Cricketology

We must first pay tribute to the man who made it all possible – the Maharajah of Missed Chances, the Don Corleone of Dropped Catches, the Earl of Err, the Pharaoh of Fumble, Lance Corporal Granite Hands himself, Kamran Akmal. (Copied from ESPNCricinfo.com) Let us count his Dropped catches and Missed Stumping. 1) http://www.espncricinfo.com/engvpak/engine/match/225255.html?innings=1;page=2;view=commentary 63.2 Collingwood was on 79(Final Score = 186) Umar Gul to Collingwood, no run, gone, out, no! Dropped! Leg-cutter, outside edge straight to Kamran Akmal ? dreadful shot from Collingwood I might add ? and, somehow, Akmal shelled it. Deafening silence from the captain Inzamam-ul-Haq, and not much more being said from the slips. Ooh, that?s a shocker 2) http://www.espncricinfo.com/engvpak/engine/match/225257.html?innings=1;view=commentary 38.2 Collingwood was on 21(Final Score = 31) Shahid Nazir to Collingwood, no run, yikes, Collingwood hangs his bat out to dry ? good awa...

Majestic timing and placement were Saeed Anwar's hallmarks. He was an opener capable of electrifying starts in all cricket through graceful strokeplay rather than brute force. He loved driving through the off side with minimal footwork. He annihilated any bowler offering width outside off stump although he too regularly guided the ball straight into the hands of fourth slip or gully. He first came to prominence as a one-day player but soon achieved equal success in Test cricket. His father was a talented club cricketer when business allowed. Aged 45, he played in a club match with his son and straight-drove a ball which, his son says, almost cleared two grounds. Anwar thinks he may have inherited some of his wrist-power from his father. He developed it by playing squash (daily) and table tennis; he became a slow left-arm bowler too; and, above all, he practised batting in the garage of his Karachi home. The bowler was not his much younger brother, Javed Anwar, who has played for ...

The Velvet Sledgehammers - Younis Khan & Mohammad Yousuf by Ammar Bin Muhammad Ashraf is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License . The two Heavyweight giants, one is fearless, as befits his Pathan ancestry and will forever be remembered as the second Khan to bring home a world title for Pakistan, and other one is best known in cricket for his achievement in 2006 when he broke the world record for most Test runs in a single calendar year. First Mohammad Yousuf, at his best, watching Yousuf bat is an unnervingly tranquil experience, especially amid the traditional chaos of a Pakistan batting order. He has a dangerously high backlift, which makes every shot he plays, a late, unhurried afterthought, but a beautiful one. The feet take time to get going, but once they do, they dance with the best. Square and behind it on the off side are his areas, where his game is the most enchanting. Younis Khan, it is as a batsman, and a fearless one, that he m...

Law 36 of the MCC's laws of cricket still has peoples' heads in a spin - exactly how does the lbw law work? To the uninitiated, the leg before wicket dismissal is to cricket what the offside law is to football. But the lbw law is not as complicated as some people may think. It is governed by certain principles which, once mastered, make the law simple to understand. And that is exactly what this guide will aim to do! The umpire will consider an lbw decision if he believes the ball would have hit the stumps had its path not been obstructed by the batsman's pads or body. But the umpire also has to take certain factors into consideration before making a decision. The three stumps There are three stumps that make up a wicket. They are the off stump, middle stump and leg stump. From a bowler's perspective, the off stump is to the left of middle stump. And the leg stump is to the right of middle stump. This is reversed for a left-handed batsman. Not out: Ball pitches outside ...