Yesterday the ICC penalised both England and New Zealand for slow over rates during the first test at Hagley Oval in Christchurch last week. Each country lost 3 World Cup points and all players had 15% of their pay docked.
Stokes and Woakes came out and challenged the ICC decision with both saying because the game finished with about 6 hours play left in the tests allocated playing time no one missed out.
I disagree because not every spectator gets to go to every day of a cricket test. At a minimum cost of $45.00 (Monday 9/12 at the Basin) every over not bowled in a day short changes paying spectators. As the average overs bowled each day seems to fall about 6 short that is roughly 30minutes of playing time spectators miss out on – or a minimum of 36 balls bowled and at a run rate of 4 an over that is say 24 runs not scored not to mention wickets that may fall – or even catches dropped or run outs missed.
Jacob Oram, New Zealand’s Bowling Coach is about more philosophical about the penalties but also makes the point about the amount of playing time left when the test finished. He did also say that the rules were there and players had to make a better effort to meet them.
Link to a Stuff article on this follows:
In conclusion New Zealand have been penalised the hardest because the penalties have put paid to their already slim chance of making the finals but the Poms are whinging the most.
No Minister 
pdm, my first action on reading your piece was a loud exclamation of the name of a certain by-product of the male of the bovine species.
My thoughts since have got stronger.
Next you will be demanding play continues for five days even if an earlier result has been achieved.
As a regular attender of cricket tests for the last 50+ years (before that I was an irregular attender) I can attest that I go to see a cricket test i.e a game of cricket that tests the very best players over all facets of the game for up to five days. I go to see the best (my team – always) win.
I regularly organised my life, even when burdened by a sheila and various brats, around being able to devote those five days to cricket. The coloured clothing bullshit games are for those who won’t/can’t.
The sport is, of course, the competition between two teams as well as between individual players within those teams.
In my experience this aspect is unique.
However the main purpose, the only one that can justify professionalism, is to help your team to win. For this a result is necessary.
Whether a team bowled ten overs an hour or 15 (or 20) matters not as long as the result (preferably a better one) is achieved.
Messrs Stoke and Woaks are correct!
When I was growing up, tests were fifteen sessions of two hours each, and teams seemed to have no problem fitting thirty overs into a session, give or take a couple. Often there were 31 or 32 overs bowled in a session – that was normal. Six bowled balls, plus a change of ends, took an average of four minutes a time, even with most overs being seam bowlers.
There are myriad reasons why this is no longer the case. I actually blame the batsmen for most of it. Starting in the ’90s, people like Sachin Tendulkar, Ricky Ponting et. al. started being primadonnas about facing deliveries – could apparently pick up the presence of a fruit fly resting on the sight screen, took walks down to square leg and back, adjusted padding and gloves between deliveries, etc., mostly as an attempt to throw the bowler off his rhythm, and of course they were very successful. This has now become commonplace to the point where it’s all but normal, and bowlers even just take it into account now, whereby they will amble back to their runup mark at a snails pace to account for the batsman strategically dicking around between deliveries. And it looks like the fielding team’s fault this way, but the reality is that it comes from us being used to bad behaviour from batsmen.
(Don’t even get me started on physios and drinks being run to batsmen in between overs. Do you think Don Bradman or Len Hutton was this much of a pussy?! If you get a cramp, you be a man about it and power through, or retire hurt.)
None of this makes for good cricket. None of it adds to the experience, or the entertainment. It certainly is a drag on test cricket, and reduces the value for money obtained from the ticket. But fining the fielding team is not the answer. The ICC/MCC Rules Committee should instead be cracking down on batsman dawdling, and give umpires license to award penalty runs for egregious delays. THAT would get us back to the 1980s norm of 30 overs in a session pretty damned quick. One of the best things that has happened in cricket recently was when Angelo Mathews got Timed Out in last year’s World Cup, and it’s almost a shame that it can only happen before a batsman faces a ball. If you’re a not out batsman, you should be assumed to be ready to face a delivery at any time, and if you are not, you should be penalized or retired.
I think you are onto something exiled.
Sometimes batsmen meet in the middle of the pitch after a defensive shot.
I never got past playing sub-association and Napier/Hastings premier club cricket but the only shagging around in my time was when an argument broke out after a player/umpire decision.
Funniest thing in CHB Club cricket was when the scorer (from our team) ran on to the ground and threw the score book at our captain and then stormed off home. I cannot remember the reason he did it as it was 60 years ago.
E2T Bradman was a wimp, too bloody scared to play outside of Oz or England and too bloody poofy to face “leg theory” without whining louder than a ‘plane full of Labour supporters. The scum-of-the-Earth cunt also was instrumental in stopping Godzone play tests against Oz for decades.
I’m not saying I don’t wish him well (thankfully he’s dead) but I hope the devil shoves a hot poker up his arse for all eternity.
But yes, if Bradman, Hutton Compton or any of the others could have got away with it they would have. They almost certainly did.
The slow over-rates thing started to be noticed only when a team with four very big, very nasty fasties started to clean up the cricket world at the same time as 60 over cricket was starting to attract attention.
Before then if Freddie Truman, Brian Statham, Wes Hall, Charlie Griffiths , Dick Motz, Garry Bartlett etc. only bowled 10 overs an hour nobody noticed.
In those days (remember the Hadlee series in England with four dead-fucking-boring draws the “result), like it should be now, the result was the first priority and unless a teams tactics was deliberately to slow the game down so as not to lose, no one gave a shit about the speed of the game.
A two-minute rule has always been there for batsmen (and most often ignored) but that is the only rule that is time-centric barring start/finish.
THAT is how it should be.
I seem to be able to count on you for the worst possible take, Tinman.
There were literally four test teams when Don Bradman played cricket, and nobody gave a shit about two of them, not least because they had to travel by boat halfway around the world to play anyone. He still managed to average 75 against the Windies. As for leg theory play, he managed to average 56 in that series, which is still higher than Kane Williamson’s whole career average. And I think you’ll find that it was this test that caused Australia to avoid playing NZ until the ’70s, not the whims of the Don.
Horseshit!
All of it!
Look it up. Bradman was too fucking scared to get off the boat when it called into India and his team played the locals without him.
As for test teams, Bradman played (or could have played) NZ, WI, India, SA as well as the Poms.
He never played a test outside of England and Oz. When you’re playing at home or where amateur umpires are easily intimidated and go out of their way to accommodate the visitors it’s far easier to look good.
The Chappels, Ponting, Smith, and at least two of his contemporaries were better, both as cricketers and as men.
I have a lot of time for Ocker cricketers but Bradman is not among them.
Goddamn. Arguing that Bradman wasn’t the greatest cricketer (sportsman even!) of all time is a bit like saying Jesus didn’t do enough miracles, or Paul McCartney isn’t much of a songwriter. One may as well complain that Sidney Sweeney’s tits sag a little, or Al Pacino is a bit wooden as an actor. Nobody but you talks like that about Bradman, because nobody else lives in that parallel universe, except possibly the people who think Kamala Harris ran a great election campaign.
You could argue he was a bit of a dick as a person, and that his battles with the players in the ’70s led directly to World Series Cricket, but… dude averaged 38 runs more than any other player. There’s no other sport on earth where the top guy of all time is literally 66% better than the next guy.
I was literally watching a video about him yesterday. They interviewed Jeff Thompson, who once bowled to a 70 year old Bradman in the nets without any padding. While he admitted to not bowling full pace, Bradman had no fear, and still swatted everything Thommo sent down without issue. Thompson said to this day he’s never seen anyone bat like that. At 70!
You can call that horseshit all you want, but you’ll be over there in the corner by yourself.
Exiled I had to google Sidney Sweeney to see what her claim to fame was.
Could not get a good look at her mammaries – so no comment.
MTT I side with exiled re Bradman but do admit that you obviously know a lot more about his career than I do.
Growing up the father of a CHB College first X1 team mate (1961/634) said Stan McCabe was a better bat than Bradman.
Plus the Captain of the club team I referred to above has the middle name McCartney, as does his son, (as maybe does his sons sons) all named after Australian batsman Charlie McCartney.
As usual your argument lacks facts.
I realise that cricket is strange to you but, like baseball, cricket has two main disciplines so the “best of all time” is blown away immediately.
A record without playing the rest is no record at all although Seppos, of course, celebrate Byron Nelson who won golf tournaments while his compatriots were winning freedom for the real world.
As, of course, is the “sportsman” tag.
Keith Miller has that sewn up.
I have no problem being alone in my argument, although I doubt associates of Miller, O’Reilly etc. will agree with you.
Oh, and who/what the fuck is Sidney Sweeney?
MTT as I recall Richard Hadlee declined to tour India towards the end of his career.
…and now there are three prize tits in this comment thread! 😜
Well Tom she would never break her nose if she fell over.
I suspect she’d bounce straight back to an upright position.