BobHarris.com - Maybe the Windies should try smaller pads

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Maybe the Windies should try smaller pads

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Sunday, 20 November 2005

... since they keep getting out by snicking their bats against their legs as the ball sails lightly by.

Smaller legs would work, too, I suppose. Or smaller bats, although there are moments that hardly seems possible.

To my eyes, watching Nine's coverage on the satellite dish, Lara looked to be called out even though his bat never touched the ball. I thought the same thing with Chanderpaul for a while yesterday, at least until Nine's cameras dissected the incident as if it was Dealey Plaza in 1963.

Incidentally, to fellow Americans who've never seen televised cricket's intense Zapruder film-like study of imperceptible movements of bat, ball, and pad, it's like Oliver Stone's sporting wet dream: replays at forty times regular speed, microphones stashed in the stumps, and tiny cameras seemingly everywhere but the wicketkeeper's protective groin box.

And they probably have plans for that.

With all this coverage, you do get remarkable close-ups. After 20-odd days of the Ashes, I could probably recite Ricky Ponting's dental work. And for anyone with a fetish for men's calves, cricket on TV would qualify as porn.

So every time there's a close call -- which is about every two minutes when Shane Warne is bowling, notable by his frantic screaming as if his testicles are coming unspooled -- we spend most of the next 119 seconds repeatedly watching the shadow of a seamed leather ball as it passes a piece of willow, synched up to an onscreen oscilloscope thing (the "Snicko"), watching waveforms and listening to the "fatness" of the sound. Is it bat-then-pad? Or pad-then-bat? There! There, I tell you!

There's a bowler on the knoll! Back and to the left! Back and to the left!

And then the 120th second clicks over, and Shane's nuts start coming unspooled again, and one of Nine's directors cues up the next video inquisition.

This is fantastic. My favorite sport now, I swear.

Still, the West Indians do seem to be getting pretty harsh calls. If the umpires were from Texas, somebody would be getting the Chair.

No slight against Oz, of course. Fun to see Hussey and Hodge going so well. You get the feeling Symonds would dive across a spilled case of thumbtacks to stop a ball through the covers, just to stay on the squad. Marvelous to watch.

And I do think if Shane Warne tossed up his lunch, it would swerve six inches to the right in the air and then ricochet three feet to the left.

One of the Windies would be out, caught behind.

You'd still hear Gilchrist saying "nice, Shane, nice!" even while toweling himself off.

PS -- with a bit of luck, as of yesterday it turns out I might make the South Africa test at the SCG come January. Excited the way I was watching the Indians when I was a boy.

For Aussie readers, that would be the Cleveland Indians. Who made the current Windies look like worldbeaters.

My Indians used to hit their legs with the bats sometimes, too. And they were playing baseball.