchers go for it if, at some time, all they need to do is prevent an home run (yes, I know that doesn’t happen in baseball) and wouldn’t it, subsequently, be banned?
It’s because overhand bowling was just the way you bowled, so nobody considered making a rule to tell you that was necessary until someone didn’t. Imagine playing football and someone picks up the ball and- oh right ;-)
The issue is countless teams had opportunities to do this in the past - they all knew it was an option - but they chose not to. Then suddenly one team decided “well there’s no rule…” even though it was clearly established that everyone agreed not to do it. It’s not like they discovered something new, they just broke convention with no warning at a very consequential time after many teams undoubtedly could’ve done the same to them. It’s dirty.
We all saw this on the school yard as a kid and none of us appreciated it. It’s annoying to have to enshrine literally every situation into the rules. Just play the game as intended. This is part of what has made American football become less fun to watch (besides learning about CTE’s…). Soooo many rules, constantly stopping play to assess every little mm of the play. It’s boring as hell for all involved. It’s why you often hear “just let them play!”
I actually suspect they didn’t know. When a sport is played one way for 200 years, you don’t read the rule book to check, you just copy what everyone is doing!
I disagree: players rarely know the rules in-depth. A great example is a YouTube video I watched where a Premier League and World Cup referee told the camera that most players didn’t know where they needed to be placed for kick off and that they needed to kick the ball forward. It was so bad that IFAB changed the rules to allow kick off to backpass because it was causing so much conflict at the start of football matches!
Cricket is a game that was designed for toffs to show off their free time, to each other and the plebs (including those making the G&Ts and cucumber sandwiches for the players and spectators) who couldn't take five days out of their lives for a match.
> Like golf
That too.
There is a reason why most other sports income 60/90/ish minute matches: people closer to normal had to squeeze their sports into what little free time they actually had, usually not much more than part of Sunday afternoons or maybe a bit of time some evenings.
> there are expectations of behavior.
While social contracts can be a good thing in terms of helping varied people people get along, cricket and golf are as important in that respect as knowing which of the four forks & three spoons on the table to use next. Etiquette in those forms is just artificial rules by which you show off how "civilised" you think you are, not sportsmanship or other genuine civility.
I know they're different, but in baseball the pitch is part of the game. Not being able to make good use of a pitch is a problem for the hitter, not the pitcher.
Now that I think of it telling a baseball pitcher that he could throw a pitch, but not too difficult of one at certain times is hilarious.
Are you allowed to pitch the baseball along the ground, therefore making it impossible to properly hit with the bat? It's no different in cricket really.
There's definitely an argument for just exploiting edge cases in the rules as hard as you can, seeing how the game evolves from there, and relying on the governing body to fix it if needed. (A la https://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/introducingthe-scrub .) Cricket saw itself unironically as "the gentlemen's game", though, so this didn't really fit the culture.
> There's definitely an argument for just exploiting edge cases in the rules as hard as you can, seeing how the game evolves from there, and relying on the governing body to fix it if needed.
Sadly, a lot of people live their entire lives this way. Ignoring courtesy, norms, ethics, grace, walking right up to the very edge of the law and then smugly declaring “ha ha there is no rule saying I can’t do this!!” Like the annoying little brother who waves his hand a millimeter from your face saying “I’m not touching you! I’m not touching you!”
The fact that everything has to be written down or some people will exploit and take advantage is a human failing, not a feature.
I'm reading a book at the moment (https://academic.oup.com/book/32137) in which the author makes a point of the distinction between "the goals of a game and our purpose in playing a game". My purpose in playing games is never winning for winning's sake, let alone winning at the cost of violating basic decency. But sometimes the purpose is best served by pursuing the goals quite single-mindedly. Competition can be fun, and some games become much more interesting when both players are really trying to win, even when this means using 'cheap' moves, learning to counter the cheap moves, etc. There's no reason this approach has to carry over into the rest of our lives; we can 'play to win' in the appropriate arenas while caring deeply about courtesy and ethics.
There’s definitely a time and place for both. Even in sport, “playing to win” can defeat the point when you’re doing it for fun. During swim training, if our coach wants to setup a relay race, he’ll deliberately mix swim ability (even changing teams between rounds) so that there’s a competitive element. Not much of a race if lane 1 is in the same team and beats everyone by 30 seconds!
Yeah I totally agree. Perhaps pedantically, though, I'd say this isn't a counterexample to 'playing to win':
> During swim training, if our coach wants to setup a relay race, he’ll deliberately mix swim ability (even changing teams between rounds) so that there’s a competitive element. Not much of a race if lane 1 is in the same team and beats everyone by 30 seconds!
I think this is actually a good example of setting up the game appropriately (in this case the teams as well as the rules) and then playing to win within those constraints. The end result is more fun and better training than you would get by departing from the 'playing to win' philosophy by, for example, having a tacit agreement that the faster swimmers will take it easy so as not to embarrass the others.
I understand this attitude, but I think the line between tactical progress and (the bad kind of) exploiting the rules can get very fuzzy. It's arguably more interesting to do whatever the game allows, even if it seems cheap, and find out the hard way whether there are ways to counter it. Sometimes there aren't, or the counter-tactics just leave you with a more boring game (usually fixable with rule changes). But sometimes you can uncover hidden depths this way, and the opposite approach can leave a game very tactically stagnant.
(I'm of course not suggesting this was the Chappells' direct motive, or even that this incident realistically could have uncovered hidden depths in the game of cricket. But as a general philosophy I think 'playing to win' has some merit, even from a perspective that ultimately cares about the health of the game and not just about winning as a terminal goal.)
The problem here is that limited overs cricket has been modified from regular test cricket in a way that fundamentally alters the strategy and flow of the game to increase the action and decrease how long it takes to play.
Because of those concessions to speed and entertainment, some rules that worked ok in test cricket break the game in limited overs. In this case, NZ was down to their “final over”, a concept that doesn’t exist in test cricket. Underarm bowling basically removes overs from the game and can guarantee a win for the bowlers, but in test cricket, would lead to a draw.
In context, it was a bit like taking advantage of a videogame exploit that others variously hadn't discovered, thought was forbidden, or assumed would not be used by tacit agreement.
Cricket is my analogy for life: a lot of standing around, interspersed by bouts of running back & forth often with people shouting at you, and a scoring system that seems almost as deliberately obtuse as Mornington Crescent (the true gentleman's game!).
It's a gentleman's game. Like in golf, there are expectations of behavior.
They didn't think they needed a rule.
This was what made me certain they were wrong--the commentary of their own older brother, who's hugely respected:
> As the ball was being bowled, Ian Chappell (elder brother of Greg and Trevor, and a former Australian captain), who was commentating on the match, was heard to call out "No, Greg, no, you can't do that"[10] in an instinctive reaction to the incident, and he remained critical in a later newspaper article on the incident.[11]
I suppose my fundamental misunderstanding is that an underarm bowl just seems like the obvious defensive move, not unsportsmanlike.
I said this in another comment and it seems relevant: "I know they're different, but in baseball the pitch is part of the game. Not being able to make good use of a pitch is a problem for the hitter, not the pitcher."
I think my baseballed mind simply cannot warp itself to your gentlemanly ways lol
Imagine the strike zone was just convention and pitchers were technically allowed to roll the ball if they were more bothered about preventing home runs than getting the opponent out. Think your baseball mind would be annoyed when someone did it, and the lawmakers would have to step in pretty quick to stop it being a regular thing...
(Think there's also a general prejudice against underarm play in professional sport as it's for kids who can't throw properly and feels like mockery. Underarm serves in tennis are frowned upon, even though an alert opponent has plenty of chance of scoring a point from them)
I don't think there's a rule against rolling the ball to a batter; it would be called a ball. It would be similar to a wild pitch or an intentional walk (when you had to actually throw the 4 balls).
I'm beginning to feel like Americans trying to understand cricket trying to understand the tactical permutations of intentional walks :D
The equivalent would be bowling a ball rather than a strike in a baseball variant where each innings ended after a fixed number of balls regardless of the number of outs (which is effectively what One Day variants of cricket are). Specifically, walking the batsman when they needed to score a home run or at least a double. I think fans would get upset!
Watch softball sometime.
I mean this does exist in baseball, kinda, but there’s incentive to not do so since it gets the opposing team closer to scoring: https://www.mlb.com/glossary/standard-stats/intentional-walk
An under-armed ball is essentially un-hitable.
The sporting thing to do is to give the batsman a chance to score but to defeat him using skill. There is no skill in bowling and underarm ball, the batsmen is not being defeated by skill.
That said, never did I imagine that cricket would interest the HN audience.
I think it is the violation of centuries old conventions and gentlemen’s agreements that maybe should have been, in hindsight, codified, that has our attention piqued
This wasn’t only underarm, but also rolling the ball over the ground.
Imagine that, in baseball, rolling the ball over the plate were considered a strike. If so, wouldn’t pitchers go for it if, at some time, all they need to do is prevent an home run (yes, I know that doesn’t happen in baseball) and wouldn’t it, subsequently, be banned?
It’s because overhand bowling was just the way you bowled, so nobody considered making a rule to tell you that was necessary until someone didn’t. Imagine playing football and someone picks up the ball and- oh right ;-)
The issue is countless teams had opportunities to do this in the past - they all knew it was an option - but they chose not to. Then suddenly one team decided “well there’s no rule…” even though it was clearly established that everyone agreed not to do it. It’s not like they discovered something new, they just broke convention with no warning at a very consequential time after many teams undoubtedly could’ve done the same to them. It’s dirty.
We all saw this on the school yard as a kid and none of us appreciated it. It’s annoying to have to enshrine literally every situation into the rules. Just play the game as intended. This is part of what has made American football become less fun to watch (besides learning about CTE’s…). Soooo many rules, constantly stopping play to assess every little mm of the play. It’s boring as hell for all involved. It’s why you often hear “just let them play!”
I actually suspect they didn’t know. When a sport is played one way for 200 years, you don’t read the rule book to check, you just copy what everyone is doing!
On the local elementary school field, sure.
At the highest levels of the sport, they know the rulebook like the back of their hand.
I disagree: players rarely know the rules in-depth. A great example is a YouTube video I watched where a Premier League and World Cup referee told the camera that most players didn’t know where they needed to be placed for kick off and that they needed to kick the ball forward. It was so bad that IFAB changed the rules to allow kick off to backpass because it was causing so much conflict at the start of football matches!
> It's a gentleman's game.
Cricket is a game that was designed for toffs to show off their free time, to each other and the plebs (including those making the G&Ts and cucumber sandwiches for the players and spectators) who couldn't take five days out of their lives for a match.
> Like golf
That too.
There is a reason why most other sports income 60/90/ish minute matches: people closer to normal had to squeeze their sports into what little free time they actually had, usually not much more than part of Sunday afternoons or maybe a bit of time some evenings.
> there are expectations of behavior.
While social contracts can be a good thing in terms of helping varied people people get along, cricket and golf are as important in that respect as knowing which of the four forks & three spoons on the table to use next. Etiquette in those forms is just artificial rules by which you show off how "civilised" you think you are, not sportsmanship or other genuine civility.
It's pretty much completely not like playing the game, because the batting team can't meaningfully hit the ball.
I know they're different, but in baseball the pitch is part of the game. Not being able to make good use of a pitch is a problem for the hitter, not the pitcher.
Now that I think of it telling a baseball pitcher that he could throw a pitch, but not too difficult of one at certain times is hilarious.
Are you allowed to pitch the baseball along the ground, therefore making it impossible to properly hit with the bat? It's no different in cricket really.
No. That would be a foul. It's in the book though lol.
Yeah, that was the flaw at the time, it wasn't in the book and not thought to be needed in the book.
There's definitely an argument for just exploiting edge cases in the rules as hard as you can, seeing how the game evolves from there, and relying on the governing body to fix it if needed. (A la https://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/introducingthe-scrub .) Cricket saw itself unironically as "the gentlemen's game", though, so this didn't really fit the culture.
> There's definitely an argument for just exploiting edge cases in the rules as hard as you can, seeing how the game evolves from there, and relying on the governing body to fix it if needed.
Sadly, a lot of people live their entire lives this way. Ignoring courtesy, norms, ethics, grace, walking right up to the very edge of the law and then smugly declaring “ha ha there is no rule saying I can’t do this!!” Like the annoying little brother who waves his hand a millimeter from your face saying “I’m not touching you! I’m not touching you!”
The fact that everything has to be written down or some people will exploit and take advantage is a human failing, not a feature.
I'm reading a book at the moment (https://academic.oup.com/book/32137) in which the author makes a point of the distinction between "the goals of a game and our purpose in playing a game". My purpose in playing games is never winning for winning's sake, let alone winning at the cost of violating basic decency. But sometimes the purpose is best served by pursuing the goals quite single-mindedly. Competition can be fun, and some games become much more interesting when both players are really trying to win, even when this means using 'cheap' moves, learning to counter the cheap moves, etc. There's no reason this approach has to carry over into the rest of our lives; we can 'play to win' in the appropriate arenas while caring deeply about courtesy and ethics.
There’s definitely a time and place for both. Even in sport, “playing to win” can defeat the point when you’re doing it for fun. During swim training, if our coach wants to setup a relay race, he’ll deliberately mix swim ability (even changing teams between rounds) so that there’s a competitive element. Not much of a race if lane 1 is in the same team and beats everyone by 30 seconds!
Yeah I totally agree. Perhaps pedantically, though, I'd say this isn't a counterexample to 'playing to win':
> During swim training, if our coach wants to setup a relay race, he’ll deliberately mix swim ability (even changing teams between rounds) so that there’s a competitive element. Not much of a race if lane 1 is in the same team and beats everyone by 30 seconds!
I think this is actually a good example of setting up the game appropriately (in this case the teams as well as the rules) and then playing to win within those constraints. The end result is more fun and better training than you would get by departing from the 'playing to win' philosophy by, for example, having a tacit agreement that the faster swimmers will take it easy so as not to embarrass the others.
This seems to describe automobile racing.
Really, any game that you're exploiting the rules, you should expect your opponents to get mad, and possibly your teammates and fans as well.
I understand this attitude, but I think the line between tactical progress and (the bad kind of) exploiting the rules can get very fuzzy. It's arguably more interesting to do whatever the game allows, even if it seems cheap, and find out the hard way whether there are ways to counter it. Sometimes there aren't, or the counter-tactics just leave you with a more boring game (usually fixable with rule changes). But sometimes you can uncover hidden depths this way, and the opposite approach can leave a game very tactically stagnant.
(I'm of course not suggesting this was the Chappells' direct motive, or even that this incident realistically could have uncovered hidden depths in the game of cricket. But as a general philosophy I think 'playing to win' has some merit, even from a perspective that ultimately cares about the health of the game and not just about winning as a terminal goal.)
Sure, but baseball has things like walking a batter so they can't hit. Not totally analogous here, but every sport has things like this.
The problem here is that limited overs cricket has been modified from regular test cricket in a way that fundamentally alters the strategy and flow of the game to increase the action and decrease how long it takes to play.
Because of those concessions to speed and entertainment, some rules that worked ok in test cricket break the game in limited overs. In this case, NZ was down to their “final over”, a concept that doesn’t exist in test cricket. Underarm bowling basically removes overs from the game and can guarantee a win for the bowlers, but in test cricket, would lead to a draw.
In context, it was a bit like taking advantage of a videogame exploit that others variously hadn't discovered, thought was forbidden, or assumed would not be used by tacit agreement.
No, everyone had discovered it.
This is like taking oddjob in the final match.
Underarm bowling was nothing new, but I reckon some had never even thought about literally just rolling the thing.
> Cricket will never make sense to me
Cricket is my analogy for life: a lot of standing around, interspersed by bouts of running back & forth often with people shouting at you, and a scoring system that seems almost as deliberately obtuse as Mornington Crescent (the true gentleman's game!).