In the course of its recorded seven hundred-year history, cricket has developed its own mystique and invented a distinctive specialist language: an idiosyncratic tongue suited to the description of the events and skills peculiar to this most English of sports. Small wonder that the newcomer to the game is mystified when the umpire shouts 'no ball' when the bowler is clearly holding a ball in his hand! Radio and television commentators puzzle the listener and viewer of the sport by stating that a bowler 'swings it' but we cannot hear any musical accompaniment to the delivery! When a batsman plays a defensive stroke 'with soft hand' the spectator envisages that his hands have turned to putty. And when a player is said to be 'backing up' does that man that he is fielding running backwards? Morden players keep pace with the game's changing imagery. They are no longer satisfied with such terms as 'outswing' and 'a good spell'. Bowlers now 'shape the ball out' or 'hoop it' and find the 'ball coming out well.' Curiouser and curiouser!
The current buzz phrase around English cricket dressing rooms is 'reverse of Irish swing." Perhaps it should be 'Welsh swing', for it is Glamorgan's speedster, Simon Jones, who, in tandem with Lancashire's Freedie Flintoff, is producing the devastatingly late fast in-swinging yorker which, in the Edgbaston and Old Trafford Tests, undermined the bastions of the Australian batting line- up, previously deemed impregnable.
But what does this apparently nonsense phrase 'reverseswing' signify? Does it mean that, after the bowler release the ball instead of hurtling toward its target of the batsman's stumps, it back -tracks towards its source -the man who delivered it? Or does it describe a delivery, which does the exact opposite of that the bowler intends it to do - and instead of moving laterally in the air - 'swinging'- continues in the direction in which it started?
Apparently not. It merely explains a delivery which, the bowler holds and bowls as for an outswinger, but which eventuates as an in-swinger. A corollary of that definition would be that it should also describe a ball, which is intended as an in-swinger but turns out to be an out -swinger.
I must protest at the looseness of modern cricket jargon. It induces inaccuracy, encourages the concept that near enough is good enough and loses just about everything in translation. Not for me. I still cling to the belief that all the skills of cricket are grounded on exact scientific explanations. Thus swinging a cricket ball- one, which deviates laterally in flight before it, bounces- can be attributed to changes in the air pressures created around the ball by the positioning of the seam and the rough side of the ball's casing. Orthodox swing with a new ball results from the vertical positioning of the prominent seam to the left or right of the ball's flight path towards the batsman. Release the ball with the seam pointing towards slips or towards fine leg and its stitching creates air turbulence and faster moving air to the left or right of the ball. Science tells us that fast moving air and turbulence has less pressure than slow moving air. If you doubt this, study the wing of an aircraft and you will note that its upper surface has to travel further and faster - and that consequently the air pressure above the wing is less than that beneath it. The slower air currents passing beneath the wing have more pressure and force the wing - and the aircraft-upwards and into the air.
Applying this theory to the cricket ball, one concludes that if a bowler can create air turbulence and greater air speed on the left of the ball by inclining its seam vertically towards the slips it results in the ball curving towards the zone of weaker air pressure. When a bowler inclines the seam towards fine-leg, he creates turbulence, greater air speed and less atmospheric presser to the right of the ball. Result=the in-swinger.
The beauty of the modern concept of reverse swing is that it can be bowled with an old ball. Indeed it depends on the ball being old: and there seems to be an optimum worn stage when it can be bowled-approximately when 30 overs have been bowled with it-sometimes even earlier on the harder Australian pitches which roughen the ball much quicker. At this stage, the ball's seam has been flattened and consequently plays little or no part in the sideways movement of the ball through the air. Reverse swing is produced by the relative roughness of the two sides of the ball. The bowler polishes or smoothes just one of its sides, allowing the other to become as tough as possible. Indeed it has been known for some bowlers to increase its roughness quite illegally-by rubbing soil into it or raising the quarter seam which runs at right angles to the stitching of the normal seam. This roughening of one side of the ball acts in much the same way as the seam of the new ball did- creating turbulence, greater air speed and less air pressure on that side. The bowler delivers the ball as he would an orthodox outswinger, with the worn seam held between the first and second fingers of the bowling hand and pointing towards the slips; importantly he maintains the position of rougher side of the ball on the right side of the ball, which the bowler has been polishing faces, the batsman's off-side. Result=late reverse swing.
The unexpectedness of a delivery, which looks for all the world as if it were an orthodox outswinger but moves late in its flight in the opposite direction, made it a sure-fire wicket-taking ball in the hands of seasoned pave-bowling practitioners such as Pakistan's Waqar Younis and Wasim Akram. In the current Ashes series Flintoff and Jones are applying the finishing touches to their novel reverse -swing IBM-by bowling around the slips and then moving it at the very last moment back into line with the stumps. This poses the problem to the batsman-to play or not to play? If the striker offers a shot and the reverse swing fails to materialize, he runs the risk of edging the angled delivery to the slips. If he refuses to be tempted and the ball ducks back- the result will probably be the nasty rattle of ball on stumps! There is also the bowling option of pitching the reverse in-swinger on a yorker length (there's another of those cricket words!) and directing it at the right-hander's leg stump close to his body- thus cramping thebatsman's scoring ambitions and denying him the room to mount an effective counter stroke. Life is becoming increasingly hard for batsmen! Look at the many bowling options now open to his opponents-orthodox and reverse swing, slower and faster deliveries, bouncers and yorkers, the orthodox slow bowler's regulation spinner, top-spinner and arm ball, Warne's slider and flipper (not to mentions orthodox leg-spinner, wrong-un and top-spinner)> Muralitharan and Saqlain throw in their 'doosra" and in days gone by, trundlers like Iverson, Gleeson and Connolly mystified opposing batsmen with their idiosyncratic brand of bent-finger spin and 'knuckle balls' borrowed from the baseball code. Nowadays bowlers send down a Heinz's 57 variety of balls. Nor do I believe that we have seen the end of bowling invention: the recent fiat of the ICC legitimizing the 15 degree kink of a bowler's arm seems certain to open the flood gates of further bowling innovations. In this case the ICC and not Necessity will be the mother of bowling invention. As a former fast bowler I can't say I am overly sympathetic to the batsman's cause! Getting the benefit of doubtful decisions, batting on shirt-front wickets against bowlers whose sole role in the game seemed to be that of presenting the ball in the hitting zone for the entertainment of the spectator-have for too long tipped the scales in his favor.

Ashley Giles
Monday August 29, 2005
The Guardian

As England wickets tumbled I was sat in the coach's room with Duncan Fletcher and Troy Cooley. There were a few nerves around. I had a thigh pad on, Jonesy was in next and my pads were lying by my side.
Fletch didn't say much but, when he did, it was to suggest that it was a lot better being in my shoes - I could at least go out to the middle and do something about it.
"Like hell it is," I said. "I would rather just watch. You go out there and get on with it."
They were right, of course. To go out there and get the winning runs was awesome. I've never been so grateful for a chip through midwicket. I've repeated myself in endless TV and radio interviews and I've given my mum a hug in front of the pavilion. Everyone is calling: "Well done, Gilo." I'm dying for a cool beer.
None of us said it would be easy. For one thing Australia are not in the habit of surrendering. And we make a habit of finishes like this. Whether we win or lose, we relish creating a bit of an arse-nipper.
It was a reminder for me of our victory against New Zealand at Trent Bridge last year when I was batting with Thorpey at the end. He got a century and we put on 70 to win the game by four wickets. It's useful to call on memories like that but this was 10 times more pressurised.
As we lost wickets I was thinking: "This can't be happening to us, we don't deserve this."
We have dominated the series since losing the first Test at Lord's and we were half an hour away from Australia retaining the Ashes and Ricky Ponting waving a stump in celebration on the pavilion balcony.
You never have a right to win a game, no matter how much you have dominated it, not when you have someone as talented as Shane Warne spinning the ball at you in the fourth innings and Brett Lee reverse swinging it at 95mph.
In the coach's room I tried to knuckle down, to plan ahead. I tried to assess how Lee and Warne were going to try to get me out.
I felt more relaxed in the middle. There were a few verbals - "Let's get him falling out of his crease" and "Let's get him nicking another one" - but nothing major. Those guys were tense, they're professional and they get on with the job.
Jonah tried to play the shot that would break the game. I had a feeling at the non-striker's end that he would play a big shot.
Thirteen runs to win and a boundary takes it under double figures and you are almost home. Unfortunately he didn't quite get it right.
I crossed when Jonah was out, so Hoggy came out to face Lee for the first ball of the next over.
"Come on, let's you and me get it done," he said, with a bit of a smile.
"It's reversing at about 95mph," I told him. I thought it was best that he knew.
I have played with Hoggy for about six years and I have never seen him drive a seam bowler through extra cover. It was quite extraordinary.
Whether it was a full toss or not, at that pace, with that much reverse on it, to get it through that gap, and so technically sound, something fell in our favour there.
It was down to two to win when I faced an over from Warnie for the last time. I thought that he was trying to set me up for the sweep, because deep square was open, and then to dismiss me with the slider. The sweep was the last thing I was going to play.
The third one, tossed up, arrived on the full toss. I thought "if I clip this through midwicket, we've won," but it hit Simon Katich at short-leg and stopped dead. At least he didn't catch it, because that's the way things were going.
Everyone around the bat just smiled. Then came the chip to midwicket and the cheers. The rest is a bit of a blur.
These games are so tough. We have all aged about 10 years in the past three weeks. You don't sleep well. Every minute of the day you are thinking about cricket. You wake up in the night and you are thinking about cricket. It's not healthy but that's the Ashes. I'm sure the Aussies are feeling just as tired.

Greatest No. 11

I think i've been pushing my whole career to get out of the No. 11 spot and to finally have the most runs at 11 in the history of the game.
- Glenn McGrath
 

One of the most amazing, or most tragic, or most understandable, or most dubious soccer stories, a viewpoint depending entirely on how seriously you embrace football as a religion, was the one involving a fan of an English club side who named his son after all the players in his team.
Football tends to do this, perhaps more than ant other sport it gives fresh meaning to the term "faithful supporter." It is an awkward tribalism, difficult to figure unless you have a Henry team shirt in your closet, know the car numbers of every Real Madrid "galactico", refuse to get married on any day that Manchester United is Playing and take every loss as a personal affront.
But faith is routinely mangled, trampled over, flattened by the studs of opposing players evidently of no pedigree but owners of unusual luck. But if you go the distance, if you hold onto that bruised faith, if you believe, dammit, it is only then you understand magic.
Magic is winning three matches to escape relegation. it is an open goal missed by a rival star, it is the ball hitting the woodwork, careening into the goal in the final minute. and it happens all the time.
Magic is Arsenal needing a 2-0 win to claim the title in 1989 in the last match of the season, against leaders Liverpool, at Anfield, and leading 1-0 and 91 minutes and 22 seconds of the game played, the result surely decided, when Michael Thomas, incredibly, absurdly, coolly scores the second goal and Liverpool fans shouting "Champions, champions" go as quiet as death.
Magic is lying in bed late into the night, Manchester United down a goal to Bayren Munich in the 1999 Champions League final refusing to believe a clock that insisted that no minutes were left, wanting to destroy the TV in frustration, yet waiting, hoping, believing, that a miracle was about to unfold. And of course it did.
That night Ole Gunnar Solskajaer scored the winner and said:"the team spirit is unbelievable. Everyone works for each other." For that moment, like doesn't matter, rifts within teams are irrelevant, demands for higher wages are forgotten, a rebuke from the manager is ignored. This is one of the beautiful things about sport, men do not have to like each other to play well together. Leander and Mahesh didn't speak for most of 1999, but got to four Grand Slam finals.
In football, no season is as special or as pure as now, the one that precedes the commencement of league play. Savings are collected to purchase season tickets, lovingly fondled when they arrive, as would any passport to heaven. For now at least, even lesser clubs, hell is still a few games away, its taste unfamiliar.
Players don't sustain clubs, spectators' hope does, his belief is the fuel for the team's survival. A season can hurt, for months, but why cheer if you don't believe in pots of gold at the end of rainbows.
Managers are alternately celebrated or vilified purely on the basis of signings. Team sheets are studied harder than algebra ever was and formations are examined like the Normandy invasion. The left flank is weak, it will be sagely observed, and the manager is a fool with the IQ of arrival striker. Scouts are just tired.
Alex Ferguson is an angel from heaven but some will insist the glue is coming off his wings. Arsene Wenger is a genius, but of Course. Chelsea merely has everyone feeling blue because its chequebook has unlimited pages. Of course, those who leave your club for better wages are traitors, prostitutes, men of no honour, though when new players are lured away from other clubs by a fat cheque it is only good business and players are congratulated for seeing the light.
Thierry Henry wants to stay at Highbury because he loves it, because money isn't the issue. "I always say that I do something that I love. Even if I wasn't playing for Arsenal and I had to play in the back garden of my friend's house, I'd play the same way," he said. Fans will call for his statue; rivals will sneer.
Great players are vital, they sell tickets, shirts, shorts, but great players are not enough, the jigsaw must be assiduously put together. Real Madrid spent over $ 300 million over nearly five years for a succession of legends but its rewards have been less than legendary. Rivals cannot stop pointing that our with unrestrained glee.
Luis Figo is gone, to inter, and if Madrid wins no one will miss his jinking runs that on occasions left confused defenders tackling air. No one is buying Michael Owen and this is plain strange. Man U has an Asian star, South Korean Park Ji-Sung, and Seoul will soon be wearing red. New love affairs are blossoming daily.
But there is more at stake this season than the various leagues, for the World Cup is a few free kicks away. There is almost a year to go, but of course Brazil has already been anointed champions and the only debate is who exactly of Robinho, Ronaldinho, Ronaldo, Kaka will they leave on the bench. No one is talking too much about Africa as usual, victims as they are of mostly uninterested media and yet there is a strange surprise when they arrive and nonchalantly disfigure reputations.
Qualifying will do what it always does, play Havoc with weak hearts and unstable bladders and one thing is for sure, somewhere there will be mourning the morning after. France so stylishly brilliant one is flailing desperately but, wait, Zizou is back; Zidane's nickname appears borrowed from a catwalk blonde but then to the faithful he remains the model footballer. After all, it was said of him that he plays with such delicacy that his feet appear encased in silk gloves. Clearly this is a French thing, for Michel Platini's feet were once described as being able to thin. I concur.
It is a valorous move by a retired genius, a comeback fraught with danger, for Zidane is daring to tamper with a grand legacy, could bruise a beautiful image. Can one man restore a team, lift a nation, and construct the impossible for a side in forth place in its World Cup group? It is a silly question. This is football, this is about magic.

The picture could not look bleaker for Andy Roddick and the other contenders and pretenders hoping to dethrone King Roger. Ferderer has whipped Roddick nine out of ten times and overpowered Lleyton Hewitt eight matches in a row and he enjoys a 7-2 career edge over unpredictable Marat Safin. Only teenaged sensation Rafael Nadal, whose forte is clay, has spun an advantage, 2-1, over Federer. "He's probably as close as he has been to unbeatable," conceded Roddick after losing to the stylish Swiss at Wimbledon for the third consecutive year.
Despite Federer's 6-2,7-6,6-4 rout of A-Rod in the Big W final, Roddick should not be disheartened. If Chris Evert, who lost 13 times in a row to superstar Martina Navartilova in the 1980s, could turn the tide during their long rivalry, so can the world's fastest server who boasts far more firepower. Evert hit the gym to improve her speed, strength and stamina. Roddick has the game the physical strength, top-notch coaching in Dean Goldfine, and the dedication to trun the lopsided "rivalry" around. His determination is second to none. "I want to go against him again." Here's what this scribe - also a USPTA - certified teaching pro and former top 10 - ranked sectional tournament player - suggests.
After standing a horrendous 5 to 10 feet behind the baseline, during rallies for the past two years, Roddick positioned himself much better, about 3 feet behind baseline, during Wimbledon. If he stands even closer, he will play better offensively. He will give Federer less time to react to his shots, his own shots will land deeper, he will get closer to the net following approach shots, and he will be able to create sharper angles on his crosscourt shots.
Defensively, Roddick will be better positioned to prevent Federer from doing those same offensive things to him as well as begin better able to reach drop shots and drop volleys and running far less during the course of a match.
Roddick's improved volley enabled him to win 17 percent (177 out 247) of the points at net during his first six Wimbledon matches. But his effectiveness plunged to only 43 percent (18 of 42) of the points at net during the final. A major reason Federer passed Roddick so often in the final was that Roddick hit far too many crosscourt approach shots. That allowed Federer to either stroke the ball into the open court or crosscourt - his favorite backhand passing shot - back where the moderately agile Roddick has come from. Roddick must aim his approach shots down the line and very deep unless he can hit a winner or a near - winner crosscourt.
Goldfine's strategy is to have Roddick keep Federer off balance with a more diversified attack, chiefly coming to net as often as he can. To succeed, however, Roddick must play percentage tennis when net-rushing. That also means Roddick must hit crosscourt volleys very decisively or else Federer will pass him for the same reasons. Roddick also risks getting burned by lobs as well as bullet passing shots if he positions himself too close - within 5 feet - of the net. Roddick holds the world record for the fastest serve (155 miles per hour), but his explosive serve, at least in terms of aces, should be more dominating. Roddick averaged only 4 aces a set (104 aces in 26 sets) on Wimbledon's slick grass. He smartly kept Federer off balance when he handcuffed Federer with serves into the body to win several points. I suggest Roddick also hit more serves wide to force Federer to start points from the alley or even outside of it. To confound Federer further, Roddick should continue to serve and volley occasionally, but mostly to Federer's backhand in the ad court.
Federer's backhand is a relative weakness, but it can be exploited only if he is forced to hit it on the dead run and/or against considerable power. To make that happen, Roddick must hit more down-the-line backhand and crosscourt forehands hard and deep to Federer's forehand corner. Yes, Federer boasts a terrific forehand, but that is a calculated risk Roddick has to take to "open up" the backhand side. If the strategy works, Federer will overhit some forehands, and more important, he'll then have hit backhands on the dead run, which will result in increased forced errors and weak returns.
Both players love to run around their backhands to whack big forehands from the backhand half of the court, even doing from the backhand corner. That ploy works best when those forehands are powerful, deep and well-placed. It backfires most often when the reverse crosscourt forehand aimed at the opponent's backhand corner falls short and lands in the middle ot the court. Federer's forehand is most devastating when he pounces on short balls, especially short crosscourt shots. That is why Roddick must hug the baseline and hit more on-the-rise backhand - rather than pinning himself in the forehand corner.
Conversely, Roddick should exploit every short ball by Federer exactly the same way. Studying Federer's matches will teach Roddick how the quick and smart Swiss attacks like a rattlesnake killing its prey. Finally, Roddick should play doubles as often as possible. Doubles will improve his volleying, reflexes, forward - backward speed and agility, and service return. He'll also have great fun,more than he'll likely have doing wind sprints, plyometrics and pumping iron. And a happy player is a better player. Roddick should take heart and advice form clever Henri Cochet, one of France's famous "Four Musketeers." In 1937 Cochet, wrote; "How many times does a player considered the weaker bear an opponent of higher reputation! It is because 'the weaker' has shown himself the more intelligent, the more subtle, the deeper."
-Paul Fein