We are a Cricket Crazy Nation ~ Modern day game is not played on the stadium alone, not even a mind-game alone, there are so many technological tools that depicts beautiful infographics and more importantly analyses, each player’s style, trying to pop out their strength / weakness and more .. ..here is a wagon wheel ~ that of Rohit Sharma and can you predict the age of the technology or hazard a guess on when it was used first ?
For every player making some significant score we see :Wagon-wheel depiction.A wagonwheel in common parlance would mean :
1. The wheel of a
wagon, including railway wagons.
2. (cricket) A
graphical representation of the cricket field, with lines showing the
trajectories of the scoring balls hit by a batsman; singles, fours and sixes
are shown in different colours.
A
Wagon wheel is also called a Batting
shot placement. This is a graphic that represents the top view of a cricket
field. Lines are drawn from the batsman’s position towards the field that
portrays the path of the balls hit by the batsman. It shows the runs made in
1s, 2s, 3s, 4s & 6s.It has dot ball
option too. When batsman is out, it can depict the type of out like catch, stump etc.Understand that BCCI and TNCA have gone
technical years ago, with scorers recording them on an application in the
tablet – the scorer details what happened to a particular delivery – everything
else – of the player info. Is available in the database, which gets updated
realtime.
New Zealand
all-rounder James Neesham made his last
international appearance in June 2017, in a Champions Trophy match against
Bangladesh. Neesham never really made it
to the international side in a long time, until this present ODI series against
Srilanka.The first ODI of the year 2019 brought a
pocket full of surprises. Jimmy Neesham went berserk at the Bay Oval, Mount
Maunganui today and hit five sixes in one over, from Sri Lankan seamer Thisara
Perera.He walked out to bat when New Zealand
were in a pretty formidable position at 5 down for 316. It was the end of the
47th over when Henry Nicholls returned to the pavilion. With only three overs
remaining from there, a maximum total of 350 was predicted for the Kiwis. But
new at the crease, Neesham had some other plans.
In Nov 2014,
against hapless Lankans, Rohit Sharma amassed 45 more runs than any ODI
batsman had ever managed in an innings, finishing on 264 from 173 balls when he
was finally caught off the last ball of the innings.Rohit's innings was so outrageous that the
first 100 runs, which were hit at a run-a-ball, seem achingly humdrum in
comparison to the 164 that followed. There were many incredible shots, from among
his 33 fours and nine sixes, but the most gobsmacking was the six off
Kulasekara at the end of the 48th over, when he walked across to off stump,
took a half volley from about a foot and half away from him and flicked it high
over the midwicket boundary. It was the kind of shot, and innings, that seemed
in open defiance of physics. The highest individual score had progressed – for
sometime it was Glen Turner’s 171 made in 1st WC; then Kapil Dev made 175 n.o
in 1983 WC; Richards made 189; Saeed Anwar 194 at Chepauk….. Sachin first breached 200; Sehwag
upstaged him……….. now it is 264 from the boy who already has a double ton in
ODI against Aussies and added up another against Lankans in Dec 2017.
Now this
is no post on double hundreds in ODI or on sixers hit ~ but on techno tool – ‘wagon
wheel’ rather its introduction.Web search
led to an interesting article on a man called Bill Ferguson.
They called him Mr
Cricket more than 60 years before Mike Hussey was born. On umpteen cricket
tours from 1905 to 1954, scorer and baggage master Bill Ferguson,
affectionately known as "Fergie", carted luggage for such flannelled
gods as Victor Trumper, Don Bradman, Bill O'Reilly, Wally Hammond and Jack
Cheetham.His
greatest claim to fame, though, was that of having created cricket's wagon
wheel. During lulls in play, as a creative aside to his main function of
recording the score, Fergie produced the first official wagon wheel a hundred
years ago. His wagon wheels were drawn in pencil, or in ink, using an
ancient dipped nib with meticulous, loving care, neat as a pin - or as Bill
Lawry would say, "clean as a whistle."
In
May 1912, Fergie charted Jack Hobbs' shots in his 81 for Surrey versus
Australia at Kennington Oval. Hobbs hit one six, 13 fours, two threes, three
twos and 11 singles. Over the years Fergie recorded many great and famous
innings, including Bradman's 334 for Australia against England in Leeds in 1934
(46 fours, six threes, 26 twos and 80 singles), Wally Hammond's 336 in 318
minutes for England against New Zealand in Auckland in April, 1933, and injured
New Zealander Bert Sutcliffe's unconquered 80 against South Africa in
Johannesburg in December 1953.
Opposing
bowlers and captains used to try to commandeer Fergie's charts but he fiercely
stood his ground: they were his private property. Once, before the Kaiser
ruined cricket for four years, a journalist tried to patent Fergie's charts,
and their inventor contemplated legal action.
Ferguson hailed from Sydney. At the age of 24 this slim, frail man
worked for the Sydney Directory, filing names of householders, streets and
districts - an occupation he called the "most monotonous task known to
man".The lunch break was his dream
time. He would stroll down to the waterfront and gaze longingly at the ships
from many nations. He fantasised about distant exotic places but was tied to
the dreaded card index drill. How could he realize his dream to travel?
In
the early summer of 1904 the answer came swiftly, like a Tibby Cotter yorker.
The Australians were due to sail for England in January, 1905, the Ashes tour.
They would need a scorer. Fergie reasoned that a formal application might be
lost among the many such a plum job evoked. Even if it reached the desk of tour
manager Frank Laver, Fergie's chances were zero. He had never been a scorer in
his life. He decided to put his future
in the hands of the future Test captain Monty Noble, a leading Sydney dentist,
by expressing his willingness to have every tooth in his head filled, capped,
polished or extracted if it meant the chance to talk to Noble about the Ashes
tour job. No extractions were necessary, but Fergie bought enough gold fillings
to last a lifetime. The pair struck up a friendship. Fergie was subtle in his
approach to the subject of cricket and then the tour. Noble was impressed with
his patient's passion and earmarked the little clerk for great things. Fergie
was introduced to two of the game's heroes, Trumper and Laver. He sensed a real
chance of an England trip, but when the team duly left Australia, alas, he
missed the boat.
Then
a letter arrived from Laver. Dated February 3, 1905, Laver wrote that it was
his honor to inform Fergie that he had been appointed to the job at a salary
of "£2 a week and to pay your train fare to the various grounds upon which
we play". Fergie paid his own fare to England: £17 one way. For a while he
had been hoarding half-crowns, shillings and sixpences, and by the time the
chance presented itself, he had amassed a monumental £25 - he wasn't quite a
millionaire, but he felt like one. He immediately set off for the offices of the
White Star shipping company in Sydney and booked a one-way ticket to England on
the good ship Suevic. In his book, Mr Cricket, Fergie notes that "England
was a very sedate country in those days. Manners, etiquette and breeding were
the paramount virtues, and, wanting to be taken for a gentleman of distinction,
our manager, Mr Frank Laver, followed the English fashion of the day by
appearing frequently in top hat and frock coat.