Talk:Bowling (cricket)

Underarm bowling - lady in a dress
Re underarm bowling. I believe the "lady in a dress" story is folklore. Early underarm bowling was not with a straight arm, but a push from under the armpit - I think the law said that the bowling hand may not be raised above shoulder height. To obtain better velocity bowlers started using the "round arm" method, similar to a standing discus throw but delivered from a run. This was the delivery that was banned initially. It was later accepted, and then the law was later amended so the arm/hand could be raised above the shoulder allowing the bowler more accuracy. From my memory of my book of bowlers ("100 Greatest Bowlers" by Phillipe Edmondes, which I am not going to dig out), WG Grace was a round arm bowler at the start of his career. PS this book also states that the first bowler to master swing was an American, Bart King, who applied the principles of "curving" a baseball to that of a cricket ball. This may be too arcane for inclusion in the main piece, but I thought it worth mentioning.LessHeard vanU 20:52, 27 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I believe there are references for the "lady in a dress" story, although a name would be good! We have an article on Bart King, btw.  Would Phillipe Edmondes be England bowler Phil Edmonds?  -- ALoan (Talk) 21:44, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

I want to know about that...how the ball speed thrown by a bowler is sensed? please send me the full detail and related website...To my mail ID:stalinkumarg@yahoo.co.in

- I've edited the piece about the woman in a dress, i feel that it is now more accurate. Does anyone else feel that this whole page is a bit lame? It's more the history of cricket? With little modern day bowling information - eg Fast bowling - Shoaib and Bret Lee. The ball of the century etc? Any thoughts? (Googly75 (talk) 22:48, 16 September 2009 (UTC)).

Adding Image
I'm relatively new to cricket, so am not sure. Is this picture a good representation of bowling action? It is Bart King, and if it is decent, I'd like to add it to the article.-- Eva  b  d  02:50, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
 * As long as the copyright is expired, or is otherwise freely available. That is indeed Bart King of the Philadephians, the first man to control the swing of a cricket ball and a forgotten giant of the game, and is the picture used in the Phil Edmonds book mentioned above. LessHeard vanU 21:29, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

history section..
The entire history section seems to be copied verbatim from here. It would be nice to have another reference for most of this 'information'. 137.82.175.12 (talk) 19:45, 22 July 2010 (UTC)


 * As an utter newbie to the sport I agree - the history section is too broad. It should be focused on the history of bowling not the whole game to avoid confusion.
 * What I came looking for, and did not find in the article, is any mention of how the condition of the pitch can be used to affect the flight of the ball. This use of terrain was mentioned several time by the commentators for the 2009 Test series and was to me at least an intriguing aspect of the game I had not considered.  This info is under Cricket_pitch

Pgilliland (talk) 18:07, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Pacers - quicks
Can someone please clarify this in the intro "pacers being the quicks". As someone who is an absolute newbie to cricket, I have no idea what "quicks" are. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.205.88.242 (talk) 15:06, 3 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Reworded. To be blunt, the previous wording was just bullshit. New version is still not great, but at least it should be an improvement. wjemather bigissue 15:42, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Bowler (cricket)
After the discussion at the cricket WikiProject, I have redirected the above article here to avoid duplication of material. Little was salavageable from this version in my opinion, but the material I added is here. If someone thinks there's material in the other article's history which would be useful here they are of course welcome to add it. For future reference, the history of that article is relevant to the history of this one. Nev1 (talk) 12:54, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Goals of bowling
''Getting batsmen out is the primary goal because once out a batsman can no longer bat in the same innings, so the potential for scoring more runs is gone. Actually preventing the scoring of a run at any point is relatively unimportant, and bowlers will often deliberately bowl so as to make it easier for batsmen to score runs, in order to build overconfidence, tempt them into a miscalculated shot, and thus get them out. Conversely, some bowlers can and will bowl in order to stifle the scoring of runs. This can cause the person batting to become frustrated and opt to play a more aggressive or less competent stroke to break the patch of non-scoring, subsequently increasing his or her chances of getting out. This style is more prominent in one-day cricket where run getting comes at more of a premium. This contrasts with baseball, in which the primary goal of pitching is to prevent the other team from scoring runs. This is reflected in the difference in terminology of attack and defence between the sports. In baseball, pitching is considered the defensive role, whereas in cricket bowling is primarily an offensive role and is referred to as the attack or charge''

This is inaccurate, bordering on nonsensical. The primary aim of bowling always has been and always will be to minimise the amount of runs the opposition score in their completed innings. The primary method of achieving this aim is to dismiss the opposition batsmen as qucikly and economically of possible of course, but this is just a means to an end - the ultimate goal is to keep their final tally as low as possible. So their is no contract with baseball pitching whatsoever - both attempt to achieve the same thing (minimise runs) with the same method (getting wickets/outs).

The two main methods employed for getting wickets are either a) simply attempt to bowl such an unplayable delivery that it cannot be safely negogiated even in defence, or b) stifle the batsman's ability to score runs, in order to tempt him into a rash shot that leads to his dismissal. The method of "deliberately allowing the batsman to score runs in order to build overconfidence" (as described in the article) does not exist, such an idea would be cricketing suicide.

The bowling attack is also never called "the charge".

Py0alb (talk) 15:19, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Source material
--Dweller (talk) 22:18, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

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Maintenance tags
I have reinstated the "more citations needed" template (again), since the majority of the content in this article remains without citations. Either citations should be added or unreferenced content removed before removing this tag. Best. wjematherplease leave a message... 09:29, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
 * It's already got 40 references and you've done nothing to actually do anything about the tag. If you think places need citations then mark them specifically instead of just keeping a pointless, stupid looking tag back. EVERY article on wikipedia can use more citations/references, so adding a tag in this fashion is simply a waste of time. Macktheknifeau (talk) 10:47, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Hibiscus
Hubris Gogh g ssh Gabi the bub. huvis, h 49.15.220.7 (talk) 13:17, 14 April 2024 (UTC)