I'm surfing the internet quite a lot at the moment, and am desperate enough to read the reports of english county cricket matches. The bitterest rivalry in county cricket is Yorkshire vs. Lancashire. It all goes back to the wars of the roses, and neither team likes to lose this match.
Often, if a match is heading for a certain draw because there won't be enough time for all the innings to be completed, a captain in a commanding situation will make a "sporting declaration". This means that he forfeits some of his batters to speed up the game, losing potential runs in the process. The upside is that there is then more time to bowl out the other side and win the match, the downside is that the other team could win. In any case the spectators will be entertained, and a win would be worth many more points than a draw.
A defeat by your bitterest rivals is unacceptable, though, so Yorkshire decided to carry on batting through the last day to secure a safe draw. For the last few hours of the match there was no possibility of victory. Blah blah blah, you say. Well all this is leading to a lovely quote from the match report on the bbc website.
Such was the dull nature of the game in the closing stages, Lancashire's Mal Loye fielded wearing a trilby hat.
No comments:
Post a Comment