Australia vs India

mjdj said:
You Indians have really taken this loss to heart haven't you?

The ball can touch the ground if you have caught it first you realise...

Anyway Dhoni is a bigger cheat cause it bounced a foot in front of him. Lucky the third umpire was used otherwise he would have had a 5 game holiday. God help the Indians if there are any close catches at the Waca.

I hope Ponting catches one in the first over and does a cartwheel after catching it. Deliberately grounding the ball just to piss you lot off even more.
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Look mate, come with whatever theories you want to, that catch wasn't legal. And if Ponting wasn't so blind he'd admit it too.
 
It seems the debate focuses on whether he was in control of the ball before it touched the ground.

I haven't seen it but if he was diving and then at the end of the dive it touched the ground, I would think that wouldn't be out, unless he was lying there still and then let it touch the ground.

Part of the rule Donado posted:

The act of making the catch shall start from the time when a fielder first handles the ball and shall end when a fielder obtains complete control both over the ball and over his own movement.
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So if it did touch the ground at the end of his dive, as it seems in the picture below, then surely it is not out.

yu9kei12aqn8wtcr.D.0.07ponting.jpg


It wouldn't be out if the back of his hand touched the ground first and then his hand rolled over because his movement would probably have switched to getting up instead.

I haven't seen it but surely it can't be that hard to figure out.
 
Clearly not out, there is no question the ball touched the ground there and there is no question he dived forward and the ground stopped both the ball and him going any further.

Of the same opinion on first looks and after I downloaded the video and played it frame by frame, in zoom.
 
Its not like he is a horrible cheat like he is being made out to be. I agreed it was dodgy but there are far worse things happening on the cricket field. Personally I think its a catch and if an Indian took it I wouldn't care. Much like the Kiwi who took the catch in the 20/20 kept sliding for a couple of metres and threw the ball back into the field. I think he had caught it before throwing it back in.

It wasn't given out anyway so the whinging and complaining isn't necessary. Cant you lot whinge about how rubbish your team batted in the 2nd innings?
 
mehro said:
Go read the rules you idiot. He grounded the ball, that's not out.
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Caught is a method of dismissing a batsman in the sport of cricket. Being out caught is the most common method of dismissal. This method of dismissal is covered by Law 32 of the Laws of cricket which reads:

A batsman is out caught if a fielder catches the ball fully within the field of play without it bouncing once the ball has touched the striker's bat or glove holding the bat. If a batsman could be given out caught or by any other method except bowled, 'caught' takes precedence.


here are the rules
if you watch the replays you cannot deny that ponting caught the ball BEFORE it hit the ground
hence out.

edit

Just wanted to add about the control thing. This clouds it up abit more but I remember from watching during the match they showed it and the ball never leaves his grasp. I wish I could think of another instance where something like this has happened because I don't think it's entered in the minds of anyone really what would happen in this kind of instance, where he has complete control of the ball coming down and still does as it makes contact with the ground.
 
mjdj said:
Its not like he is a horrible cheat like he is being made out to be. I agreed it was dodgy but there are far worse things happening on the cricket field. Personally I think its a catch and if an Indian took it I wouldn't care. Much like the Kiwi who took the catch in the 20/20 kept sliding for a couple of metres and threw the ball back into the field. I think he had caught it before throwing it back in.

It wasn't given out anyway so the whinging and complaining isn't necessary. Cant you lot whinge about how rubbish your team batted in the 2nd innings?
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Oh I thought it was given out by what was being said, anyway, India aren't the team I follow, far from it, I'd rather they lost the series even if it is Australia.

Ponting is a great captain, a great batter, and obviously has a great hunger too succeed which also leads him to win at any cost. I'm fairly certain he knows what he has done and would probably do it again.

I think the furore about it stems from all the controversy going on, I doubt it would be this big if the race issue or bad decisions wasn't in the picture. Plus everybody is sick of Australia now!
 
Chapster said:
Caught is a method of dismissing a batsman in the sport of cricket. Being out caught is the most common method of dismissal. This method of dismissal is covered by Law 32 of the Laws of cricket which reads:

A batsman is out caught if a fielder catches the ball fully within the field of play without it bouncing once the ball has touched the striker's bat or glove holding the bat. If a batsman could be given out caught or by any other method except bowled, 'caught' takes precedence.


here are the rules
if you watch the replays you cannot deny that ponting caught the ball BEFORE it hit the ground
hence out.
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To complete a catch you have to gain control of not only the ball but your movement also. Look a few posts above for that specific line of the ruling, quoted in my post.

Or even better go to Donado's thread where the full ruling has been posted.
 
ZIDANE said:
To complete a catch you have to gain control of not only the ball but your movement also. Look a few posts above for that specific line of the ruling, quoted in my post.
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yeah saw that
the issue is that it's not as black and white as him having dropped it but still claiming it.

At the time of the appeal, as far as he would have been concerned, he caught it in midair and never lost his grip on it, so it's a catch. So I honestly don't think he's integrity is in question.

He may still think he caught it, even though he knows the ball came in contact with the ground, but that's because it may be not out to the letter of the law. I doubt Ponting knows the 'catch' rules to the letter of the law.
 
He didn't drop the ball and he never completed the catch either.

To complete a catch you have to have complete control of the ball, which he did, but he didn't have complete control of his movement as the ball touched the ground.

Its called grounding, mate.

I don't know his thoughts so I couldn't comment but I'd seriously hope he knew what a catch was in cricket being a top class professional and a captain. Plus with his experience I would be inclined to believe he knew full well that ball touched the ground.

Edit: (c) the ball does not touch the ground, even though the hand holding it does so in effecting the catch.
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I don't think a top class professional would be expected to know the rules to the letter. If I took a catch like that the last thing I'd have been thinking of was did the ball touch the ground whilst I was still in the process of catching as per the definition of what a catch is? I'd just be thinking along the lines of

Ball in air, caught, dont' drop it when I hit the ground, didn't drop it, time to appeal
 
ZIDANE said:
It seems the debate focuses on whether he was in control of the ball before it touched the ground.

I haven't seen it but if he was diving and then at the end of the dive it touched the ground, I would think that wouldn't be out, unless he was lying there still and then let it touch the ground.

Part of the rule Donado posted:



So if it did touch the ground at the end of his dive, as it seems in the picture below, then surely it is not out.

yu9kei12aqn8wtcr.D.0.07ponting.jpg


It wouldn't be out if the back of his hand touched the ground first and then his hand rolled over because his movement would probably have switched to getting up instead.

I haven't seen it but surely it can't be that hard to figure out.
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It was given not out but given that he plainly had the ball under control it more than fair enough that he appealed. The umpires presumably ruled it not out on the basis that they didn't believe that his body was under control. If his appeal had been a problem the umpires would have reported him. Which they didn't.

It is only an issue because of the bleating of the Indian team about anything and everything now that they got the arse end of a couple of bad descisions and because one of their players was found guilty of racial abuse.

Typically the ICC have caved yet again like they almost always do when India or Sri Lanka are concerned.
 
I dont think the catch was even considered as Bucknor ruled it came off pad only. He was of course wrong as it came off the finger as well.
 
It is not the umpires mistake that we picked Yuvraj and Dhoni in the team. I don't think Ponting should be blamed for that catch. He did what is best for his team and if anybody ever played cricket, you'll never know if you caught it perfectly or not while diving.
 
So, are some of us interpreting that Ponting had control of his body as he was diving to catch the ball - A controlled dive? Nonesense...

Bad losers?

As I recall India took the first test defeat very well.
 
There wouldn't have been all this fuss if they had even managed to draw I'm sure.

The ICB have far too much power and/or the ICC are a bunch of wimps. Or both. It seems that umpires are fair game thses days with two removed due to the ICC caving as soon as they are prsssured. There were a few bad calls but to sackBucknor like they have is disgraceful treatment for such a long term servant of the game. And charging Hogg for saying "bastard". Kinell.

The Indian team and a representative of the ICB were just on our news saying that both players deserve no more than a slap on the wrist implying that racial abuse and minor swearing are offences of the same magnitude.

The defence also seems to be that there was no racial abuse but it is never stated that the comment wasn't made. Surely they wouldn't be pathetic enough to try to say that "monkey" wasn't a racial taunt?

The Perth test should be interesting.
 
The monkey abuse Symonds gets from Indian fans is pathetic. I completely stopped supporting the Indian cricket team after the mumbai game.
 
The Daily Mail said:
Paul Hayward
ICC making a monkey out of the game of cricket now
20:51pm 8th January 2008

Here is the latest news from Down Under. A black cricketer claims he was called a 'monkey' so the authorities have dumped a black umpire to appease the team accused of harbouring a racist.

Out goes the West Indian Steve Bucknor, veteran of 120 Tests and five World Cup finals, and on goes India's tour of Australia after a match in Sydney so unsavoury you wouldn't touch it with kitchen tongs.

Today, Wisden readers, you are invited by the International Cricket Council to believe that Bucknor has been dropped from the forthcoming third Test solely because he made two whopping umpiring errors that favoured Australia, and not because they needed a convenient victim to stop India bailing out of the series.

A shudder must have run through every white coat, every match official in every sport, as Bucknor became the scapegoat yesterday of cricket's latest racial imbroglio, in which Australia's Andrew Symonds says Harbhajan Singh of India called him a 'monkey' during an especially venomous clash of the two superpowers.

Harbhajan's three-Test suspension is on hold pending an appeal but Bucknor lost his job within hours of the lighters being sparked beneath photos and effigies of him in Calcutta.

One black man endures a disgusting insult, allegedly, and another one gets the sack. How do you like that?

So now the panjandrums will doubtless find a way to make Harbhajan's suspension disappear, probably on the grounds that the slur was heard by neither umpire, but instead reported by the Australian captain Ricky Ponting to Mike Procter, the match referee.

Even if Harbhajan said it, there is no independent corroboration outside an Australia side who have been lambasted in their press for their 'arrogance'.

Ponting says: 'I was doing the right thing by the game.' But there is another context to a Test that deserves a simple headline: 'Petrol, match — whoof!'

Not only has Australia's Brad Hogg also been cited for allegedly abusing two India batsmen, but the Sydney Morning Herald's Peter Roebuck has written with astonishing vituperation of Ponting's supposedly discredited leadership.

Demanding that 'Punter' be sacked, Roebuck accuses him of turning 'a group of professional cricketers into a pack of wild dogs'.

So that's the background. What now? Well, we sit back and watch the authorities make the biggest of the allegations evaporate, while Billy Bowden and his crooked finger jock off Bucknor.

Bowden might have refused to step in, invoking the old warning from Republican Spain: 'If you tolerate this, then your children will be next.'

But sport's business ethic always wins in the end: a fact surely not lost on unruly players, who can smell the ICC's terror when it looks as if a major tour might be heading south.

In the interests of sanity, permit me to rewind to the original allegation and make the point that cricket's code of conduct on unacceptable abuse is at least trying to lay down some elementary principles on what players can and can't say to one another in the increasingly puerile subculture of sledging.

If Symonds and Ponting are making mischief, they should be thrown out of the Australia team for committing the ultimate slander.

But if Harbhajan said it, there is no moral equivalence between calling someone a 'monkey' and Merv Hughes chuntering to England's Robin Smith: 'Mate, if you just turn the bat over you'll find the instructions on the back.'

Or, for that matter, the Australia wicketkeeper Ian Healy's favourite imprecation to departing batsmen: 'Back to the nets, #@%!$.'

Or Allan Border saying to Angus Fraser: 'I've faced bigger, uglier bowlers than you mate, now **** off and bowl the next one.'

All these nuggets come from Simon Briggs' hilarious Stiff Upper Lips and Baggy Green Caps.

But you can wipe the smile off for the Symonds-Harbhajan case, for reasons that were amply apparent when thousands of Spain's fans monkey-chanted at England's black players during a Madrid friendly in 2004.

'Monkey' relegates the object to the animal kingdom and instantly evokes slave ships out of Africa, lynchings in America's deep south and the worst ramblings of white supremacists.

It dehumanises. It cannot be compared in any sense to a bowler telling a batsman he's rubbish, or Shane Warne teasing Paul Collingwood about his premature MBE.

You could publish the whole 10-volume history of Australian sledging and none of it would offer refuge to people willing to use ape analogies.

Without conclusive evidence, beyond Australian allegations, we may never know, of course, but Bucknor has already fallen prey to Indian power in the ICC and been sent packing.

A deeply radical suggestion from this end is that the players stop this mania for denigration and restore some manners, sportsmanship and dignity to the game they are so lucky to play.
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Great article.
 
It's right Umpires, referees and match officials be dropped for being off form or for having bad games.

No different to players being dropped.
 
"It is important to stress that Steve has not been replaced due to any representations made by any team or individuals," ICC chief executive Malcolm Speed claimed.

"The ICC remains the sole body responsible for the appointment of umpires and no team has the right to object to any appointment. The decision by the ICC to replace Steve for this match was made in the best interests of the game and the series."
 
He wouldn't have been sacked unless the ICB threatened to pull out unless he was. He was sacrificed to placate them.
 
That may be, but he deserved to be sacked. Awful performance. But I still think we've acted like sore losers. Amidst all this people have forgotten the main reason we lost the match was because we bottled it and couldn't bat out 2 sessions.
 
Wibble said:
He wouldn't have been sacked unless the ICB threatened to pull out unless he was. He was sacrificed to placate them.
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Could well be the case Wibbs - but the ICC deny that fact (face saving exercise?).

But as P Smith says, as much as I sympathise with Bucknor, he had a stinker and deserves to be dropped regardless of India's antics.
 
Wibble said:
There wouldn't have been all this fuss if they had even managed to draw I'm sure.

The ICB have far too much power and/or the ICC are a bunch of wimps. Or both. It seems that umpires are fair game thses days with two removed due to the ICC caving as soon as they are prsssured. There were a few bad calls but to sackBucknor like they have is disgraceful treatment for such a long term servant of the game. And charging Hogg for saying "bastard". Kinell.

The Indian team and a representative of the ICB were just on our news saying that both players deserve no more than a slap on the wrist implying that racial abuse and minor swearing are offences of the same magnitude.

The defence also seems to be that there was no racial abuse but it is never stated that the comment wasn't made. Surely they wouldn't be pathetic enough to try to say that "monkey" wasn't a racial taunt?

The Perth test should be interesting.
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Yes it was!!
 
He's been having stinkers for ages.They didn't need a fiasco like this to end his career.Should've dropped him from the 'Elite panel' long ago.Bunch of idiots.

And sacrificed??He showed that he was incapable of umpiring an international test match.How much more proof do you need to kick someone out of a series?
 
Wibble said:
It was given not out but given that he plainly had the ball under control it more than fair enough that he appealed. The umpires presumably ruled it not out on the basis that they didn't believe that his body was under control. If his appeal had been a problem the umpires would have reported him. Which they didn't.

It is only an issue because of the bleating of the Indian team about anything and everything now that they got the arse end of a couple of bad descisions and because one of their players was found guilty of racial abuse.

Typically the ICC have caved yet again like they almost always do when India or Sri Lanka are concerned.
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Not a couple of a bad decisions, more like 10. And that Ponting catch has at no point been brought up by the Indian team, it was just a point of discussion amongst fans. The only appeals the Indians have made have been for the removal of Bucknor (and to be honest I'm not happy that the ICC went back on their word after one day, plus it sets a rather dangerous precedent) and that an Indian player has been wrongly accused of racism. And they HAVE denied that Harbhajan made those comments. It's a matter of Procter taking one man's word over another. So when Sachin went for that hearing and said that Harbhajan did not say anything like that while Ponting said he did, Procter some how came to the conclusion that Ponting was telling the truth while Sachin was lying.
 
Good article about the Indian over reaction...

Some balance, please
True, India were sinned against in the Sydney Test, but they're no innocents, and the reaction of the media back home has been consummately over the top

Suresh Menon

January 9, 2008

If India's media are to be believed, the Indian players are angels, and anyone who thinks otherwise is an unpatriotic Gandhi-hater and should be condemned to watching Navjot Sidhu expressing his views on a dozen television channels.

By hauling up a player for a racial slur (just as all who drink are not alcoholics, all who use racially charged words are not racists), the match referee has apparently called into question our manhood, nationhood, honour, Gandhian way of life, support for Nelson Mandela in the days of apartheid, and the sacrifices made by our martyrs.

Yes, we lost a Test. Yes, the umpiring was horrendous. Yes, the charges against Harbhajan Singh might not hold up in a court of law. But do we have to go overboard like this? One television channel dragged out Harbhajan's mother, that expert on racial slurs and leg-before appeals, to share her thoughts with us.

How do we drop so quickly into us-and-them mode? The media paranoia feeds itself. If one channel demands an apology from Australia, another displays greater patriotism by asking for the Test result to be nullified. Pundits push themselves to the head of a gathering trend. Or, if they are Sidhu, suggest that Indian bowlers should kick the umpires as they approach the wicket to bowl. If this is what a Test player feels, what of the regular effigy-burners and professional naysayers?

That mythical creature, the Average Man, wants the team to return home, we are told. Politicians speak for the Man in the Street (who is there because politicians, in their rush to defend the millionaires abroad, have omitted to build a house for him).

"This is not about cricket," Sidhu thunders, "This is about national honour." The President-elect of the ICC, Sharad Pawar, is upset. This is not something trivial like farmers committing suicide, which he can ignore in his other avatar as the Minister of Agriculture. This is the real thing. The BCCI runs the ICC and the media run the BCCI.

Brinkmanship is our national sport. The way India treats the ICC is no different from the manner in which the "veto powers", England and Australia, did in their heyday. When the cycle turns and the power base shifts, we will have at least nine countries waiting to get at us for all that we are doing to them now.

Pawar has the bogey of Jagmohan Dalmiya on his shoulder. Didn't that worthy threaten to split the cricket world more than once? Didn't he save India's honour, nationhood, manhood and all other hoods by annulling the result of a match in South Africa a few years ago? How can Pawar go one better? Can he annul Australia's nationhood?

The board could not have asked for a better chance to show its patriotism. The players could not have asked for a bigger distraction from their own pathetic display in the second innings at Sydney. Two batsmen got poor decisions. What about the others? Is batting through two sessions to save a Test beyond the ability of the greatest batting line-up in the world? As for the board, the criticism about pushing the players into Tests in Australia without adequate time to acclimatise themselves is now residing under a carpet somewhere.

It is all so convenient.

But what of the incidents? We have been mixing apples and oranges. The boorish behaviour of Ricky Ponting and his men is independent of the umpiring boo-boos, which have nothing to do with what Harbhajan Singh said to Andrew Symonds. By bundling it all together, and then garnishing the mix with almost plausible quotes and Peter Roebuck's unusually over-the-top reaction, the Indian media have taken breast-beating to new levels.

A clever lawyer can pick on anything Symonds said and give it a racial twist. Even honourable cusswords like "bastard" and "son of a bitch" can be seen as insulting the parental uncertainty or animal origins of all non-whites. Logicians call this reductio ad absurdum - stretching a proposition to its logical absurdity. But logic has been a casualty in this fracas.

Let's get a sense of balance. No Indian writing or broadcasting from Sydney mentioned that replays showed Sachin Tendulkar was out leg-before when he was in the twenties. He added roughly the same number of runs that Symonds did after being reprieved when he was first out.

Brinkmanship is our national sport. The way India treats the ICC is no different from the manner in which the "veto powers", England and Australia, did in their heyday. When the cycle turns and the power base shifts, we will have at least nine countries waiting to get at us for all that we are doing to them now

Ponting's integrity may be in question after he claimed a catch off Mahendra Singh Dhoni though the ball touched the ground. Just as you can't be a little pregnant, you can't be a little upright. Integrity is indivisible. But if the two captains had an agreement regarding catches close to the wicket, then Mark Benson was right in turning to Ponting when Sourav Ganguly was caught. After all, Steve Bucknor was further away from the action.

Indians are not innocents. The average number of Tests played by the Sydney XI is 65. That's enough time to learn all the tricks. Ishant Sharma, in his third Test, showed you don't need to have played 65. His ridiculous time-wasting tactic of walking out with two right gloves would have embarrassed a schoolboy.

For a team that is trailing 0-2 in a Test series, India are on top Down Under. This is remarkable. It is the result of a combination of the BCCI's financial arrogance and media-inspired jingoism. This is dangerous, however exciting and ballsy it might be for an Indian. For it is this combination that makes huge headlines of incidents that might otherwise be handled with delicacy and tact. Already the ICC has replaced Bucknor for the Perth Test (question: if India had long-standing disputes with him, why didn't the board object at the start of the tour?). This may be good Page Ranking, but it is a bad precedent to set.

Likewise with the Harbhajan case. The ICC can neither revoke the ban nor endorse it without getting into a bigger mess. The Indian media are probably getting ready to speak to Malcolm Speed's relatives even as you read this.
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The England fans are great, the Aussie fans act like cnuts and the AS fans don't exist.
 
Dear god...I don't know why she irritates me so much mehro, but she does.And it's real world banging your head against the wall irritation.Get her out of the thread!!!
 
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