***Official*** Stanford Super Series

[GIMH]

Well, I don't know if this will get the sticky treatment as it's not truly an international series, but then, the IPL did. This is about 7 weeks away now, but England named their squad today, the same squad that will travel to India for the ODIs:

Kevin Pietersen (capt)
James Anderson
Ian Bell
Ravi Bopara
Stuart Broad
Paul Collingwood
Alastair Cook
Andrew Flintoff
Stephen Harmison
Samit Patel
Matt Prior (wk)
Owais Shah
Graeme Swann
Ryan Sidebottom
Luke Wright

Could soon be some very rich men amongst them (well there already are a couple I'd say but there you go). The fixtures for this series:

Fixtures
October 25: Stanford Super Stars v Trinidad and Tobago
October 26: England v Middlesex
October 27: Trinidad and Tobago v Middlesex
October 28: England v Trinidad and Tobago
October 29: Stanford Super Stars v Middlesex
November 1: Stanford Super Stars v England

I'm actually looking forwards to it, any England cricket will do me

 

[Richard]

Only because of the obscene sums involved am I interested in this.

 

[GIMH]

Will you watch it though? Am guessing not!

 

[Richard]

Nah, but I'll sure as be taking note of who's won what, whereas almost any other Twenty20 game I couldn't hope to tell you who'd won what.

 

[NUFAN]

Hope Middlesex thrashes England.

 

[Richard]

It'd be mildly amusing if they did I suppose.

(My I-don't-want-massive-upsets desire doesn't really apply in Twenty20: 1 because I just don't care for the format and 2 because it seems upsets are less upsetting in that, due to the somewhat random nature of it)

 

[NUFAN]

It'd be mildly amusing if they did I suppose.

(My I-don't-want-massive-upsets desire doesn't really apply in Twenty20: 1 because I just don't care for the format and 2 because it seems upsets are less upsetting in that, due to the somewhat random nature of it)

You could even call it romantic..

 

[GIMH]

It's more likely to happen in a T20 than an ODI or Test - an upset that is. I wouldn't say because of the random nature as such, but the length. The same reason why upsets happen more often in football, but over the course of a season you'll never find anyone **** winning a league title.

 

[Richard]

Well the length of the format is what causes its randomness, y'see? The fewer overs you have, the less it's down to skill and the more down to how the stars align.

 

[BoyBrumby]

It's more likely to happen in a T20 than an ODI or Test - an upset that is. I wouldn't say because of the random nature as such, but the length. The same reason why upsets happen more often in football, but over the course of a season you'll never find anyone **** winning a league title.

Leeds won in 92, tbf.

Hard to argue with the squad too much, really. Mascarenhas maybe had a case, but him aside it looks the best available.

 

[Uppercut]

Well the length of the format is what causes its randomness, y'see? The fewer overs you have, the less it's down to skill and the more down to how the stars align.

While that's true, the better team does win a T20 more often than the better team wins a football match, for example. And since football's my first love i'm not about to take the element of luck in T20 into account when judging its merits as a game.

 

[fredfertang]

Who is playing for the Stanford Superstars?

 

[GIMH]

Leeds won in 92, tbf.

Hard to argue with the squad too much, really. Mascarenhas maybe had a case, but him aside it looks the best available.

Belter of a midfield though IIRC

Richard I don't think "random" is the right word. It's more to do with a fact that if a bowler has 4 bad overs that could well cost the team the game. Errors are more costly than an ODI. In some ways this makes it a tougher game, IMO. But I have no desire to go down the T20 V ODI route, so we'll agree to disagree

 

[Richard]

Richard I don't think "random" is the right word. It's more to do with a fact that if a bowler has 4 bad overs that could well cost the team the game. Errors are more costly than an ODI.

Yeah, that's precisely the point. It's far easier to have 4 bad overs than 10 bad overs, and it's also far easier to bowl perfectly decently and get smacked in 4 than 10 overs. This makes it more random, in my book. You could probably find a way of expressing it that meant pretty well the exact same and made Twenty20 look "better" though.

 

[GIMH]

Well, as you probably know, I don't really have a preference to T20s or ODIs, except that I love when a T20 starts at 6 as I can watch a whole game of cricket when I get home from work.

That being said, it could quite well be argued that there is much more pressure on a player in Twenty20, as one mistake is more likely to make a difference, and because it punishes mistakes more than ODIs it's actually a more telling tale of who is the better side.

Not a theory I necessarily subscribe to, as where does it end (ie does this make Test Cricket the easiest???) - and this is the point. To me personally, they are different formats, that test different things. I don't believe that it makes either better or more or less random than the other.

 

[Uppercut]

Well they're different sports, and you can no more explain to someone who doesn't get a sport why it's good than you can explain to someone who doesn't like a song why it's good. That's why music critics have to bull**** so much to stop people from realising how useless they are.

 

[GIMH]

Well they're different sports, and you can no more explain to someone who doesn't get a sport why it's good than you can explain to someone who doesn't like a song why it's good. That's why music critics have to bull**** so much to stop people from realising how useless they are.

They're not exactly different sports, they are different formats of the sport. They are more alike than, say, Union & League (though I seem to notice the same sorts of arguments between fans of ODI&T20 as Union & League here on CW )

 

[Jamee999]

If we're going to talk about randomness get it right - it's like the difference between rolling a dice twenty times and rolling it fifty times - the more times you repeat an experiment the more likely you are to find the "true" result.

 

[Richard]

That's only one angle on it though - an over of cricket is not the same as the roll of a dice, nor 50 overs the same as 50 die-rolls. Cricket is played by individuals.

 

[GIMH]

It's played by teams!