Bowling & Bowling..

Just mused about Bowling, after participating in a tournament on May 07..

To all those who know the game of cricket, and those who would like to know...

A bowler has to bowl a hard ball, with a core of cork wound with string and covered by leather, weighing between 156 and 163 grams(slightly larger but a lot heavier than a tennis ball). The ball is directed towards 3 stumps (cylindrical wooden post, 25 mm in diameter and 813 mm high) arranged in a row perpendicular to the bowling direction with a maximum separation of 228 mm apart from the edges ...I omit the detail about 2 little bails, sitting on the gap between 3 stumps.

The aim is to unsettle this combination(wicket) by directly bowling at it from a distance of 22 yards. To top it all, you could bowl inswingers,outswingers,yorkers,bouncers,fast,medium pace,gentle medium pace, leg spin,leg break, off spin ,chinaman,leg-cutters and other species of balls.

(note if you are feeling dizzy about the statistics given above, you are not fit to listen to a standard cricket commentary..You need to work on your appetite for numbers before you read on. start befriending the 'deep blue'..)

Thats not all..To prevent the bowler from achieving this aim of hitting the stumps, stands the guardian of the wicket..A Wicked Batsman with a dangerous weapon simply called a bat, whose dimensions are well specified, but not the maximum weight. This guy's job is to despatch the ball you just bowled, to the farthest corners of the playing field, and send your teammates on a leather hunt..

I barely had a happy moment in my bowling career, and mostly left the field demoralised and dis-oriented. Now you can understand why a failed bowler like me, would readily love the friendly conditions of an Bowling alley

----------------One fat heavy ball, 10 fat little stumps, tame rolling the ball on the lane will do, and most importantly no batsman to prevent it from reaching there. Though you could never flatten all the 3 stumps in cricket, you could strike down all the 10 pins in Bowling.

Getting a strike, could be quite gratifying for normal cricketers, and absolute bliss for sloppy bowlers(in cricket) like me. When I still see other novices bowl and miss all the pins, I cannot imagine how they would fare if they were playing cricket. Now dont ask me how I fared in that tournament..All I can say is I scored centuries in almost all the games I played..(well, that last sentence is intended to wow a cricket batsman, who has never been Bowling !!)

Last heard that our team could been selected for the finals..A big thanks to my 3 teammates, for triple-handedly taking me along to the finals on June 04..