By contrast, underhand free throw shooting is legal in the NBA and it is very effective. But it is seen as unmasculine rather than cheating. Players would apparently rather lose than be seen doing it.
(Though as a non-American, I am indeed mystified why the kneel is legal and not regarded as delay of game!)
They’re considered down when their knee touches the ground while in possession of the ball (“possession” having a specific meaning, with regard to the rules). Again, this is the same as if they had been tackled. The only difference is no one forced them to the ground.
Taking a knee is not something that would normally be considered a good thing since you lose yards and a down.
As for why it’s not a delay of game, that’s likely because it does not delay the game any more than any normal play would. It probably runs down less time on the clock than if they played normally, but of course playing normally is riskier which why they take a knee. The idea is to simply run down the clock as much as possible without risking a turnover and then leaving the other team with too little time to score.
If the rules could be changed to disincentivize taking a knee I think that would be more interesting, but I’m not sure how you do that. It’s also safer in an already dangerous sport.
Each team has 4 attempts to move the ball forward 10 yards, where if the ball moves >= 10 yards they get a fresh set of 4 attempts. These are called "downs".
If the team has any downs left when they kneel then they can maintain possession of the ball and can thus run out the clock. Most (all?) of the time the teams end the game even if there is time left on the clock.
Note that either team can call a timeout pre-snap which freezes the game clock. Certain plays also result in the game clock freezing between plays. There is also a 2-minute warning at the end of the 2nd/4th quarter that also freezes the game clock.
IMO clock management adds a very interesting strategic layer to NFL football.
Passing the ball around the backfield is a risky tactic in association football (which similarly banned the goalkeeper just picking up backpasses because it was too easy to waste time). 'Taking the ball to the corner' is a much lower risk option, but it is possible to win the ball back and quickly go up the other end and score with good play. Deliberate time wasting between plays is a yellow card offence (even though the referee could simply add the time on, it's disliked)
Plus cricket nominally has more of a sportmanship culture than most sports. "Mankading" (the practice of a bowler deciding to strike the wicket near to him instead of bowling because the runner from the other end has strayed too far[1]) is technically legal and would be considered smart play in many sports - especially since it's an action performed to stop opponents gaining a small advantage over you - but is regarded as shameful in cricket, at least not unless you've been gentlemanly enough to warn the runner at your end to stop straying forward each time the ball is bowled. Indeed it's so controversial Wikipedia maintains a 'list of incidents' page, starting with poor Vinoo Mankad who probably thought he was just being smart and didn't realise his surname would become synonymous with cheating https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mankading_incidents_in...
[1]baseball fans: roughly the equivalent of a pitcher deciding in mid-pitch to throw the ball to a base to stop someone stealing bases, except the base in question is right next to him.
They didn't think they needed a rule.
This was what made me certain they were wrong--the commentary of their own older brother, who's hugely respected:
> As the ball was being bowled, Ian Chappell (elder brother of Greg and Trevor, and a former Australian captain), who was commentating on the match, was heard to call out "No, Greg, no, you can't do that"[10] in an instinctive reaction to the incident, and he remained critical in a later newspaper article on the incident.[11]
I said this in another comment and it seems relevant: "I know they're different, but in baseball the pitch is part of the game. Not being able to make good use of a pitch is a problem for the hitter, not the pitcher."
I think my baseballed mind simply cannot warp itself to your gentlemanly ways lol
(Think there's also a general prejudice against underarm play in professional sport as it's for kids who can't throw properly and feels like mockery. Underarm serves in tennis are frowned upon, even though an alert opponent has plenty of chance of scoring a point from them)
The sporting thing to do is to give the batsman a chance to score but to defeat him using skill. There is no skill in bowling and underarm ball, the batsmen is not being defeated by skill.
That said, never did I imagine that cricket would interest the HN audience.
Now that I think of it telling a baseball pitcher that he could throw a pitch, but not too difficult of one at certain times is hilarious.
Sadly, a lot of people live their entire lives this way. Ignoring courtesy, norms, ethics, grace, walking right up to the very edge of the law and then smugly declaring “ha ha there is no rule saying I can’t do this!!” Like the annoying little brother who waves his hand a millimeter from your face saying “I’m not touching you! I’m not touching you!”
The fact that everything has to be written down or some people will exploit and take advantage is a human failing, not a feature.
(I'm of course not suggesting this was the Chappells' direct motive, or even that this incident realistically could have uncovered hidden depths in the game of cricket. But as a general philosophy I think 'playing to win' has some merit, even from a perspective that ultimately cares about the health of the game and not just about winning as a terminal goal.)
You might notice the law changes section in that article, that amongst other things you can't have loads of fielders behind square on leg side now.
I would also suggest it is not considered unsportsmanlike to bowl short and aim for the head any more, but rather something people look foster's forward to seeing.
For those who might not want to go through the article:
> ...designed to combat the extraordinary batting skill of Australia's leading batsman, Don Bradman... aimed at the body of the batsman in the expectation that when he defended himself with his bat, a resulting deflection could be caught by one of several fielders deliberately placed nearby on the leg side. At the time, no helmets or other upper-body protective gear was worn, and critics of the tactic considered it intimidating, and physically threatening in a game traditionally supposed to uphold conventions of sportsmanship.
Underarm bowling was still allowed when this incident occurred and was therefore legal, just considered very unsportsmanlike and outside the spirit of the game.
Has probably been forgotten by Australia and everywhere else though.
Now Americans can finally know how Europeans feel when watching baseball
A cricket pitch is a long strip. Bowler bowls from one end, batter strikes the bowl from the other. Scoring is done by running from one end of that strip to the other (the unit of scoring is literally called a run). Six legal bowls make an over.
There are two batters in play at each point in time, one at each end of the pitch, and they both must run towards the other end of the pitch (therefore swapping places) to score.
Bruce Edgar had scored 102 runs, was not out (in the same sense as baseball — meaning he was still in play), but, because they either didn’t manage to score any runs, or scored twos, he spent the whole over on the non-striking side of the pitch.
I have tried it many times and failed.
Personally, playing a few games of cricket is the best way to learn the rules of the game.
As an example, in your explanation ( which is good to this lifelong cricket fan from India) your first sentence starts "A cricket pitch..." And when a baseball fan reads it he is probably asking "What is a pitch?"
(Bruce Edgar), who was (on (102 not out)), was stuck at (the (non-striker's end)) the entire (over).
• An “over” consists of six opportunities to hit the ball and score “runs”. (A “run” is the basic unit of scoring.)
• "102 not out" indicates how many runs the player had personally contributed to the team's score. The number is large enough to suggest that this was the player who was playing particularly well in that match.
So the sentence is saying that the player who could be expected to make good use of whichever of those six opportunities he got, did not get any of them.
I think as with most cases of unfamiliar jargon, the sentence can be confusing not because of unusual words but because of everyday words being used with technical meanings ("not out", "end", "over").
Everyone not from one Uk, India... maybe Australia you mean?