Sports.
The Tour de France is on. Will Mark Cavendish get to 35?
In Cricket, the Aussies did something legal but “not cricket” in a match at Lords. It has ignited a huge contróversy. I’m trying to get my mind around it, looking for an equivalence in American baseball: do something legal that you just don’t do in order to win, which outrages people because it violates the spirit of the game. Something “unfair” took place. Australia won against England in the Ashes Test match when the wicket-keeper stumped out the batsman who thought play was dead. In baseball, could an equivalent be something like the 1st baseman pretending to throw the ball to the pitcher while really keeping it in his glove and then tagging out the guy on base? In cricket, it seems, what happened “isn’t cricket”.
A puzzle. White to move and mate in 2. Fabi found it. Can you?
NB: I’ll hold comments with solutions ’till the next day so there won’t be “spoilers” for others.
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The most dramatic result would be for Cavendish to get to 35 by winning the sprint in Paris.
Julia: No question. That would be the most dramatic. Could we all stand the wait? It’s his last Tour.
Bairstow was robbed. Still, the three members of MCC who were suspended deserved it. That just wasn’t cricket.
Stokes can’t carry the team, though. They all need to step up.
My sympathy for Bairstow is about zero. No excuse for not making sure the ball was dead before wandering off. A dreadful mental lapse, like forgetting how many outs there are in baseball. This is the Ashes, not some scratch game.
Use that defiant bishop to break through the pawns and stand up to the enemy king.
1. Ba6! …(knowing if KxB then 2. Qa8 awaits.)
2. Qb7#
I mean, it probably wasn’t done with unsporting intent – if you look at how fast everything happened, the keeper would have instinctively gone for the throw-in without pausing to fully evaluate the situation and speculate about the batsman’s state of mind.
Should the Aussies have withdrawn the appeal when it became clear what had happened? Maybe. They might well have won anyway, and would have looked like the bigger men either way. But who am I to judge…?
I’m not sure I understand what happened in the cricket match enough, but it has the air of bunting in the 9th inning to break up a perfect game. Sure, it’s legal, but it isn’t really ethical baseball.
Sumus: bunting in the 9th inning to break up a perfect game
Not quite the same, however. Is it. What happened in the cricket match was something at the end of a play. Bunting in the 9th… that’s at the beginning of a play, and the batter shows bunt before making contact which can set the defense in motion. And, in a perfecto, there wouldn’t be anyone on base to advance. It would be kinda dumb to bunt.
I don’t know enough about cricket, but I know about sports. Arguably, the correct thing to do is for the other teams to simply refuse to play the offending team in the future. In effect saying; if you think that’s how the sport is played, you don’t understand the sport, and we aren’t playing with you.
If the comeback is that “but these are professional teams and are obligated under contract to play” then the response is that the terms “sport” and “professional” are oxymorons, because a “sport” implies playing according to rules that are agreed upon from the outset. Obviously, they didn’t actually have agreement on that particular rule: if the question had come up in advance, “is X ok?” obviously everyone ELSE thought the answer was “no”.
This telling interview from Bairstow years back balances out this story (the pot calling the kettle black?):
https://www.foxsports.com.au/video/cricket/the-ashes/bairstow-smirks-as-he-praises-own-wicket!861664