Can you tell your left from your right? Part V of V

The Chinaman

So, we come to the end of our journey with the ball that inspired it. And this final article throws up a number of questions. What is a 'Chinaman'? Who bowls it? Why are are you telling me this?

(A Chinaman isn't this, but that is very funny, and cricket related, so you should take a look.)

'Puss' Achong was a West Indian bowler of Chinese extraction whose unremarkable career would have passed without much comment, were it not for the fact that one day he threw in an unexpected delivery to English batsman (and here I confess to resorting to Wikipedia) Walter Robins. Robins was expecting SLA (which was Achong's stock delivery) but Achong (who must have been practised this sly delivery in the nets) bowled one out of the back of his hand, in the same manner as a leg spin bowler. Since he was a left-arm bowler, the ball turned in the opposite direction to the leg break, clean bowling a flummoxed Robins. Legend suggests that looking back at his shattered stumps he uttered the immortal phrase, "Fancy being out to a bloody Chinaman!" And the sobriquet stuck.

And in essence, that's it. The Chinaman is the mirror image of the leg break. It's left arm wrist spin and it turns from off to leg, rather than leg to off (like a conventional leg break).

So who bowls it? Well, the answer is, not many people. Like Achong, Johnny Wardle (yet another brilliant Yorkshire bowler) was an SLA who opted to throw in the occasional Chinaman to bewitch his opponent. But Wardle's Test career was nothing like Achong's. Indeed, it was nothing short of brilliant. It is still a mystery to me how such a talented bowler could only have played only 28 Tests (even he was up against Laker and Lock for a spot in the team) but in those 28 he took 102 wickets at an average of only 20.39 runs per wicket. That's better than Laker, Murali, Warne and, pretty much, everyone. Wardle has a decent claim to being the best post-war spinner though SLA (and yet another Yorkshireman!) Bobby Peel's 101 wickets at 16.98 will take some beating!

In more recent times, Paul Adams (whose bowling action has been likened to a 'frog in a blender') and Brad Hogg have had modest success bowling Chinaman. (Here's are great video of Hogg bowling, which includes 'conventional' Chinaman, more than one wrong 'un (googly - note how the batsmen often fail to spot, or 'pick' the googly) and flipper). Brilliant one day batsman Michael Bevan was known to toss in the occasional over of Chinaman (men?).

Why so few? Well, like leg spin, Chinaman is hard to master. Of course, It's useful to have a googly (and despite unpopular misconception, a Chinaman's googly is called just that - a 'googly'. The Chinaman is the stock ball - the mirror image of a leg break) but the disadvantage of a stock ball that breaks towards the (right handed) batsman appears to have led the majority of left-arm spinners to opt for orthodox SLA, rather than wrist spin.

I can think of one other Chinaman bowler. And fittingly for the last word in this article and this entire series, he was the greatest cricket player of all time. Originally picked primarily as an SLA bowler, he developed into one of the greatest batsmen the world had ever seen, a top notch fielder, a left arm fast bowler of prodigious talent, and he developed a Chinaman as well. He was the great Sir Garry Sobers, and as Garry Sobers cannot be surpassed as a cricketer, it is here that we end this series.

The great British Novella

So, I dug out the old notebooks. "There's bound to be something there the public want", I though to myself, "Probably enough for a novella or maybe even a collection of witty short stories".

Alas, no. It took my some time to decipher the contents, as my handwriting has, over the last decade or so, began to resemble something that pre-dates Linear A but I appear to have unearthed the following

• A 'to-do' list from when I worked at the University of Leeds. I note th
  at most of the things to-do were not crossed out, suggesting that they in fact weren't
• A short PERL script called "Sub random_link"
• A long list of bands and singles. Not sure what the purpose of this was. Probably bored in a lecture
• A large number of unfinished letters, most of which were due to be transcribed to email but never made it
• A sudoku
• Some fantasy cricket teams (what sort of person creates these, and what sort of person admits to this on his own blog?)
• Matt black finish on cell lids
• Details of the time and location of appointments from the horrible, horrible time when I was flat-hunting in London and had to meet with people who then judged whether they wanted to live with me or not

Also an airship

and a house

Paranoia

Thanks to htfb for drawing our attention to the Tinfoil Hat Song.

What makes a man?

I am a rational being. I have 9 GCSEs, 3 A Levels (4 if you count 'General Studies'), 2 degrees and a wealth of experience, both theoretical and practical. I can tile a roof, cut a slate, align a laser, help to draft vague, non-committal statements on climate change[1], and patronise policy officials who don't understand the difference between kiloWatts and kiloWatt Hours.

So why, when I extract my headphones from my pocket, pannier or rucksack, and they are all twisted up, do I randomly pull, jerk and twist the cables, desperately trying to free the trapped ends? I noticed that, after about 2 minutes of doing this, if I patiently sat down and examined the problem at hand, it was trivial to calmly track the knot back to its source and undo it. A pigeon could have done it in 30 seconds.

Why am I irrational? Is everyone irrational?

[1] I didn't write para 23, but it's exactly the sort of thing I spent 2 years doing, and I doubtless commented on it at some point - and yes, it's meaningless

The old

For reference, my old journal lives (2003 - 2006) lives at www.iamsilk.com/journal.htm

A new year, a new blog, same old rubbish

Hello

I am going to use blogger for a while, to see if I like it. If I don't, the experiment can be abandoned.

Reasons (for me) to use blogger

• It has a label function, so posts can be categorised by subject, as well as date. This was one of the reasons I designed my own blog script, rather than using an existing one.
• I can post from anywhere, using the web. A clear advantage over iamsilk.com
• Spell check!
• Most importantly of all, it will allow you to make comments. So please do.
  

I think they are reasons enough. So long as I don't lose any functionality, I can live with the slightly different look and feel.

Happy New Year