Category: Cricket

The late Robert George Dylan Willis, popularly known as Bob Willis, was one of the finest fast bowlers of his generation and spearheaded the England bowling attack for over a decade. While many would be in coach potato mode or playing new casinos online USA, Willis was becoming a master at his craft. Instantly recognisable by his long run-up – once described by Wisden as ‘intimidating, but slightly absurd’ – and distinctive bowling action, Willis made his Test debut, at the age of 21, in the fourth Test of the 1970/71 Ashes series against Australia at the Sydney Cricket Ground in January, 1971.

Despite being forced to have surgery on both knees in 1975, when still only in his mid-twenties, Willis went on to play a total of 90 Test matches for England, 18 as captain, before retiring from all forms of cricket in 1984. All told, Willis took 325 Test wickets at an average of 25.30. Remarkably, despite taking five wickets in an innings 16 times, Willis never once took ten wickets in a Test match. His best match bowling figures were 9-92 in the second Test against New Zealand at Headingley, Leeds in July, 1983. However, his best innings bowling figures were 8-43 in the third Test against Australia in the 1981 Ashes series, also at Headingley, two years earlier. After England followed on, Willis produced a devastating spell, finally clean bowling Ray Bright to hand the home side a highly unlikely 18-run victory. Competative and talented to the end – while I sit here on www.kingjohnnie.info – Willis has carved out a place for himself in cricketing history.

Born in St. John’s, Antigua on March 7, 1952, Sir Isaac Vivian Alexander ‘Viv’ Richards was one of the most prolific batsmen of all time. Richards made his first-class debut for the Leeward Islands, at the age of 19, in 1972, but is best remembered for his exploits in Test and One Day International cricket with West Indies and in County Cricket in England, predominantly with Somerset, for whom he made his professional debut in April, 1974. Strategy was the name of the game with Viv, and no doubt in a casino (virtual or otherwise) setting he’d be making a beeline for the best online blackjack real money table. Despite facing some of the most hostile fast bowlers in history, unfettered by any ‘one bouncer per batsman per over’ rule, ‘Master Blaster’, as Richards was affectionately known, famously forsook a batting helmet and even a mouthguard, relying on his ability to keep hime safe from harm.

Overall, Richards scored 36,212 runs in first-class cricket at an average of 49.40. His career record included 114 first-class centuries, 24 of which he scored in Test matches, and a high-score of 322, which he achieved in a single day, in the first innings of a County Championship against Warwickshire at Taunton on June 1, 1985. The latter score made Richards the first West Indian in history to score 300 runs in a day and surpassed his previous best, 291, for West Indies in the first innings of the fifth Test against England at Kennington Oval in August, 1976.Perhaps in his retirement he’s lounging on a beach or killing some time on www.cinemacasino.com .  Richards was made a Knight of the Order of the National Hero for services to cricket by the Antiguan government in 1999.

The origin of the term ‘googly’ is uncertain, but it was first recorded in the early twentieth century, when it was used to describe a type of delivery, or ball bowled, invented by Middlesex and England cricketer of the day, Bernard Bosanquet. Bosanquet was a Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1905 and, by that stage of his career, was already well-known to the scribes at the independent cricketers’ almanac as an exponent of a deceptive, off-break delivery, which became known as a ‘googly’.

The stock delivery of a right arm leg break bowler, or right arm leg spinner, is the leg break. For a right-handed batsman, the leg break turns, or ‘breaks’, away from the leg-side to the off-side or, in other words, away from the batsman’s body. An important characteristic of the leg break is that spin is generated by the wrist, rather than the fingers. Thus, by bowling the ball out of the back of the hand, with the wrist at 180º to the ground, the right arm leg break bowler can spin the ball clockwise, rather than anticlockwise. The end result is a delivery that, while apparently bowled with a normal leg break action, breaks away from the off-side to the leg side or, in other words, a ‘googly’.

Deception and infrequency are the keys to the efficacy of the googly. Bowled correctly, the ‘wrong ‘un’ should be indistinguishable from a regular leg-break and, employed sparingly, can bamboozle an unsuspecting batsman by turning in the opposite direction to that expected.

Conventional wisdom dictates that cricket derives from the ancient game of ‘club-ball’, although it is unclear whether the latter was a specific game, or a generic term used to describe a variety of folk-games – all of which involved hitting a ball with a stick – which were popular in Medieval England. Similarly, the name ‘cricket’ is believed to derive from the Middle French word ‘criquet’, meaning ‘goal post’, and came into usage during the Norman Period.

What is better known is the history of cricket from the mid-fifteenth century onwards. During the reign of Elizabeth I, in 1598, Surrey county coroner John Derrick testified in court to playing a game known as ‘creckett’ on a plot of common land in Guildford while a pupil at the Royal Grammar School, formerly the Free School, fifty years earlier. Certainly, by the early sixteenth century, cricket was well established throughout the home counties of England, including Kent, Surrey and Sussex. The first reference to a ‘great match’, an eleven-a-side affair for fifty guineas, was recorded in Sussex in 1697 and, just over a decade later, in 1709, the first recorded inter-county match, between Kent and Surrey, was staged.

Other landmark dates in the history of cricket include 1744, when the Laws of Cricket were first issued by the London Club, and 1788, when the Laws of Cricket were revised by the newly-formed Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC). For the record, the first Test match took place between Australia and England in Melbourne in 1877, with the home team winning by 45 runs.