Turf Side Up TURF SIDE UP! The not so serious side of the industry A measure of success!
DON’T be too harsh on fast bowler Ryan Harris if he sends down a few full tosses.
In comical scenes that could have been from a Fawlty Towers script, the burly Queenslander had his bowling radar scrambled in his comeback from a hamstring injury in Brisbane grade cricket.
Playing at his Toombul home ground against Wests, Harris charged in to bowl the first over of the day, but something was quite clearly amiss.
The Australian quick had to strain twice as hard as usual just to get the ball up the pitch, and two edges from batsmen fell well short of the slips.
After another baffling over from fellow fast bowler Preston White, the rookie Toombul groundsman was
called on to the pitch and sheepishly discovered the problem.
“He had mucked up his tape measure and the pitch was 22 metres long rather than the normal 22 yards long,” Harris laughed.
“It had to be re-marked and the game had to be restarted. Never in my life have I been a part of anything like that on a cricket field or even seen anything like that. It was so funny, but it was also bloody embarrassing for the club.”
It’s not cricket ...
THE Asian Cricket Council’s Twenty20 tournament in Kathmandu, Nepal turned ugly during the game between the host country and the United Arab Emirates.
Electing to bat first, Nepal only managed to score 95-9; a score that was met with boos from the partisan crowd. But, things got a lot worse!
As the UAE side approached their target in just the 15th over, helped by four overthrows, the now angry crowd started to leave the ground, hurling bottles onto the pitch as they departed. The police moved in - ‘overzealously’ according to one reporter. The crowd turned on them, and the players, throwing stones onto the outfield.
The match was delayed for ten minutes as the police dealt with the crowd, and
152 PC DECEMBER/JANUARY 2012 Mary Queen of Shots!
“ORGANISED” football was being played in castle courtyards in Scotland more than 500 years ago, experts have found.
Documents show a set of accounts from the court of King James IV indicating he paid two shillings for a bag of “fut ballis” in April 1497.
The world’s oldest surviving football dates back to 1540 and was found behind panelling in Stirling Castle.
The Scottish Football Museum said it appeared the game evolved rather than was invented.
Richard McBrearty, the museum curator, said that it appeared rules were emerging in the 15th and 16th Century, hundreds of years before football was codified at Cambridge University in 1848.
He said: “We know that the game was played in the Royal Court going back to the 15th Century, 1497, there’s accounts of footballs being ordered for the King’s court, by the Lord High Treasurer.
“A Scottish retinue played a game for the amusement of Mary Queen of Scots for two hours - the game is described as being a game of skill, with a little foul play, and the skill is mentioned because of the
What a let off!
groundstaff and helpers cleared away the debris.
Not surprisingly, the UAE knocked off the winning runs with a few overs to spare.
Other countries in the tournament include Hong Kong, Afghanistan, The Maldives, Kuwait, Oman and Bhutan.
TWELVE men accused of digging up a cricket pitch at the first international match held in Indian-administered Kashmir have been acquitted - twenty-eight years later.
The men were accused of attacking the pitch during the lunch break of the India versus West Indies one-day game in 1983.
A court ruled there was a lack of evidence.
The match was volatile. The ‘home side’ were booed by supporters of the Kashmir separatist movement and lost
the game.
Only one other international cricket match has ever been staged in the region - when India lost another one-day game to Australia in 1986.
The twelve men were arrested after dozens of people invaded the ground during the lunch break and damaged the pitch. It was not severe enough to halt the game, which the West Indies won by 28 runs.
The men were freed on bail in 1984 - charges were filed in 1989!
smallness of the ball.”
“The number of players is quite interesting. It mentions specifically 20 players, and that suggests a small sided game of 10 in each side.”
The first association game in Scotland in 1868 was between Queens Park and The Thistle. It also lasted two hours but was 20-a-side.
“The traditional notion is that, in the early 19th Century, the modern game is born and that it’s almost a revolution, an invention in that respect. We are arguing, from some of the evidence that we are starting to find, that, really, it’s an evolution, that the game has evolved over hundreds of years,” Mr McBrearty added.
He said there was evidence of structured and skilled games and also of bad tempered players, with one clash even leading to the threat of a duel in the aftermath!
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