Is 41 The New 21?

Every time we attend a cricket league meeting, the topic of “involving the youth” in the cricket leagues is always discussed. Usually it’s the same chain of events that occur meeting after meeting; a few wise men bring forth their ideas and how it’s their life’s mission to involve the youth in our local leagues, some more wise men join in and pledge their support for the cause, we all clap and sing praises of probably a handful of times something was actually done regarding the subject and then we all have our refreshments and go home. Don’t get me wrong, a few individuals and organizations have indeed done their part in inspiring the youth to go out and take up the game of cricket and there is actually a youth team that takes part in CLNJ Division 3, but I do not think this is enough and I strongly believe that as a NJ cricket fraternity we have truly dropped the ball.

As they say, “Don’t Come to Me With a Problem If You Don’t Have a Solution” so, here is my solution or more of a suggestion to the decision makers in our local leagues.  Implement a rule that every playing 11 should have a player which is no older than 21 years of age. I do not believe that this is an unreasonable ask and this will not only mandate teams to involve a youth but it may also give chances to youth who are eager to play the game, but are reduced to just scoring or fielding as 12^th man for their father’s or uncle’s team.

I will love to hear from the team captains and club Executives regarding this matter. Will you support the idea of having a U-21 player in your playing 11 regardless of their skill level or do you believe that having a U-41 experienced slip fielder in for all 40 overs is the way to go ;) 

CLNJ: Color kit

At the recent Cricket League of New Jersey (CLNJ) AGM some very productive and to an extent ground breaking decisions were made such as the passage of the motion to use pink balls for the 2014 season.  I for one am extremely excited about the ruling, but in my opinion, the Execs and the BOD once again took a beautiful thing and put a blemish on it. The blemish I refer to is the allowance of teams using either white or colored clothing at their own discretion.

I believe that a league which prides itself in being organized and well maintained, there should be some sort of uniformity when it comes to dress code as well. I say this not just for the sake of argument, but have witnessed the eye sore of a game in which one team played in whites and the other in colors in a local tournament last year.

I hope that the Execs and BODs look further into this matter and make the correct call of mandating teams to either play in color OR whites as this will aid our league games not to look like street “pick up” games .

Stars vs Stars

Another special from Stars vs Stars... Saroosh vs Jessy and we all know who came up top but this video will go in the hall of fame of Stars CC.  Every Stars vs Stars game had a story, Fazeh vs Asif, Akif vs Mohammad, Jassim vs Akif but this one might have taken the cake :)

WASP up!

Over the years while watching cricket games on TV, my daughter always asks me "So who’s winning dad?” and I always stumble to answer the age old question.  My usual reply to her is, that Team A scored 275 and now Team B is 45 for 1 in the 9th over and my daughter usually reply is "I’m not asking the score papa! I want to know who is winning the game?" If it was any other sports one would know right away that which team is winning and by how much but cricket is a funny game, when it comes to predicting the winner, as long as there are wickets in hand and overs to be played anything can happen, like I always say "this is cricket so Kuch bhi oh sakta hai"
The other day when I was watching the ODI series between West Indies and New Zealand and I saw some stats flashing on the bottom right hand corner of the screen.  First I couldn’t make it as to what that was as I thought it was the bowler’s name but it remained up there throughout the game.  This is the first time I saw or heard of WASP (Winning and Score Predictor) and intrigued me enough to Google it, as the announcers were too busy talking about how they played game in the 80s and 90s.

What I learned after googling it is that WASP gives out a predicted score in the first inning and in the second, it gives the probability the batting team winning the game.
WASP was developed by University of Canterbury and it’s a measure of how well the teams have done to that point, rather than forecast of how well they will do from that point on.  
As Brad Throng in his blog “The models are based on a database of all non-shortened ODI and Twenty20 games played between the top eight countries since the late 2006.  The first-innings model estimates the additional runs likely to be scored as a function of the number of balls and wickets remaining. The second innings model estimates the probability of winning as a function of balls and wickets remaining, runs scored to date and the target score.’’
I’m not going to bore you guys with the mumbo jumbo of how it calculates but at least I can tell my 9 year old who is winning and that’s WASP up