The 180 year rematch: USA vs Canada opens the cricket Men's T20 world cup
May 30, 2024 11:40 AM Subscribe
The 20 country, 55 match tournament is hosted through June 2024 by the West Indies and the USA. Guardian: “Khan’s first delivery back bowled Shakib off his inside edge. His fourth was a yorker, which pinned the new batsman lbw. His 10th, delivered in the final over, was edged and caught by the wicketkeeper. The three wickets cost 11 runs and USA won the game by six. “It was a big achievement to take down a top ten T20 side,” Khan says, two days later. But he believes there are even bigger ones ahead. The T20 World Cup starts with their [USA] opening match against Canada in Grand Prairie, Texas, this Saturday.” Official World Cup website, Wikipedia page. Scorecard for USA vs Canada from 23rd September 1844.
Scorecard for USA vs Canada from 23rd September 1844.
Wow, even by C19th standards that is a low-scoring game.
posted by Bloxworth Snout at 12:47 PM on May 30 [1 favorite]
Wow, even by C19th standards that is a low-scoring game.
posted by Bloxworth Snout at 12:47 PM on May 30 [1 favorite]
Can anyone recommend a way to follow the action for low-information fans who want to learn?
(When I did study abroad, my hall was across the street from our university's cricket fields. Sitting in the springtime sun with a pint was sublime, and seeing one of my dumber hallmates in crisp white, playing skillfully, was quite a surprise.)
posted by wenestvedt at 2:43 PM on May 30 [3 favorites]
(When I did study abroad, my hall was across the street from our university's cricket fields. Sitting in the springtime sun with a pint was sublime, and seeing one of my dumber hallmates in crisp white, playing skillfully, was quite a surprise.)
posted by wenestvedt at 2:43 PM on May 30 [3 favorites]
Sitting in the springtime sun with a pint was sublime
Yes! One of the high points of human civilization so far.
posted by vincebowdren at 3:42 PM on May 30 [3 favorites]
Yes! One of the high points of human civilization so far.
posted by vincebowdren at 3:42 PM on May 30 [3 favorites]
Are Canadians allowed to use hockey sticks? ;)
posted by baegucb at 9:34 PM on May 30 [2 favorites]
posted by baegucb at 9:34 PM on May 30 [2 favorites]
BBC: It is a stretch to think this event will have the same impact on the sporting consciousness of the United States as the football World Cup of 1994 and, in reality, it is a tournament held in the Caribbean plus a portion taking place in the US.
Still, it is also part of a very tangible and undeniable growth of the game in the U-S-of-A. Major League Cricket is already coaxing players away from the English summer and has just been granted official List A status. Cricket will end a 128-year exile from the Olympics in Los Angeles in 2028.
The venues in Texas and Florida are actual cricket grounds, and the glamour comes from a pop-up stadium in New York, completed by a drop-in pitch grown in Adelaide.
posted by Wordshore at 6:43 AM on May 31 [1 favorite]
Still, it is also part of a very tangible and undeniable growth of the game in the U-S-of-A. Major League Cricket is already coaxing players away from the English summer and has just been granted official List A status. Cricket will end a 128-year exile from the Olympics in Los Angeles in 2028.
The venues in Texas and Florida are actual cricket grounds, and the glamour comes from a pop-up stadium in New York, completed by a drop-in pitch grown in Adelaide.
posted by Wordshore at 6:43 AM on May 31 [1 favorite]
I wonder how much of the growth in cricket here in the US can be attributed to the large influx of South Asian tech workers? The folks I managed are absolutely obsessed with cricket and can rattle off stats and facts of all sorts of matches like I can with Red Sox games of my youth.
I'm all for more varied experiences, but even as a die hard baseball fan and with the help of my colleagues, I still find cricket to be near impenetrable. Guess I just need to get watching!
posted by drewbage1847 at 9:31 AM on May 31 [1 favorite]
I'm all for more varied experiences, but even as a die hard baseball fan and with the help of my colleagues, I still find cricket to be near impenetrable. Guess I just need to get watching!
posted by drewbage1847 at 9:31 AM on May 31 [1 favorite]
I wonder how much of the growth in cricket here in the US can be attributed to the large influx of South Asian tech workers?
There's a short article in today's Guardian which goes some way to answering your question.
(tl;dr - a lot of it)
posted by Wordshore at 10:04 AM on May 31 [1 favorite]
There's a short article in today's Guardian which goes some way to answering your question.
(tl;dr - a lot of it)
posted by Wordshore at 10:04 AM on May 31 [1 favorite]
I'm a casual cricket fan, but also genetically obsessed due to being South Asian. Here's a version of my primer on cricket for baseball fans, delivered in person at any bar where someone is foolish enough to bring up the subject around me:
- There are two broad types of cricket match: unlimited overs and limited overs. T20 is a limited-over format in which each team bats until they are all out or until 20 overs have been bowled. An over is 6 legal bowls, so each side bats for, at maximum, 120 bowls or 10 outs. Each team bats once and fields once. The team which scores the most runs wins.
- In cricket, the batting team is technically the defending team. The fielding team is attacking the wicket, and the batting team is trying to prevent wickets from being taken. In the course of defending wickets, they score runs, which can broadly be considered as a measure of how well they've defended the wicket. This is why cricket bats are more like shields for blocking than rounded for striking. If you get your head around this difference between cricket and baseball, everything else about cricket starts to make a lot more sense.
- The field is an oval of grass with a strip of dirt in the center (the pitch). There is one wicket at each end of the pitch, and each wicket must always be defended by a batter. A wicket is 3 vertical poles (stumps) supporting two horizontal pegs (bails). When a bail falls from the stumps to the ground, the wicket is taken. There are 11 players per side, so when 10 batters are out, their turn to bat is ended. Each wicket has a zone around it called the crease. The batter cannot be run out when they or their held bat are inside the crease (baseball "safe").
- Batters can be got out in 4 ways: bowled out (the bowled ball breaks the wicket), caught out (after batting, the ball is caught by a fielder before it touches the ground), run out (the ball breaks a wicket while its batter is not in the crease), or leg before wicket (the batter blocks a bowl aimed at the wicket with their body instead of the bat). Once a batter has gone out, they cannot bat again. Batting orders are typically front-loaded, with the strongest batters going first and the weakest in the 8-9-10 position. In a limited-over format like T20, the later batters may not get a turn before 20 overs have completed.
- Runs are scored by the two batters switching wickets successfully by running between them on the pitch while the ball is in play. Batters are not required to run if they strike the ball. A struck ball which crosses the rope edge of the oval (the boundary) on the ground scores an automatic 4 runs, and the batters remain at their current wickets. A struck ball which crosses the boundary without touching the ground scores an automatic 6 runs.
- Anyone on the field can bowl an over (6 legal bowls), but once started, the same bowler must bowl the full over. A legal bowl is one in which the ball is bowled using a straight arm, typically striking the ground once in front of the wicket, and which would hit or come close to the wicket if it wasn't defended (functionally similar to a baseball strike). If the bowl would not strike the wicket and is outside a playable spot by the batter, it's a wide (baseball ball); the batting team gets a run, and the bowl does not count towards the over. An illegal bowl (the bowler doesn't use a legal arm action or is positioned incorrectly, among others) is a no-ball; the batting team gets a run, the bowl doesn't count towards the over, and the batter gets a "free hit", a bowl which also doesn't count towards the over but during which the batter can score runs and can't be gotten out. In T20, any single bowler can only bowl 4 overs in total. The wicket being bowled at switches each over.
- Bowlers come in two very general types: fast bowlers (basically fastball specialists) and spin bowlers (basically curve/slider/changeup specialists). The fielding captain will usually have a plan for which bowlers they want to attack which batters. The other specialized position is the wicketkeeper, who is similar to a baseball catcher. All the other fielders take up various positions on the field based on who's batting in order to try to limit runs and get outs. The field has a multitude of possible positions with some absurd names, too many to go into here, but try not to laugh when someone is posting up at silly mid-on.
So let's look at the scoreline of a recent match: USA 104-9 (20) Bangladesh 108-0 (11.4) (Bangladesh wins by 10 wickets). This tells us that USA batted first, they batted for the full 20 overs, during which they scored 104 runs and lost 9 wickets. Bangladesh batted second, they exceeded the USA scoreline on the 4th ball of the 11th over, and so they won by the number of wickets they had remaining when they surpassed the run total of the side batting first.
Hopefully this helps anyone looking to enjoy the fun.
posted by Errant at 3:52 AM on June 1 [3 favorites]
- There are two broad types of cricket match: unlimited overs and limited overs. T20 is a limited-over format in which each team bats until they are all out or until 20 overs have been bowled. An over is 6 legal bowls, so each side bats for, at maximum, 120 bowls or 10 outs. Each team bats once and fields once. The team which scores the most runs wins.
- In cricket, the batting team is technically the defending team. The fielding team is attacking the wicket, and the batting team is trying to prevent wickets from being taken. In the course of defending wickets, they score runs, which can broadly be considered as a measure of how well they've defended the wicket. This is why cricket bats are more like shields for blocking than rounded for striking. If you get your head around this difference between cricket and baseball, everything else about cricket starts to make a lot more sense.
- The field is an oval of grass with a strip of dirt in the center (the pitch). There is one wicket at each end of the pitch, and each wicket must always be defended by a batter. A wicket is 3 vertical poles (stumps) supporting two horizontal pegs (bails). When a bail falls from the stumps to the ground, the wicket is taken. There are 11 players per side, so when 10 batters are out, their turn to bat is ended. Each wicket has a zone around it called the crease. The batter cannot be run out when they or their held bat are inside the crease (baseball "safe").
- Batters can be got out in 4 ways: bowled out (the bowled ball breaks the wicket), caught out (after batting, the ball is caught by a fielder before it touches the ground), run out (the ball breaks a wicket while its batter is not in the crease), or leg before wicket (the batter blocks a bowl aimed at the wicket with their body instead of the bat). Once a batter has gone out, they cannot bat again. Batting orders are typically front-loaded, with the strongest batters going first and the weakest in the 8-9-10 position. In a limited-over format like T20, the later batters may not get a turn before 20 overs have completed.
- Runs are scored by the two batters switching wickets successfully by running between them on the pitch while the ball is in play. Batters are not required to run if they strike the ball. A struck ball which crosses the rope edge of the oval (the boundary) on the ground scores an automatic 4 runs, and the batters remain at their current wickets. A struck ball which crosses the boundary without touching the ground scores an automatic 6 runs.
- Anyone on the field can bowl an over (6 legal bowls), but once started, the same bowler must bowl the full over. A legal bowl is one in which the ball is bowled using a straight arm, typically striking the ground once in front of the wicket, and which would hit or come close to the wicket if it wasn't defended (functionally similar to a baseball strike). If the bowl would not strike the wicket and is outside a playable spot by the batter, it's a wide (baseball ball); the batting team gets a run, and the bowl does not count towards the over. An illegal bowl (the bowler doesn't use a legal arm action or is positioned incorrectly, among others) is a no-ball; the batting team gets a run, the bowl doesn't count towards the over, and the batter gets a "free hit", a bowl which also doesn't count towards the over but during which the batter can score runs and can't be gotten out. In T20, any single bowler can only bowl 4 overs in total. The wicket being bowled at switches each over.
- Bowlers come in two very general types: fast bowlers (basically fastball specialists) and spin bowlers (basically curve/slider/changeup specialists). The fielding captain will usually have a plan for which bowlers they want to attack which batters. The other specialized position is the wicketkeeper, who is similar to a baseball catcher. All the other fielders take up various positions on the field based on who's batting in order to try to limit runs and get outs. The field has a multitude of possible positions with some absurd names, too many to go into here, but try not to laugh when someone is posting up at silly mid-on.
So let's look at the scoreline of a recent match: USA 104-9 (20) Bangladesh 108-0 (11.4) (Bangladesh wins by 10 wickets). This tells us that USA batted first, they batted for the full 20 overs, during which they scored 104 runs and lost 9 wickets. Bangladesh batted second, they exceeded the USA scoreline on the 4th ball of the 11th over, and so they won by the number of wickets they had remaining when they surpassed the run total of the side batting first.
Hopefully this helps anyone looking to enjoy the fun.
posted by Errant at 3:52 AM on June 1 [3 favorites]
I've been intrigued with cricket for a few years but have never seen more than a few minutes of action. I could totally sit and watch a 5 hour match if I had sufficient snacks. Americans can watch cricket on a subscription streaming service called Willow but I've read that it's next to impossible to cancel so I will skip this event.
posted by neuron at 8:46 PM on June 1 [1 favorite]
posted by neuron at 8:46 PM on June 1 [1 favorite]
My Aussie cricket friend emailed me to tell me to go to next weekend's Sri Lanka vs Bangladesh game because it looked the best of this round in the Dallas area.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 9:04 PM on June 1
posted by gentlyepigrams at 9:04 PM on June 1
Bless you, Errant -- that's the best summary I have ever read! I think I owe you a pint.
posted by wenestvedt at 9:15 AM on June 3 [1 favorite]
posted by wenestvedt at 9:15 AM on June 3 [1 favorite]
I did not forsee USA getting the better of Pakistan. That’s a genuine upset!
posted by inflatablekiwi at 1:03 PM on June 6 [2 favorites]
posted by inflatablekiwi at 1:03 PM on June 6 [2 favorites]
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* Guardian: ‘Land of opportunity’: USA is cricket’s bold new frontier once again.
* Website of USA cricket.
* The 12 full members of the International Cricket Council, and the 96 associate members (includes the USA).
posted by Wordshore at 12:18 PM on May 30