YouTube and the IPL: Error Message!

I'm not all that bothered about the IPL or indeed T20. I watched a few internationals and a couple of the tournaments on TV but I still find there is something undignified about it. In short, too many 'non cricket shots' for a purist such as myself.


I was however, mildly interested to see how YouTube's handling of the IPL would work out. Streaming competitions on the internet, free to all, is undoubtedly the future and I'm sure for YouTube and some as yet undiscovered start ups there will be a huge amount of commercial success in such a venture. I'm just not convinced the IPL would be the platform I'd choose to launch it. 


I've found when trying to catch the odd IPL game over the past couple of years that I simply don't know enough about it for the game in front of me to be engaging. I barely recognise the team names, let alone 80% of the players. That makes it very hard to grasp at a hook with which to become interested. Exposure through YouTube and ITV4's coverage will help in that regard, but it's difficult to watch a game of cricket on TV as a neutral.


Like it's first day coverage (see picture) YouTube's broadcast venture with the IPL may have gotten off to a sticky start, but I'm sure the business model and technical challenges will be established and overcome through the IPL experience. 


In a few years when we're signing in to watch the latest stream from the Olympics, the IPL experience will seem insightful. 

A Test Team of the Decade

I've just read the Wisden's various Test Teams of the Decade, and agree with none of them! So I thought I'd put down mine and my reasons for each player. 


Hayden, Jayasuriya, Ponting, Tendulkar, Lara, Dravid, Gilchrist (wk), Warne (c), Pollock, McGrath, Khan


Having gone through the process I can now see why I agree with none of the teams offered by Wisden! As you might expect there is a lot of convincing arguments for many players in each position and so it does very much come down to personal opinion. 


To quickly rattle through what might be considered as the 'obvious' selections (interestingly all Australian): Ponting, Gilchrist, Warne and McGrath, I'd consider them automatic choices not only because of how good they were during the past 10 years but also because of the success, individually and collectively, that they achieved. I believe these to be beyond reproach in their current positions in any team (with the exception of No.3 where other candidates can bat lower in the order, that is). 


My criteria for selection is based on the following: 

1. Personal success during the past 10 years
2. Contribution to team success during the same period
3. Success in that particular position
4. Impact made during a significant part of the past 10 years, if not continually throughout that period

My controversial selections begin I suppose with Jayasuriya. When you consider him alongside Justin Langer, Marcus Trescothick, Virender Sehwag or even Stephen Fleming then stronger arguments can be made for most of the other players on that list. However it is the personal contribution that is the principle reason I've included him. The age at which he continued to play at such a high level is remarkable. His leadership throughout the beginning of the century enabled Sri Lanka to progress from a developing team to a strong contender in every series they took part in and his ethic and influence on the team is showing itself in their current success. His One Day career should not influence a test team but it is an impressive footnote. 


Tendulkar and Lara in the middle order I don't think could be surpassed as a combination, no matter what the criteria for selection is. My knowledge of cricketing history does not stretch back beyond the early nineties based on first hand experience, but I'd be hard pressed to think of any others for these positions. I have been privileged to see first hand Tendulkar bat, not so Lara. Ponting at No.3 and Dravid as the extra batsmen at No.6 complement these two perfectly (although Dravid could do with batting higher up the list we it not for Ponting). I remember the England v India series in 2003 when both he and Michael Vaughan were outstanding and Dravid at No.3 really personified his 'The Wall' nickname. 


The start of both Tendulkar and Lara's careers came before this century but that should not be held against them. Gilchrist is I think undisputed at No.7 for the runs he makes, the offensive role he plays in that position and his 'keeping ability. Had it not been for him Alec Stewart had success during this period and would be a close call too. He also inspired a generation of aggressive wicket-keeper/batsmen and that as much as his cricket will be his legacy.


Shaun Pollock and Zaheer Khan are probably the debatable bowling options. Pollock became a good all round option at numbers 8 and 9 for South Africa and his bowling record is worthly of inclusion on its own. Captaincy is another notable asset of his and were it not for McGrath then I believe his reputation would be greater than it is today. 



Zaheer Khan is perhaps my indulgent choice and is primarily due to his series against England in 2003. His left arm conventional and reverse swing from around the wicket to England's left handers is some of the best bowling I have seen. His temperament and focal point of an Indian team full of batting super-stars made him seem even more exceptional.

Notable by their absence are any English players. Vaughan, Trescothick and Flintoff I would consider to be the best of the past decade (Graham Thorpe mentioned in dispatches). Of these all have their merits and I'm a big fan of Michael Vaughan so he was under consideration, especially for his early decade form and captaincy. All three had their purple patches but also their problems. Maybe I am slightly harder on English players as I tend to be too familiar with them, weaknesses and all?


A final note about the Captain. I've gone for Warne in line with the common belief that he was the best captain Australia never had. I think he would have offered something very different in that capacity. He always appeared to be forward thinking, inventive and not afraid to take risks as a player and captain for Hampshire and I think he'd have been one of the bolder captains of international cricket. I also don't believe there is a natural captain in my team. 

As a nod to the next 10, I expect Pakistan's Mohammad Aamer, South Africa's Morne Morkel and England's very own Adil Rashid to feature prominently.

   

Stick Cricket: Great game, successful strategy

I've been meaning to post about my favourite ever Internet game for a while now. Stick Cricket's history is quite an interesting read, a rise from a student learning how to develop in flash to one of the best Internet games out there.

I first became aware of this game a few years ago now and it is the only Internet game that has held my attention for longer than a week! I can't quite put my finger on what makes the game so appealing for me, but there are a few factors that probably help. Firstly, the ability to score fours and sixes on a regular basis (the entire point of the game) brings that feel good factor when playing. Secondly, the view you get (a batsman's view) of the ball careering to the boundary is very, very satisfying. It also looks like a proper cricket shot. Sometimes on other games the actual game play isn't very realistic. Finally I think the concept is something that fits the medium it has been developed on. Although originally using stick men, the game has developed but kept to the same ethos.

Apart from the game play elements addressed above I think another reason I really like the game is the way in which Stick Sports has been developed and allowed to evolve. Slowly but surely they've enhanced the Stick Cricket game. New features, new competitions, more variety in how you play have always enticed me back to the game. They tackled the most obvious shortcoming of their game (not being able to bowl) with a challenging online multi player game. It didn't last very long but it was good!

More impressively than the actual innovations that were borne seems to be the strategy they have adopted for development. Stick Sports had a core product and they spent time and money developing it; enhancing the game play and ensuring it maintained its popular appeal and market position. Only after this phase of its strategy had proved successful did it branch out to develop other games to complement the cricket game and produce a range of sports games under the stick sports banner. (The best of these games in my opinion is Stick Tennis)

Although with success has come less discrete advertising and more 'obvious' placement of adverts, this doesn't interfere with the experience of using the sites. They have developed a community feel to the site that although I don't personally see as advantageous, I know a lot of other users do). The site is not in the same league as Cric Info and other cricket media in terms of a cricketing knowledge base, but this seems to be the next phase in the strategy. Blogs and forums are prevalent on the site and there is also 'Live Score' features (although I must confess to not having used these enough to pass comment).

Basically I've been impressed with Stick Cricket since the beginning, and if it is possible to end with an awful pun, believe that from tiny acorns, cricket bats really can grown! [I'm sorry]

It's not the referees that lack consistency...

I've decided to get in early this year. Listening to an interview with Ricky Ponting where he wanted to bemoan umpiring decisions during the 2nd Ashes Test at Lord's but didn't, it occurred to me that football seems to have adopted the wrong mindset when it comes to the perception of referees.

There is a perception that referees 'need to be consistent', presumably with regards to decision making in order to create an expectation that can be attained on a regular basis. This view it would seem is supported not just by fans, commentators and managers, but by referees themselves. I happen to have a few issues with this theory though!

First up it's probably important to define what is currently accepted as a definition of a referee. As usual Wikipedia has it's own view:

A referee presides over a game of association football. The referee has "full authority to enforce the Laws of the Game in connection with the match to which he has been appointed" (Law 5), and the referee's decisions regarding facts connected with play are final, so far as the result of the game is concerned.

This I think covers the 'text book' definition and I would suspect is contested by few. There is probably another angle to explore, that being the common perception of what a referee is. Although there isn't really anything to cite to backup my theory, I suspect a referee is perceived by many as being a person to ensure fair play is achieved. Whilst not a ridiculous suggestion, I think most people connected to Football expect the success rate of this to be 100%. This is where I believe the problem lies!

The expectation of a referee is probably the same as a quiz host or a mortgage broker. In these instances you feed facts into a system and the host or broker delivers a verdict. The interpretation of these facts is automated so there is no subjective judgement to be passed by a human. In reality however, they should probably be closer to a Doctor or a Judge in terms of expectation: recognised to get most decisions correct but accepted that they can not achieve 100% as they are human!

To explore this point further, taking a scientific look at referees can explain the concept. When looking at even the basic of scientific experiments, the focus is on identifying variables from a group of constants in order to evaluate performance. The same can be found in problem solving. In order to diagnose what is wrong, we often find out what has changed first and then work from there. For example when a car breaks down because of a puncture, the puncture is the only variable that changed from when the car was working fine. With a referee, often the only constant when evaluating their job, decisions, performance etc. is the referee himself. Everything else is a variable.

Using a simple example to compare two 'similar' decisions, firstly look for the variables: if we look at two decisions over two games then these will include the date, time, location, probably both teams, maybe a different competition. These are just some of the more obvious variables. Then there are more obscure ones that a based on human behaviour: history between two teams, between teams and referee, previous incidents in press/media, recent criticisms of other referees etc. All of these will have a bearing on how the referee feels, thinks and ultimately acts. A late clip by the full back on the winger early in the game may go unpunished in the first game, receiving just a cautionary word from the referee, yet may be punished with a yellow card in the next game. Why? Unfortunately a variety of reasons! The referee may have been criticised for his decision in the previous game, he may be trying to assert his authority early on in the second game, the referee may perceive the full back deliberately clipped the winger in the second game but not the first.

There are two points that are important from the example above: referees are human and as such can not guarantee that subjective thinking will not come into their decision making and secondly, that only the referee has all the information available to him when making a decision. Commentators and managers can disagree but the only person who has all the information to make a decision is the referee.

So based on the theory and examples above, is it right to lay such expectations on referees? Would the same be made in other professions? There are a few similarities between referees and professions such as judges. Both make decisions that include an element of subjective thought. Both have a recognised appeal process to accommodate human error and mistakes being made, yet judges in general are not a vilified breed.

As an argument against referees, there will undoubtedly be incidents that referees should be expected to make correct decisions on. Black and White issues that take little subjective interpretation. In these instances it is probably fair to ask for a level of consistency and by their own admission, a lot of referees do acknowledge obvious mistakes. But if we are not to expect them to be able to interpret every situation correctly and make the appropriate decision, then what expectation should we have for referees?

Consistency should be found with our approach to how we view referees. More account should be given to the fact that a referee can not always produce consistent decision making due to the wide range of variables involved from one decision to the next. If this primary notion was accepted across the sport it would make a huge difference in the way referees are treated and accounted for. To cite Ricky Ponting, it is acceptable for players/managers and fans to disagree with the decisions taken by referees but they must be accepted as part of the game. Accepted in the same way that a player being injured during the match or sent off for an incident on which all agree was warranted are accepted by all parties as justified in altering the course of the game.

In addition to this there is also merit in the old adage that the decisions even themselves out across a season. Although I do not have any statistics to prove the theory, my hypothesis would be that contested decisions for and against a team even out during the course of the season.

Again to Ricky Ponting and rather than find excuses from questionable umpiring he chose to acknowledge the weaknesses of his side's play as reasons for their failure to win the match. Similarities could also be found in football. How many times has a manager blamed a referee for not awarding a penalty as justification for his side's inability to win the game, yet neglected to acknowledge the abundance of chances his strikers missed in open play? If a player is sent off then again the referee is blamed. Who questions why the player got themselves into that situation in the first place?

To summarise, consistency ought to be sort in the way everyone associated with football approaches the role of a referee in football. They should not be expected to find a level of consistency that exceeds the subjective capacity of their decision making. They should be expected to deliver the best decisions they can, and that erroneous decisions will even themselves out over the longer duration.

A referee is an easy scape goat for those who do not have the ability to question themselves when it comes to failure. A change in mind set to accept the limitations of a referee when evaluating the outcome of a game will go along way to improving the perception of referees and the quality of the decisions they give.

WT20's place at the top table?

I always find it useful when discussing Twenty20 to find out exactly what camp someone sits in before they start! It's not to pre-judge their opinions based upon my view of these camps, more to understand why they make the points they do. To clarify, I think there are three main camps: Traditionalist, Modernist, InBetweenist! OK, so I need a new name for the third but that'll do for now.

To work within my own guidelines, I confess I'm the third, as yet poorly defined, category. Traditionalists and Modernist are fairly easy to understand; one prefers Test Matches and views anything other as 'not quite cricket'. The other [modernist] aligns their wants of cricket to more contemporary sports such as football and rugby, where pace, entertainment and gladiatorial power are more sort after commodities than grace, tactical acumen and polite sportsmanship. Neither I believe to be right or wrong, which I guess explains why I find myself in the middle of the two!

I've always liked Test Match cricket. When people ask why I like Cricket in general, I've always referred to sitting outside on a sunny summer's day, watching sport and drinking beer! I like the pace of the game and the gentleness of its appearance. Like most cricket forms I also enjoy the fact that the most drama or mediocre of matches all unfold the same way: bowler runs up and delivers. From there anything can and often does happen. Listening to Cricket commentary it so often appears that the bowler is in charge. They set the field, dictate the line and length of the ball and can make the ball leave the hand with subtle, yet effective variations. However this does not keep a good batsman down for long! The battle between batsman and bowler is the most fascinating part of cricket and at its most prevalent during test match cricket.

I will also admit that I viewed Twenty20 cricket with an element of disdain. Not because I'm incapable of being a modernist, or accepting of change in the game, because I don't think I'm guilty on either count. My main objection was that the introduction of 'ugly' cricket shots as the norm in this particular format of the game. I felt it was unnecessary to promote elements of batting that required little skill. I've since climbed down on that particular remark as I do appreciate the hand/eye co-ordination and sheer power required to slog the ball to the boundary! Improvisation (for example, Dilshan's Scoop) I'm all for, but the slogging element does still erk me. My other negative thoughts towards Twenty20 mainly come from sitting with 10,000 Lancashire supporters in the rain watching Yorkshire get thumped a couple of years back!

With the World Twenty20 just about to get underway, I was however looking forward to the tournament. When this summer's schedule was announced it was just something that filled a calendar month before the Ashes and I had no immediate plans to watch it, but as it grew closer I did find myself more intrigued. I held little hope for an English success from the Men's team, but wanted to study the format in closer detail. I was impressed with the tournament for a few reasons:

The first thing that stuck me was that improvisation was no longer the right of the batsmen. I'd watched Saj Mahmood of Lancashire bowling slow-ball bouncers in the domestic competition and was impressed at the success it had in controlling an over. On the international stage it was also used to good effect. When Harbhajan Singh refused to bowler once Kevin Peterson adopted the Switch-Hit stance, that was another scalp in the rights of bowlers during this tournament! It was spin bowling however, that seemed to see the greatest resurgence during the tournament.

The second most notable outcome of the World T20 however was the role of the established test player. Kallis for South Africa, Dilshan for Sri Lanka in particular but Gayle, Vetorri, Harbhajan, Chanderpaul all showed that a truly class cricketer can prosper in all forms of the game.

My final observation was mainly a personal one. Although the 'ugly' shots were still on show, much of the big hitting was a) from established players and b) clean hitting (for want of a better phrase!). I also found myself enjoying the flying sixes in matches, particularly when the power plays were being exploited by the batsmen. I came to the conclusion that maybe you can forgive the odd slog!

However my overall view on WT20 is slightly more calculated. I noted a few times on Test Match Special and Sky commentaries that our experts often said that in T20 teams who lose early wickets simply don't have the time to rebuild an innings. I don't necessarily agree with that and Sri Lanka can cite a good case in point when looking at the final game. They didn't post the biggest total after losing early wickets but they adopted a strategy and it almost worked for them.

This first observation also seems to lead to the second, in which it was often felt that T20 cricket would replace 50 over cricket in the future because it eliminated the lull in the middle overs of 50 over cricket. I would again argue otherwise! A lot of matches I watched involved the same format. Big start to the innings, then take the singles at 6 per over for the next nine or 10 overs, hoping for a boundary ball every over or so to top up the total before letting lose at the end. It's not too far fetched from the 50 over game plan. I'm not an expert but I'd guess this is probably due to the age-old one-day philosophy of keeping wickets in hand for the end of the innings. I'm not sure T20 has overcome that mindset quite yet.

So to WT20's place at the top table? I'm not convinced it should replace 50 over cricket, although that's not to say I don't see that happening. T20's main advantages lie logistically. As seen in this tournament, more than one match can take place per day and back-to-back matches are realistic. I'd much prefer this approach introduced into the international format, maybe at the expense of lots on 50 over cricket and the Champions Trophy. After a test series why can't three of more countries contest a couple of 50 over games and then a quick T20 tournament over a long weekend or holiday period? You shouldn't have to search the globe with teams to make up the numbers either. In Europe we have Ireland, Scotland and Holland who would benefit from the exposure of playing more established teams. There are plenty of other smaller national around the world who could do the same.

Whatever is decided, the mantra should be Quality over Quantity. It will take resourcefulness and innovation to make that commercially feasible but it's not impossible. In short, more tournament T20 I think is the future, where it can share it's place alongside 50 over cricket and test matches.

Howzat? The Hokey-Cokey of Cricket Referrals

Somewhat bizarrely, when using Google to check its spelling, I came across an interesting Wikipedia definition for Howzat! (Another google related beginning in case anyone's keeping count!) And guess what happened when checking Hokey Cokey!!! I felt an irreverent reference to 'in-out, in-out, shake it all about' would reference a throw-away nursery rhythm, I didn't realise it had such a precise definition! 

It's a strange world sometimes...

There's been a lot written, debated and ranted about in the media during the recent Test Series in the Caribbean regarding the use of technology in cricket. To such an extend in fact that the I.C.C.'s General Manager Dave Richardson flew over to the Windies to take a personal interest in the debate. I think regardless of the now cliched views that Cricket is the most appropriate sport to introduce technology, due to pace of the game, technical aspects of decision making blahdy blah... a lot of people have been missing the point in the debate. Like deploying technology in all other walks of life, its success depends solely on the understanding, ability and willingness of the people who are using the technology. 

How the technology is used is another important factor, and one that was crucial during these trials. Back in 2004 when Hawkeye was first introduced, a lot of people were concerned with its impact on the game as it was merely a predication of where the ball could have hit the wickets. Lots and lots were written and debated back then, including this post from Buzzle.com. However over the years Hawkeye has almost become accepted as the rule, mainly because extensive studies have been done regarding its accuracy, and also because many people associated with the game began to realise that it was about on par with the human eye and judgement! 

So having overcome the doubts seeing it become an integral part of the game, I think it a mistake not to make it available during the referral trials. The technology was introduced, field tested, proven but not accepted. It follows a worryingly similar pattern for a lot of technological developments that are placed in the hands of people who are not open minded and forward thinking. 

The second part to the use of technology to determine the success of the trial centres on the understanding of how the umpires are going to use it. It was patently unclear, from first to last test, that this had not been well defined. Was the third umpire to use the technology and make a final decision, or were he to use the technology to ensure the on-field umpire had not made a mistake? We were left with the feeling that perhaps they did both!

In not clearly defining all parts of the trial well in advance, the I.C.C. failed to ensure maximum benefit was gained for the trial. Put the trial into a project context: the business case is clear. Players believe umpires make too many mistakes, and want to utilise technology to ensure a fairer decision making process. No problems there. The Risks? Integrity, Authority and technology's role within the game if it all went wrong are the main ones to spring to mind. Not catastrophic if managed correctly. Finally the objective? Provide fairer decision making utilising technology whilst maintaining the integrity of the game and authority of the on-field umpire. That's all fairly straight-forward stuff and shouldn't have caused too much consternation. So in a project context where did it go wrong? Not clearly defining the implementation. How the technology was to be used, how it wasn't, example processes for altering and upholding decisions. These aspects weren't clearly defined up front and the result was confusion.

I suspect from a purely human perspective, the third umpires also wanted to demonstrate their ability to make decisions with the aid of technology to increase the likely hood of a correct decision, so politics may also have played a part. Which leads into the main flaw in the plan: the people!

A trial is just that. Trying something to find out more. However even if it intended deployment is the Test arena, that wouldn't have been my first port of call to test. The unexpected outcomes of the trial (emergent properties, see I did listen sometimes during lectures!) need to be discovered away from spotlights and important platforms (such as test matches). For this trial they include the interpretation of the requirements when a decision is referred, ego (if I'm being particularly harsh!) and more telling perhaps, player despondency. The single emergent property that struck me was that no longer is an umpire's raised finger the end of a batsman. That is a huge unexpected shift in the game. In the first test, Gayle was out after a long innings. It was the breakthrough England needed. The finger went up. But then he wasn't out. And he went on, and on, and on! How that effects the bowler I don't know, but I can imagine!  

In an ironic twist of events, the new referral system has the potential to be more conclusive and less divisive than the current umpire-based referrals. Utilising Hawkeye and Hot Spot in particular would at least give a quick, consistent and less debatable decision. The subjective use of technology to judge grounded catch is suddenly very primitive in comparison. 

In short: there was nothing wrong with the technology that was used during the Test Series. The scope of technology used was debatable (limited without Hawkey, Hot Spot and the Snickometer), and the way in which the technology was used, flawed. The latter can be fixed with a little more thought and judgement, the former is easier still. No commotion, no debacle, no fuss. Just forward thinking technology enhancing the simple game of cricket. Easy.