Hitting Against the Spin: How Cricket Really Works

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The idea being that you shouldn’t remove a rule or tradition unless you understand why it was first put in place. The forward press is basically a small forward movement of the front foot that is made just before the spinner delivers the ball. As well as moving your front foot forwards, you should lean forwards slightly over your front knee. This gets your bodyweight moving forwards towards the ball. In my opinion, this is the best position you can get yourself in before you receive a spinning delivery. The book explores some genuine curiosities, such as why over half of opening batsmen at Test level are now left-handers, why that's not the case in India and Bangladesh, and why this preponderance has surged in recent years. The answers to these questions lie in issues as diverse as pitch speeds, the LBW rule, neutral umpires, Hawkeye and DRS. Here are some other quotes that were quite revealing, but to understand the true context, you should read the book. If you’re interested, you can find more of my batting footwork tips in the post linked here! Try To Play ‘With The Spin’ More Often Than Not

This Diagram Shows How Some Spinners May Try To Land The Ball Outside Leg Stump & Spin The Ball Across You Beware of Fielders Placed Close To The Bat Some of the content that follows is pretty technical, and there were a few passages I struggled with, but that says more about me than about the way the book is written. An example looks at the importance, or not, of bowlers maintaining a good length as opposed to a full length. The ability that the authors now have to record every detail of every delivery makes this sort of examination possible. It has come far too late to have any impact on the way I play the game of course, but it will alter the way I watch it and, more importantly, the judgments I come to about what I see. The book refers to these two juxtaposed ideas, which explore whether something that has been perceived wisdom for a long time is true or not, the names come from two stories:Chesterton used the story to illustrate his principle that you should not be allowed to remove a rule or a tradition unless and until you fully understand the reasons why it was first put in place, and all the effects that its presence has (5). We can take this same approach to risk and apply it to business or projects. If something has a 10% chance of success, yet would result in a 100 times improvement in revenue/KPI etc, then it might be a far better bet than taking something at a 80% chance of success that would only improve something by 2 times. Are there areas in your work where embracing risk would in the long-term result in improved results?

The pattern of World Cup winning teams - top 2 in batting, top 2 in win percentages in the years leading to the final, and experience (a core that has played 80+ matches) - and how England were topping these going into their fairytale run in 2019 The rise of left handers and why India doesn't produce enough of them was quite insightful, and so was the discussion of swing, line, length, and the vagaries, beauty, and relevance of spin in general and wrist spin in particular in the slam bang age of T20 They analyse the unseen hands that determine which players succeed and which fail, which tactics work and which don't, which teams win and which lose. Now this sounds obvious, but England were expected to do well in the 5 World Cups between 1999 and 2015, yet were never in the top three teams for any of these metrics! They changed things going into the 2019 World Cup, and were the number 1 team for the three metrics, with the highest run rate, best win percentage, and most squad experience, and went on to win the World Cup. The more shots you can play against a spinner, the harder it is for them to bowl to you. It also makes it harder for the opposing captain to set a field for you!This is the problem with Tethered Cats. Sometimes, a perfectly reasonable response to current circumstances becomes a habit, then a tradition, then an article of faith that outlives the circumstances that created it. We rarely question what we know to be self-evidently true, particularly when everyone else is doing the same thing. And so, the bias towards batting first seems to have outlived the circumstances that created it by several decades (175). Analysis is about making the invisible visible,” Leamon explains. “The analogy I always use is cameras. Being able to slow things down and freeze frames enables a coach to make better decisions, but it doesn’t do the coaching for him.” One of the key commentaries in the book is about the warnings of data. Statistics and data are only useful if analyzed from an unbiased point of view. If it is used to prove a personal point or win an argument, then it is of no use. The authors also distinguish Simplicity vs Complexity and how both perspectives are necessary to properly embed data into the context of the game. Quotes Why is this? The answer is simple enough. At heart I am a traditionalist, and like my books to fall into predictable genres, such as biographies, autobiographies, tour books and history books. Seeing the title of this one, coupled with the appearance on the front cover of scribbled mathematical formulae, I immediately realised its content would probably be outside of my comfort zone.

Dravid in particular had already started to influence the England players and coaches’ thinking around the best method against spin. And in the preparations for the tour of India, this focus was redoubled (223). Humility, doubt, nuance, opening ourselves to the challenge, admitting the paradox of duality, these are necessary tools (171). If you’re batting and you see fielders being placed close to you, I’d recommend trying to play with ‘soft hands’. This basically means that you don’t force your hands towards the ball. Instead, you try to play passively and allow the ball to hit your bat. Playing in this way means that if you do make a mistake, the ball is less likely to carry to a fielder! Game Theory is a branch of mathematics and economics where behavioral strategies impact decision making. This can be best understood by the Prisoner’s Dilemma or the Nash Equilibrium (scene from A Beautiful Mind).Zubin Barucha, ‘and so they’re playing game theory too, and trying to push you up. So the strategy going into the auction was very simple – we have to spend ninety percent of our money on eleven players and then just wing it from there (334). – On Ben Stokes RR 2018 auction