Is this cricket?

James

Given the pace that bowlers can launch the ball these days - it is certainly right that they let the batsmen know which side of the wicket and which arm they are using.

With regard to the batsmen - if this shot was easy I would have sympathy. However even Pietersen can't do it against all bowlers and very few batsmen could pull it off at all without looking silly. So I'm in favour as it is an incredibly skillful shot that is also high-risk for the batsman to execute.

Nicholas

Don't know but I think the replacement of traditional "whites" with football-type coloured strips in some matches is to be deplored.

Ian C

James has answered the point. It is a rare batsman that can pull those shots off and only then against a moderate bowler. It is cricket - of the modern variety and purists will always have a wine about the loss of purism in sport, with some justification at times, but not on this occasion.

Tiberius

As a former Test cricketer, Mike Selvey should know he's talking rubbish - maybe that's why he writes in the Guardian.

Anyway, as Richie Benaud always says, it's a batman's game.

TrevorH

The rules are based on positioning certain fieldsmen in certain positions based on the guard taken by the batsman, so it seems to me the batsman should not be allowed to change his guard, at least until the ball has left the bowlers hand.

Chuck Unsworth

No. But it's fairly similar to cricket, much as baseball is.

Adam McNestrie

I just tried to play the video and it wouldn't let me. I think that it has been taken down by You Tube.

James Forsyth

Adam, I fear you might be right. You can watch it here, though: http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid958992159/bctid1610677984
Best, James

Geoffrey Boycott's Hat

How can the rules of the game legislate against this? There is not, and cannot ever be a law dictating how the batsman grips the bat, i.e. whether or not he reverses the traditional top hand grip... LH = top hand for a RH batsman),where he takes guard, how he moves his feet before during or after the bowler's delivery stride... etc, etc.

LBW - The Umpire knows which is off and which is on for all Batsman at International level - as does the bowler.

In any case, 99% of all batsmen trying this shot are unlikely to make contact, never mind middle it over cover (or should that be mid-wicket)for 6.

Can't wait to see him (KP)do this against an Aussie. Until then let him get on with it. He'll probably stop it once he makes a complete prat of himself.

Fergus Pickering

The two greatest batsmen of the Edwrdian era, Ranji and Victor Trumper, both invented strokes of their own which nobody else could play. Ranji's was a leg glance which some people thought was hardly fair. Only an oriental could possibly do such a thing. Trumper played a stroke very late to leg UNDER his raised back leg. Nobody else could do it. Can anyone else do what Pietersen does? If I were a bowler I'd like to see them try. Anyway, the bowlers have weapons of their own. Whom is goingto reintroduce the underarm lob. Brearley tried it but he did not have the skill. Google Simpson-Hayward if you want to learn about the Englishman who bamboozled South Africans on their own pitches. The there was Jack Iverson whose hands were so huge he spun the ball from BETWEEN his fingers. He won a Test series for the Australians in 1951 I think he was about forty when he did it.

Verity

Nicholas - You and me both. I don't even bother watching much any more since they started dressing like yobs.

It is such an elegant game, and the players all looked so elegant in their whites. Show me any man of any race on the pitch in whites and I will show you a glamourous, elegant man. (I mean at professional matches. Obviously, the heavy butcher on the village green may not live up to this sartorially-enhanced glamour.)

Why would they throw this away to look like soccer yobs? It doesn't make sense. I think Cherie Blair and Jane Goody and behind it.

Verity

PS - The India captain is a dazzler, but in those stupid football outfits he looks a right prat.

Verity

PPS - And they don't even wear flannels and cotton shirts. It's POLYESTERRRRRRRRRRRRR!

Argggghhh! The death of civilisation as we knew it - cricket in colourful polyester.

TGF UKIP

The discussion between the Sky commentators yesterday demonstrated why the bowler will still have to declare his intentions to the umpire of round or over the wicket. It's so the umpire will know where to look for the bowler's feet landing to be able to adjudicate on the validity of the ball. There will, therefore, be those who would argue that this lends further weight to the case for the use of technology on line decisions.