LIFE IN ADELAIDE IV

Looks like I am getting another posting in before Christmas! A chance to repeat my well-wishing for your enjoyment and safety over the holiday season.

Is Australia an island or a continent? Being surrounded on all sides by the sea, one could argue that it really just a very big island. Most of it is quite arid, giving rise to the description that it is the driest continent. Just at the moment, it could the wettest; a good bit of the country is under floods. Even in the high country, at this beginning of Summer, there have been blizzards and heavy falls of snow. Nothing to compare with what is happening in the Northern Hemisphere but, hey, this is Summer! My daughter and her family are off on a camping holiday after Christmas (actually, the day after the day after Christmas Day; here, as in the UK, the day after is know as Boxing Day). Just now they are busily searching on the Internet for a non-flooded area.

In the New Year, the big event here in South Australia is the Tour Down Under. Lance Armstrong and some other cycling greats will be participating as this cycling event centres on Adelaide from 16 to 23 January. One stage is alongside the River Murray and is threatened by possible flooding of the river. This is the first of the races on the world professional bike racing circuit. It is a big tourist attraction and it may be possible, in the US, to watch it on Versus, should you not be coming down to follow it.

Australians are sport-mad but, whether you follow tennis (the Australian Open Tennis begins January 11), soccer, rugby, Aussie rules football, or any other sport, just now the Fourth Test Cricket Match between England and Australia commencing Boxing Day (recall? The day after Christmas Day) dominates the papers. This is BIG because, having miraculously defeated England after they seemed doomed, the Aussies have leveled the series. Whoever wins in Melbourne takes out the series and either retains The Ashes (if the Poms win) or wins back the Sacred Urn (if the Aussies win).

Despite having in common things like bat and ball, cricket is as unlike baseball as it is possible to imagine. Bear with me as I attempt to tell you why the condition of the pitch is so important to the outcome of the series.

Cricket is played on a cricket pitch in the centre of a cricket ground or oval. The oval is marked by a boundary. Weeks (even years in the long term) of preparation go into getting the pitch ready for an important match to ensure it remains playable the five days of the match. The batting side has two batsmen in play at any one time. If the batsman taking strike scores an uneven number of runs from one delivery by the bowler, the batsmen will have changed ends so that the second now has the strike. These must be actual runs (i.e., each batsman will have to run the length of the pitch. A ball hit all the way to the boundary scores four runs but the batsmen do not have actually to run; if hit over the boundary without bouncing, it scores six runs. There is much, possibly boring detail that one might add, but I desist.

Coming now to the bowler: the bowlers selected by the captain can each bowl six balls before swapping directions or 'ends' (causing the fielding side to adjust their positions accordingly). With the exception of one ‘full toss’ allowed within each six deliveries, the ball must bounce once before arriving within reach of the defending batsman. (What is he defending? Well might you ask. Of course, his wicket...therein lies another story). That is, the ball must hit the pitch.

The pitch began as rather special grass, cut very sort, growing in rather special earth. The cricket groundsman or curator goes to a great deal of trouble (watering, rolling, protecting from the elements, and the like) to make the pitch as smooth and level as possible ensuring the ball will bounce reliably. Bowlers come in several varieties; fast, medium, slow, swingers, and spinners. As a stiff, straight arm is required, the action of bowling can be quite awkward and needs considerable skill, especially if one is a spin bowler.

One way or another, all bowlers attempt to disguise from the batsman the exact sort of delivery they intend to make. Their main purpose is to get the batsman out by hitting and knocking down the wicket (there are, of course, other ways by which the batsman may be dismissed but, once more, I desist). Now I will get to the point.

The condition of the pitch favours certain styles of bowling, usually fast bowling in the early stages of the match and slower, spinning delivery in the last couple of days, as the pitch begins to crumble slightly. Right now, the English cricket writers are up in arms because they think the curator at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) is preparing that pitch to favour the Aussie fast bowlers. How evil can these Aussies get…how low can they go?

A fast ball can travel at over 90 mph and cover the 20 yards or so to the batsman in about half a second. There is no way the batsman can decide, by sighting the ball, which of the many strokes in his repertory he will play for a particular delivery. Yet batsmen contrive to score many runs. The world’s greatest current batsman is an Indian, Sachin Tendulkar, has made 15 centuries in 40 test matches. Research has shown that a practiced batsman subconsciously ‘knows’ from the motion of the bowler what to expect before the ball leaves the bowler’s hand. Once ‘in the zone’, a good batsman can dominate the bowlers of the other side and prove impossible to dismiss. Equally, certain bowlers are either so terrifying (really fast bowlers) or so skillful (great spinners) as to ‘destroy’ a batting side.

Be safe and happy over the holidays.