**Official** New Zealand in Australia 2015

[Prince EWS]

Testing out CA Live Streaming, is it possible to make the video full-screen on a PC? At the moment it's only a box that takes up the top 1/3ish of the page above the scorecard

Yeah you can but you need to dig the brightcove link out of the source code.

 

[hendrix]

That decision was absolutely fine, and actually if it had been shown to be just missing the stumps and overturned it would have been slightly unfair in the context of the DRS system.

 

[Spark]

I mean, it can happen that the changes catalysed by Hawkeye lead to better cricket, i.e. more batsmen being forced to play with the bat rather than just kicking the ball away against spin, which is unquestionably more interesting cricket. And that isn't a strictly DRS-related thing, as those decisions are given in matches without DRS too.

 

[thierry henry]

Yeah I do essentially agree. What we've discovered since HawkEye has been that the umpires had been getting a bunch of decisions wrong that no-one even felt aggrieved about. This is problematic when devising a system to overturn poor umpiring decision as you either end up changing the game significantly or just trying to find some sort of middle ground that amounts to "we want to overturn the random decisions that most umpires wouldn't get wrong without over-turning the ones that most umpires wouldn't have got right in the first place".

They've opted for the latter which I've always instinctively thought was pretty silly, but it's worth keeping in mind that the lbw law has been changed a bunch of times throughout cricket's history in order to find a balance between discouraging pad play and encouraging more exciting modes of dismissal.

When you really think about it, a lot of aspects to the lbw law seem completely arbitrary and unnatural in the first place; there's no way you'd intuitively think them up if you were creating the laws of cricket from scratch. They've been created like that to reach the balance we have currently, which IMO works well. If you realise that the current law should actually be leading to a bunch more lbws and implement a system to start giving those, you've thrown the balance of the law out and probably need to actually change it to avoid making the game far less balanced with significantly more lbws in each match.

To complicate things even further, we only have DRS at international level, so you'd get a situation where international cricket either followed fundamentally different rules to every level below when it came to lbws or the balance between discouraging pad play and encouraging more exciting modes of dismissal was completely off at either international level or every other level.

I just think you're really overstating the difference this would make. The difference between half the ball hitting the stumps on a tight lbw and only a fraction of the ball hitting the stumps is not as great, conceptually, as you are making out. I don't believe, in the era of DRS even as it is, that players are routinely using the pad as a bail out option because they reckon "oh it's clipping at best". Even as the rules stand, they stay out if the umpire gives them. Hell, people often think an lbw "looks out" and it turns out to be missing the stumps altogether.

What I think this is really about is people having little "guidelines" in mind for what an lbw is supposed to look like. It's like the Williamson dismissal- that's "supposed" to be out, but a player getting reasonably well onto the front-foot to an off-spinner shouldn't be out even if the ball is taking a bigger portion of leg stump than the ball that got Williamson.

I get that a lot of people like these "conventions" but I don't. I wouldn't miss them at all and I think it makes for lazy umpiring that DRS (thankfully imo) has exposed. Anything that makes lbws more about "is the ball actually hitting" and changes techniques to be more about what is effective rather than what is traditionally "right" is a good thing imo.

This idea that we should be playing cricket according to what are effectively myths we're all buying into is a bit silly imo.

 

[Jono]

What's the forecast tomorrow? If it's likely they will lose at least a session surely kiwaaahs are a huge shout at a draw?

That kayne wicket is big but thr weather could nevertheless save them.

 

[Spark]

I just think you're really overstating the difference this would make. The difference between half the ball hitting the stumps on a tight lbw and only a fraction of the ball hitting the stumps is not as great, conceptually, as you are making out. I don't believe, in the era of DRS even as it is, that players are routinely using the pad as a bail out option because they reckon "oh it's clipping at best". Even as the rules stand, they stay out if the umpire gives them. Hell, people often think an lbw "looks out" and it turns out to be missing the stumps altogether.

What I think this is really about is people having little "guidelines" in mind for what an lbw is supposed to look like. It's like the Williamson dismissal- that's "supposed" to be out, but a player getting reasonably well onto the front-foot to an off-spinner shouldn't be out even if the ball is taking a bigger portion of leg stump than the ball that got Williamson.

I get that a lot of people like these "conventions" but I don't. I wouldn't miss them at all and I think it makes for lazy umpiring that DRS (thankfully imo) has exposed. Anything that makes lbws more about "is the ball actually hitting" and changes techniques to be more about what is effective rather than what is traditionally "right" is a good thing imo.

This idea that we should be playing cricket according to what are effectively myths we're all buying into is a bit silly imo.

You have your conventions too and your own mental frameworks that you use to judge whether something is out or not out; unless you had no opinion on LBWs at all before Hawkeye was a thing then it's disingenuous in the extreme to claim that you're somehow about it all.

I mean, that's what umpiring is. You're making a split second decision on whether it looks out or not, because you don't have a magic computer spitting out yes or no.

 

[SteveNZ]

This literally makes no sense. "Well it's technically out but we're going to overturn the decision anyway because we're not sure about it?"

The reason umpire's call exists is so we don't suddenly overturn 120 years of umpiring convention by suddenly determining that really borderline decisions which would never be given out at any other level of cricket are suddenly given out.

Less than half a ball=excess doubt/borderline decision. You're also doing away with decades of umpiring convention by not applying benefit of the doubt. If the system was 100% accurate, by all means. In rugby league, a decision stays as ref's call when there is insufficient evidence. I can cop that on a caught behind/bat pad etc with obscured views, masked noises etc but not when you have all the tools at your availability as with LBWs.

A dismissal is a dismissal, it shouldn't matter a jot whether the umpire on field saw it well, not well, is a batsman's/bowler's umpire etc.

 

[SteveNZ]

That decision was absolutely fine, and actually if it had been shown to be just missing the stumps and overturned it would have been slightly unfair in the context of the DRS system.

Out of interest, why?

 

[Spark]

Less than half a ball=excess doubt/borderline decision. You're also doing away with decades of umpiring convention by not applying benefit of the doubt. If the system was 100% accurate, by all means. In rugby league, a decision stays as ref's call when there is insufficient evidence. I can cop that on a caught behind/bat pad etc with obscured views, masked noises etc but not when you have all the tools at your availability as with LBWs.

A dismissal is a dismissal, it shouldn't matter a jot whether the umpire on field saw it well, not well, is a batsman's/bowler's umpire etc.

You're also doing away with the LBW law as well. You know, the one where it says that if they think the ball will hit, it's out.

Imagine trying to explain to someone that "well, the umpire gave it out, the TV graphic gave it out, but we gave it not out anyway". They'd look at you and tell you to watch a sport which was less ****ing dumb.

 

[adub]

Heals takes aim at Deano. Doesn't miss.

 

[Kippax]

What's the forecast tomorrow? If it's likely they will lose at least a session surely kiwaaahs are a huge shout at a draw?

That kayne wicket is big but thr weather could nevertheless save them.

.

Cloudy. Medium (50%) chance of showers in the morning and afternoon. Winds southeasterly 15 to 25 km/h becoming light in the evening.

 

[hendrix]

Out of interest, why?

Because if they're going to have margins of errors for the ball clipping the stumps and saying there's a chance it could have just missed, then they should go the other way too: the ball that just missed could actually be clipping.

 

[Fuller Pilch]

The good thing is that if there is no more play today they'll be starting with a 53 over ball rather than a fairly new one. If we survive to the new ball without the loss of too many wickets the bowlers won't be fresh.

 

[Prince EWS]

I just think you're really overstating the difference this would make. The difference between half the ball hitting the stumps on a tight lbw and only a fraction of the ball hitting the stumps is not as great, conceptually, as you are making out. I don't believe, in the era of DRS even as it is, that players are routinely using the pad as a bail out option because they reckon "oh it's clipping at best". Even as the rules stand, they stay out if the umpire gives them. Hell, people often think an lbw "looks out" and it turns out to be missing the stumps altogether.

What I think this is really about is people having little "guidelines" in mind for what an lbw is supposed to look like. It's like the Williamson dismissal- that's "supposed" to be out, but a player getting reasonably well onto the front-foot to an off-spinner shouldn't be out even if the ball is taking a bigger portion of leg stump than the ball that got Williamson.

I get that a lot of people like these "conventions" but I don't. I wouldn't miss them at all and I think it makes for lazy umpiring that DRS (thankfully imo) has exposed. Anything that makes lbws more about "is the ball actually hitting" and changes techniques to be more about what is effective rather than what is traditionally "right" is a good thing imo.

This idea that we should be playing cricket according to what are effectively myths we're all buying into is a bit silly imo.

Yeah I basically think of these conventions the same way you do. A few months ago I was actually 100% on your side and wanted everything DRS showed to be umpires call to just be given.

Spark tried to sell me with "it'll result in more lbws which are less interesting than other dismissals", and I thought about that but just didn't really care. If batsmen were out and technology showed it, I didn't want them to not be given just because historically they wouldn't be; that seemed absurd to me, and it still kind of does from that perspective.

What really changed my thinking on the whole thing was the day I actually sat down and thought about how contrived the lbw law actually is. If the law was simply 'if it hits the pad first and it's on track to hit the pegs then you're out' and always had been then I'd see it as a more significant building block of cricket itself, but lbws didn't even exist in the first set of written laws for the game, and the rule has changed a bunch of times since then. Even as it is now, you're not out if it pitches outside leg, but it can pitch outside off as long as it strikes in line, and it doesn't need to strike in line either if you're not playing a shot.. these are just completely contrived regulations that exist to prevent anti-cricket strategies more than anything else. The lbw law from its inception has always strived to maintain a balance between discouraging pad play and encouraging the modes of dismissal that are central to the actual key concepts of cricket (bowled and caught).

As such, any changes to umpiring which result in more lbws should probably make us re-examine the law itself to balance it out. That's always going to be difficult when the umpiring changes only apply to international cricket but other rule changes will apply to everything. I just don't think there's a good solution to this.

 

[Spark]

Yeah I basically think of these conventions the same way you do. A few months ago I was actually 100% on your side and wanted everything DRS showed to be umpires call to just be given.

Spark tried to sell me with "it'll result in more lbws which are less interesting than other dismissals", and I thought about that but just didn't really care. If batsmen were out and technology showed it, I didn't want them to not be given just because historically they wouldn't be; that seemed absurd to me, and it still kind of does from that perspective.

What really changed my thinking on the whole thing was the day I actually sat down and thought about how contrived the lbw law actually is. If the law was simply 'if it hits the pad first and it's on track to hit the pegs then you're out' and always had been then I'd see it as a more significant building block of cricket itself, but lbws didn't even exist in the first set of written laws for the game, and the rule has changed a bunch of times since then. Even as it is now, you're not out if it pitches outside leg, but it can pitch outside off as long as it strikes in line, and it doesn't need to strike in line either if you're not playing a shot.. these are just completely contrived regulations that exist to prevent anti-cricket strategies more than anything else. The lbw law from its inception has always strived to maintain a balance between discouraging pad play and encouraging the modes of dismissal that are central to the actual key concepts of cricket (bowled and caught).

As such, any changes to umpiring which result in more lbws should probably make us re-examine the law itself to balance it out. That's always going to be difficult when the umpiring changes only apply to international cricket but other rule changes will apply to everything. I just don't think there's a good solution to this.

 

[thierry henry]

You have your conventions too and your own mental frameworks that you use to judge whether something is out or not out; unless you had no opinion on LBWs at all before Hawkeye was a thing then it's disingenuous in the extreme to claim that you're somehow about it all.

I mean, that's what umpiring is. You're making a split second decision on whether it looks out or not, because you don't have a magic computer spitting out yes or no.

My only opinion on LBWs was based on "does it look like it's hitting". If that's me "claiming I'm above it all" then I guess that is what I'm claiming.

I don't really see umpiring on LBWs as a decision of "does it look like it's hitting" but more, well, a calculation by the "magic computer" of the human brain doing it's best to play "human DRS" and track the flight path. That's how I've always tried to do it anyway. Things like focusing on the type of shot played are where bias comes into it and I don't see how that can be good.

 

[Prince EWS]

Yeah but the fact that lbws are apparently less interesting didn't sell me. It's the fact that they're not really central to the concept of the game and all, and don't really follow any intuitive principles. The fact that you're out if the ball pitches outside off but not leg isn't really fair or something anyone would come up with when creating a new sport; it's just something that has come about because cricket works better that way. The lbw law is cricket's plot device rather than one of its core principles.

Now, I actually think that's what you might have been getting at. But I didn't really care which modes of dismissal you found more interesting because I had it in my head that lbws were as intrinsic to the concept of cricket as bowled and caught dismissals, regardless of your personal preferences or anyone else's. The current law and its history reveals that it's just not true though.

I needed your argument to arrive at mine though, so I'll give you partial credit for swaying me.

 

[Hurricane]

seems so long ago that Kane scored that ODI duck on debut. Followed by another duck. Interestingly some people said he was more likely to be a great player based on the ducks than if he had've scored a fifty. You would have to talk to them to explain that logic.

 

[Spark]

My only opinion on LBWs was based on "does it look like it's hitting". If that's me "claiming I'm above it all" then I guess that is what I'm claiming.

I don't really see umpiring on LBWs as a decision of "does it look like it's hitting" but more, well, a calculation by the "magic computer" of the human brain doing it's best to play "human DRS" and track the flight path. That's how I've always tried to do it anyway. Things like focusing on the type of shot played are where bias comes into it and I don't see how that can be good.

Yes, but how do you come to that opinion on whether it looks like it's hitting, which is what everyone does? Is it gifted to you by divine insight? This is superficial analysis to say the least.

These processes do not happen in a vacuum, intuition is guided by memories and patterns of what you've seen and visual similarities between decisions made between decisions you've seen given and the decision you're making a judgement on in realtime. This is how said human brain actually works; it is terrible at making detailed and precise calculations, it's extremely good at making estimates and predictions based on what it's seen before.

Yeah but the fact that lbws are apparently less interesting didn't sell me. It's the fact that they're not really central to the concept of the game and all, and don't really follow any intuitive principles. The fact that you're out if the ball pitches outside off but not leg isn't really fair or something anyone would come up with when creating a new sport; it's just something that has come about because cricket works better that way. The lbw law is cricket's plot device rather than one of its core principles.

Now, I actually think that's what you might have been getting at. But I didn't really care which modes of dismissal you found more interesting because I had it in my head that lbws were as intrinsic to the concept of cricket as bowled and caught dismissals, regardless of your personal preferences or anyone else's. The current law and its history reveals that it's just not true though.

I needed your argument to arrive at mine though, so I'll give you partial credit for swaying me.

It was ftr, and the main thing I've had in my mind all this time is the pitching outside leg stump technicality, which has baffled literally everyone new to cricket that I've ever tried to explain it to, but makes absolutely perfect sense when you think about what would happen if it wasn't there. The LBW law is sort of a necessary evil both in spirit and in technicalities to prevent **** anti-cricket which is fundamentally unwatchable, so when I say it's "less interesting" I mean that it distracts from the fundamental contest between batsman trying to score runs without getting caught or bowled.

 

[SteveNZ]

You're also doing away with the LBW law as well. You know, the one where it says that if they think the ball will hit, it's out.

Imagine trying to explain to someone that "well, the umpire gave it out, the TV graphic gave it out, but we gave it not out anyway". They'd look at you and tell you to watch a sport which was less ****ing dumb.

My philosophies on the DRS/LBWs are vague, I'm starting to realise that...as you can probably pick up I'm just really bemused by the role of an on-field umpire when technology is called for. It seems to me like we've got the technology, but our decision will be partly guided by the human whose decision we're investigating. To me if you've got technology, it's absolute - it's not hinging on whether a guy on-field said yay or nay. You're saying you have the technology to do a better job than the naked eye but kinda you haven't.

And I know that if you just made it anything that is clipping or hitting would lead to batsmen having nightmares. And yeah it would probably make things even more farcical than they are now. That's why I propose less than half the ball= not out at every instance. I could explain that to a neutral. Basically we're saying we're not yet living in a perfect AI society where robots can hold perfect conversations with us, drive our cars and predict exactly where a cricket ball is going to hit.