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The Ashes

A couple of weeks ago, User:Pricejb did a major rewrite of the opening of this high profile featured article. I personally prefer the old intro but won't change it if others prefer the new one. Could you comment here. -- I@n 14:36, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

I have removed one paragraph in the intro that was POV. Otherwise I think the intro is okay, but I hope someone can expand the whole article which at present has nothing at all about some of the great series that took place in the distant past. The article as it stands is unrepresentative of the history and scope of the subject. --BlackJack | talk page 15:02, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
I much prefer the old lead - the numbered paragraphs look wrong to me.
On expanding, this article is already pretty big, and I think it does a decent job of presenting the sweep of Ashes history. I am sure that more could be written about the "distant past", to give the article a bit more balance, but it is not entirely unreasonable to give more emphasis to more recent matches. We already have List of Ashes series, which links to the subpage for each series - most are pretty stubby, but surely that is where extra detail should be given.
Regarding the allegedly POV paragraph, I am surprised that anyone would argue with the contention that the Bodyline tour in 1932-3, the Invincibles in 1948, and Botham in 1981 are the amongst the best-known and most notorious (that is, notable) series. I am not convinced that 1989 and 2005 are in the same category, although each has its claim to fame. The 2005 series looms a bit large to be able to put it in context. Anyway, perhaps BlackJack can suggest equally notable series that should be included in the list? -- ALoan (Talk) 16:56, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
I'm not Blackjack, but 1902 would be a candidate. England and Australia have rarely both been strong at the same time, but here for once they were. In theory England were the stronger, but Australia won the series. Australia won the Fourth Test by 3 runs and England won the Fifth (Jessop's match) by one wicket. These are two of the most famous Tests of all time.

JH 17:21, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Everyone agrees about the fame/infamy of the Bodyline series and the outstanding quality of the Invincibles series. The forgotten 1902 series is indeed the one that should be highlighted and so should 1894/95. What appals myself and many other cricket supporters is the predictable inclusion of Botham at the expense of all else. For every person who says "Botham's Ashes" there are ten more who say "Brearley's Ashes" and a hundred more who will tell you that the two teams in 1981 were mediocre.

And this is where JH hits the nail on the head. Before any Ashes series is described as notable it should pass the minimum qualification of two strong teams who were both capable of taking on the best of the rest. In 1981, neither of them could begin to compete against West Indies: though India and New Zealand both could. But then New Zealand had Richard Hadlee: now he was a great all-rounder. 2005 was the first time since 1972 that England and Australia have both been world-class teams. Australia was a post-Packer rabble for a decade after 1977 until Mark Taylor and Steve Waugh arrived. England has only recently arrested a near-terminal decline that began with Denness and reached rock-bottom under Atherton.

There are numerous Ashes series from 1882 to 1972 that should be described as notable. 1926 and 1953 were both great England victories against powerful opponents. 1930 was notable for Australia with Bradman the difference between two very strong teams. And so on. --BlackJack | talk page 06:29, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Team, etc

Is there a primer on the meaning of Team, Squad, Side, Roster, etc? --whatever terms people use for whatever they are.

Is there a general term such as Club for the organizer of a team (whatever its called?

Captain: is there some stable meaning since 1744, perhaps always meaning a team member whose role is distinct from organizing the team?

Game, Match, Event, Competition, Tour

Jack, These are examples of terms that seem to me poorly handled by a glossary. Maybe that is because they are ordinary language words used by those who follow many team sports, resisting development of specialized use by the particular sport. For example, squad has certain connotations in northeastern England, common among E-speakers in that region regarding many or all sports and also cooperation by people in business and the military. Unless internationally agreed laws of cricket adopt some technical meaning of the word, there will be no meaning common among people speaking about cricket. (That is a made up example.) wallowing in abstraction, P64 20:43, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Not surprised you're confused! Several of these terms are interchangeable. People talk about a club when they mean a team and about a side when they mean a club and a team when they mean a squad.
Captain (or "skipper") is the "team leader", so to speak, but note he is not necessarily the best player, especially in the days of Gentlemen and Players. Classic example is Yorkshire in the 1920s who always gave the captaincy to some amateur gentleman of, presumably, 2nd XI standard. In reality, the team was captained by the great Wilfred Rhodes, a very dry and laconic character indeed who has been described as "the ultimate professional". There is one story of how Major Lupton, the nominal skipper, started padding up after a wicket fell. Emmott Robinson, the second senior professional, said to him: "No need to pad up, Major. Wilfred's declaring at t'end o' t'over." When Percy Chapman captained England in 1926 and won the Ashes, Wilfred said of him: "He wor all right wor Mister Chapman; he allus did what me an' Jack (i.e., Hobbs) told him to do."
We tend not to use event or competition. A game and a match are the same thing, but "Test Match" is an understood term while we don't say "Test Game"! By contrast we do say first-class game and first-class match! "The game" is also used to mean "the sport". We talk of a series meaning a test series or a LOI series. A tour is a set of matches including internationals played in another country by a visiting team/squad/side!!! --BlackJack | talk page 08:12, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
The captain is more than just a convention though — he has certain defined responsibilities in the Laws. Stephen Turner (Talk) 08:56, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
By the way, some of these terms (squad, side, match) are little used regarding team sports in in American English and {game, match} have special meanings in lawn tennis, in the laws. I have gathered them partly by foraging here at Wikipedia.
Do team, squad, and side all usually refer to the eleven? Or do some mean eleven and others mean all the players affiliated with a club from whom an eleven must be selected? (In America, across all team sports I think, "roster" unambiguously means the larger group, where "team" is ambiguous in size even where it clearly means a group of people rather than a club.)
In golf, tennis, and bridge (card game) --Ryder Cup, Wightman Cup, Bermuda Bowl?-- a "captain" may be a nonplayer who assembles a team or selects who will play when or what position. This tends to be a past-prime but once exceptional player. As far as I know, that assembler/spokesmen is called a "captain" rather than "coach" or "manager" for competitions where the players are not employees and may be volunteers(?) representing country or continent as volunteers.
I am taking up a lot of space here. If you folks wish, I will move much of this out to my User Talk. I will ask for permission to quote particular contributions.
(Jack, I am working on team sports history before 1880, despite myself.) --P64 20:09, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Squad refers to what you call a roster. Or for a Test match, it would be 12 or 13 players that were selected a few days before, from whom the final 11 would be selected on the day. The captain must be one of the 11 players, according to Law 1.1. Stephen Turner (Talk) 22:56, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Infoboxes again...

This may have been mentioned before, and if so apologies, but it's just struck me that older domestic-only players get a much better Infobox than newer ones, since {{Infobox Old Cricketer}} contains considerably more information than {{Infobox Cricketer (Career)}} - name, country, batting/bowling styles and first/last appearances are all in the former but not the latter. The "Career" Infobox is good as a secondary box (eg Graeme Hick) but rather less satisfactory as a primary one.

I'm aware of the recent discussion regarding parser functions etc, but I'm afraid it's a bit above my head, and I worry slightly about making filling in Infoboxes any more technical than it has to be. That being so, I've knocked together {{Infobox Recent cricketer}}, which is based on {{Infobox Historic cricketer}} but with FC and List A columns replacing Test and FC; I think this box could be more useful for players with a significant domestic career but no international matches. "Debut" and "Last appearance" apply to the combination of FC and List A games - ie, the first and last "top-line" games the cricketer played.

I've used this new box experimentally for Ravinder Senghera. Any thoughts would be very welcome. Loganberry (Talk) 14:12, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

What is a player has played many domestic matches and two ODIs? Should international matches gain the right to come above the domestic matches? Another question to be asked in such a case, would we be having two complete infoboxes, or should be remove the redundant double data such as country, pic etc.? PS. The =External links= should be renamed to =References=. =Nichalp «Talk»= 14:19, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
As far as which matches take precedence go, I really have no idea. I'm not sure it's possible to find perfect solutions for everybody - after all, there are players for (eg) Hong Kong who have played ODIs but no other "top-line" games, and there's no current Infobox that suits them either. It also seems at least likely that we'll have to take account of Twenty20 matches at some point. And so on and so forth.
As for your other point - I thought that Cricinfo/CA counted as External links, whereas the References section was where you put numbered footnotes. Personally I think it makes sense to keep those separate, and use the References section for specific points in the text (eg info from Wisden obituaries) and the External links section for the more "generic" Cricinfo/CA links, which every bio I write will have. To illustrate what I mean, look at John Santall. Precedence also seems to support me here: Donald Bradman, for example, puts the link to his Cricinfo profile in "External links", separate from footnotes. Virtually every other bio I've looked at also counts Cricinfo as an "External link" rather than a "Reference". I may well be wrong in my opinion... but if I am, so are 90%+ of other bio writers! Loganberry (Talk) 19:12, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
Having read much Wikipedia documentation recently (I arrived five weeks ago), I will cite and summarize.
Citation. See WP:REF sections 4.3.4.2, 4.3.4.3, and 5
Summary. Documentation makes clear that references used for researching/writing articles should all be identified as such, which leaves "External links" only for that further reading which is on the web. Doc suggests "Further reading" for digital and print media combined, below "References" also for digital and print media combined. Both of those below "Notes". When I expand a baseball bio-stub, the usual External link to a playing record at the leading online encyclopedia (which was always used for writing the stub) ends up one of the References. See George Wright (baseball) for example.
See John Hatfield (baseball) for example of redundant links to the online encyclopedia, which I have written for discussion (none yet). My preference is essentially the second and fourth examples in combination: a clear line of text at the bottom of the article and a formal entry in the References (thus no External link). --P64 19:57, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
Ah... so in effect, what I have been labelling "References" (the numbered footnotes) should actually be labelled "Notes", while what I have been labelling "External links" (Cricinfo etc) should actually be "References"? All right: I'll change to that usage from now on. It's probably because when I started editing Wikipedia, "External links" was pretty much a catch-all section for everything that wasn't a link to another WP article. So I just hope Wikipedia practice on this doesn't change again in the near future! Loganberry (Talk) 21:41, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
Mind you... writing <references /> under a heading other than "References" does seem a bit odd! Loganberry (Talk) 23:03, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Categorization in alphabetical order

Visiting Category:Cricket historians and writers, I revised the biography of Harold de Axxx by capitalizing 'De' in all of the category tags. That does not change the listing of his biography in any category but it puts every listing in proper alphabetical order, which is not case sensitive. That is, every category tag such as 

[[Category:Cricket people|de Axxx, Harold]]

must be revised to 

[[Category:Cricket people|De Axxx, Harold]]

--P64 03:04, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Cricket in baseball biographies

FYI: There are cricket bits in one biography that I wrote yesterday and two that I expanded recently, all related to the first professional baseball team, Cincinnati Red Stockings. Namely: Alfred T. Goshorn (4th paragraph), Harry Wright (2nd-3rd paragraphs), George Wright (baseball) (2nd-3rd paragraphs). Samuel Wright, named in the biographies of his sons, played in the first Canada-USA, 1844. Harry Wright, at least, later played in that series. --P64 03:18, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

For a bit of a challenge, you could try and find some information on the baseball career of Essex cricketer Ian Pont who played semi-pro baseball in South Africa, and played at least one spring training game as a pitcher for a MLB club.Andrew nixon 08:04, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
Do you know the year of the spring trial sting?
Now I am challenged to the brim, hoping to remove some stub tags in the next 36 hours and also do some things concerning original baseball research. (Tomorrow is national Labor Day here, so I should labor.) Moments ago I did unstub Goshorn after adding a bit about the relationship between clubs. See also Cincinnati Red Stockings#Baseball. Unfortunately I cannot write an article on the Union Cricket Club or Union Grounds with the web or my personal library.
A bit of 1867 busine$$, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA: when the two clubs affiliated, sharing the formerly cricket-only grounds and club pro, they spent US$2400 for construction of a grandstand, US$1300 for a more substantial fence; set nonmember admission prices 10 cents for local opponents, 25 cents for foreign. --P64 19:37, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
From what I remember on the article I read it came shortly after a stint playing cricket in South Africa and he went back to Essex after it finished. According to his cricket record, he played in South Africa in 85/86 and finished with Essex in 1988. So it's probably either 86, 87 or 88. Can't remember the name of the club though, sorry!Andrew nixon 21:35, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
Couple of minutes with google says he trialled for six teams in 1987, and got offered a monthly contract with the Philadelphia Phillies. Sam Vimes | Address me 21:39, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
Was about to post that myself! Loks like that's the best bet for the spring training team and year. If he did play a spring training game, by my reckoning, that makes him the only professional cricketer to have played for an MLB club (several have had trials), so he would be worthy of an article, if that is indeed the case.Andrew nixon 21:42, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
Edit: Article here contains a few interesting facts.Andrew nixon 21:47, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Rather disheartened...

Could someone please have a look at John Anton to see whether I've got the idea? I hope so, but to be honest I'm getting a little bit disheartened, as the section title indicates.

As I indicate on my own userpage, I don't make any claims to being a great editor or to not making mistakes, and one of the things I'm not very good at is getting all the technical bits and bobs correct; I really do find that quite hard. I whole-heartedly agree with the need to cite verifiable sources, but keeping up with the ever-changing standards and guidelines of which section headings to use, where to put them, how to format footnotes, etc etc, is often just too much for me.

What I can do well is limited, but I think it's of some use: I can write short, readable biographical articles about cricketers with (usually!) excellent grammar, spelling and punctuation. They wouldn't make Wisden features, but as far as they go I don't think I've done too bad a job. I've been motivated enough to put in who knows how many hundred hours' work on the subject... but am I letting the side down by admitting that I simply can't summon up anything like the same enthusiasm for the matter of whether a section heading says "External links" or "References"? Loganberry (Talk) 00:04, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Ignore all rules and write an encyclopedia article as you think it should be. Then someone with the enthusiasm for section titles will come along and change it, if the convention changes again. Something is better than nothing! :) Sam Vimes | Address me 06:58, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
Yes, you're right of course. I'm afraid I was guilty last night of letting matters completely unrelated to Wikipedia cloud my mind and get me down, though I don't think I've let that leak into any actual articles. So... frankly I think I'm going to go back to the format that seems to have served me well over the last X number of months, but as you say I'm hardly going to complain if someone wants to spend their own time changing titles etc. Having my work mercilessly edited is a good thing! =;) Loganberry (Talk) 10:54, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Shanthakumaran Sreesanth

Is it just me or do I smell copyvio addtions? Blnguyen | BLabberiNg 00:06, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Aye, from [1]. Sam Vimes | Address me 07:00, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Indexing, eg Yuvraj Singh

Gene Nygaard insists on indexing him by Singh again.....Blnguyen | BLabberiNg 03:31, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, he refused to see the point that Muslims and Sikhs sort their names differently the last time, so here's what I suggest: agree for the births and living people category, and sort properly in all categories of cricketers. IIRC that wasn't a problem. Sam Vimes | Address me 06:54, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Roy Scott and Wasim Raja

Slightly obscure New Zealand Test player. Just one cap. But... is he still alive? Or not? Cricketarchive [2] says he died in 2005. Cricinfo [3] has him 89 years old and still accumulating the days. Googling him didn't help, as far as I could see. My instinct is to follow cricketarchive, which I did when expanding his substub bio. But maybe some NZ wikipedian can find out more. Johnlp 20:54, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

There was no obituary for him in the 2006 Wisden Almanack [4], and they say they provide obits for every test cricketer. Andrew nixon 20:59, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

As per comments above (somewhere), Wisden is far from infallible and with obits quite often catches up in later years. In 1994 it published a whole obit section of "People What we Missed" that included at least one of its own Cricketers of the Year 42 years late! Johnlp 21:05, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Um. Tintin and I came across an inexplicable disagreement between Cricinfo and Cricket Archive, over the number of runs scored by Wasim Raja in his first-class career. Both say he played in 250 matches, but Cricket Archive says 11,386 runs in 378 innings with 53 not outs, and Cricinfo says 11,434 runs in 379 innings with 54 not outs - so when did he score the 48 not out that Cricket Archive has missed? They also agree on his 558 first-class wickets, but disagree by 1 on the number of runs conceded (16,212 or 16,211).
Incidentally, if you are expanding cricketer stubs, or other cricket-related articles, consider nominating them at WP:DYK. -- ALoan (Talk) 21:53, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
Probably not the "missing innings" in question, since he only batted once in this game and in any case it's CA that's "one short", not CI, but the only 48* CA has is this one, for DB Close's XI v Sri Lankans at Scarborough in September 1984. Loganberry (Talk) 00:33, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Surely that is not a first-class match? CA may be right, of course! -- ALoan (Talk) 00:40, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
It was indeed first-class, as were the other four Scarborough matches involving the XI in the 1980s. Close's "real" f-c career ended in 1978, but look at his Cricinfo page and you'll see "First-class span 1949 - 1986". This is how he did it! Loganberry (Talk) 02:43, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
I sent a mail to Cricketarchive. They usually reply in two or three days. Raja played in England in fcc in 1986 & 1982 and List A in 1987. Do the Wisden or Playfair of those years have his career aggregate ? Tintin (talk) 05:31, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
The Playfair of 1987 doesn't have him in either its career records or its records for 1986, so at the time it must have been thought that whatever match(es) he played in in England in 1986 were not first-class. JH 08:10, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Update: I've now trawled through the 1987 Wisden, but can find no indication that he played in any 3 day (or longer) match in the 1986 English season, even in a match whose f-c status might be dubious. JH 09:06, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Did Cricinfo count the 48* twice, perhaps? Johnlp 11:40, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Beat me to it. I was just about to suggest thwe same thing. JH 17:23, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Dates in cricket history

Re the link provided by JHall [5] : 1905 says "Last Test to be played to a finish if necessary. It was not until 1912 that the necessity arose when the last test at The Oval took four days". The idea is that if the last Test could alter the result of a series, it would be played to a finish. This situation came up in 1909. Australia was 2-1 up going into the last Test and that match ended in a draw. Does it mean that the rule did not apply to the 1909 matches ? Tintin (talk) 13:51, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

I think it was because Australia were the defending Ashes champions, and hence the result of the match would not change the destination of the Ashes in 1909. Andrew nixon 14:01, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

John Warr worst bowling average?

Please see Talk:John Warr. "He has the worst Test bowling average of anyone to have played for England." was inserted. I removed it per WP:LIVING, but I found one potentially reliable resource... but I know nothing about cricket, and understanding it is out of my not-even-laymen's perspective, as I detail on his talk page. Can someone please comment? TransUtopian 16:20, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

He does indeed have the worst test bowling average for England. [6] Andrew nixon 16:47, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Position, batting and fielding

Last hour I wrote the stub Position (team sports), which is a great step forward from nothing at all. It was quite a challenge simply finding some of the various articles for various sports and the current version certainly needs expansion by linking to more team sports.

Now I have belatedly rediscovered the two articles on baseball or cricket batting order --which is collective, the assignment of an entire team to a complete set of batting positions. I see that the basic arrangement of Position (team sports) should probably be revised by or with someone who can answer the following questions about cricket. And I'll decide what to do about the article on batting position.

  1. Batting position. Is the term sometimes used in cricket? Or some equivalent term? Or only some indirection like "position in the batting order"?
  2. Do any batting positions in cricket have their own names, other than cardinal or ordinal numbers? Are cardinals and ordinals both used? (Eg: Bradman never batted ten or eleven, even as a schoolboy! Bradman never batted tenth or eleventh, even as a schoolboy!)
  3. Quoting Batting order (cricket): The order in which the 11 players will bat is established prior to the commencement of a cricket match, but can be changed at the captain's discretion
In what sense is it established before the match? I don't suppose it is preprinted on scorecards sold to the audience; that would be unworkable if the captain uses discretion to change it even occasionally. --P64 23:07, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
In regards to your 2nd question: Generally the first two batsmen are called "openers", and occasionally the 3rd and 4th batsmen are called "first drop" and "second drop" respectively. Positions 4-7 are usually referred to as the "middle order" and about 8-11 as "tail-enders". You have things like "pinch hitters" and "nightwatchmen", but these are usually game-specific alterations to the batting order. I can't think of any other batting positions that would be given names. – AlbinoMonkey (Talk) 10:01, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
I've never heard of "first drop" and "second drop". Cardinal numbers are used. Yes, it is printed on the scorecards — the order is in practice known in advance — the captain is allowed to vary it as circumstances demand, but this is rarely done, except in the case of a nightwatchman. Stephen Turner (Talk) 10:30, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
It's done quite frequently in One-day cricket, perhaps through the promotion of a pinch hitter higher up the order according to the circumstances of the game. --ⁿɡ͡b Nick Boalch\talk 11:05, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
I've heard third drop, etc. used as well. I think the claim that the order is established before the match is incorrect. It is true that (particularly at the top level) the batting order not changed that much from match to match, and team lists may be presented in batting order in many places including scorecards and scoreboards, but this is a result of people wanting to have something to print, not actually part of the game. JPD (talk) 11:47, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
I think we agree. That's why I said it's in practice known in advance. There's nothing official though. Stephen Turner (Talk) 11:54, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
A related point is that batting order gives the players the numbers by which they're identified on the scoreboard: or it used to until the advent of coloured clothing with names and numbers on the backs of shirts and the arrival of electronic scoreboards that can cope with players' names. I hadn't heard the "first drop" term before, but would recognise a "first-wicket-down batsman", but more usually just a "No 3 batsman". Openers are an interesting side-issue: some of them seem to be permanently No 1 or forever No 2, no matter what team they're playing for or their seniority, though obviously they go out to bat at the same time. Johnlp 12:33, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
I definitely agree with how Steven put it, but I think the text in batting order is a bit misleading, and even more so if we take into account lower level games where there is no need to have an "expected batting order" used on programmes, scoreboards, etc. On top of that, there were many variations on how scoreboards used batting order or similar numbers. JPD (talk) 13:52, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

(back to the left) Thanks for the comment. I suppose batting order (cricket) will suffer some revision.
Throughout the sporting sections of Wikipedia, there is a tendency to cover high-level play. I hope it's understood that rules commonly depart from the official and tactics commonly depart from the professional, where many articles cover the official and professional only. But those variations should be covered if it can be done deftly.

The set of nine fielding positions in baseball is now stable (although players may exchange positions) and a numerical code 1 to 9 for fielding positions is used to identify the players in official scoring. 130-150 years ago, batting positions 1 to 9 were used, probably direct from cricket scoring. For example, '1' means caught by the pitcher; long ago it meant caught by the first batter. I suppose they did a lot of erasing in case of a later surprise in the batting order. -P64 03:05, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Non-test team infobox

Some of you may have noticed my recent spurt of activity on creating/updating pages for all the non-test teams. I've started to think that an infobox for them could be useful on each page, based on the infobox for the test teams, featuring details such as the flag, ICC membership level, ICC membership year, ICC region, division of the World Cricket League and division for their regional competition, etc. I've looked at coding such an info-box, but I'm at a loss! Any thoughts from anyone? Andrew nixon 13:51, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

I could help with making one. What do we want, though?
  1. Flag
  2. ICC membership year
  3. ICC membership status
  4. ICC region
  5. Division of the World Cricket League (if applicable)
  6. Division of regional competition
  7. First recorded match (in case of Fiji, about 1900, for example...)
  8. ICC Trophy best placements
And maybe first-class/List A record for countries with that kind of status (easy enough to find at CricketArchive) Sam Vimes | Address me 19:03, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
Pretty much covers it, just add captain to the list. Andrew nixon 19:25, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
{{Infobox non test cricket team}}. Enjoy! Sam Vimes | Address me 20:17, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
Cheers! Absolutely brilliant! Check out Bermudian cricket team. Andrew nixon 21:09, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
One problem. How am I going to get the appropriate Ireland flag? Andrew nixon 22:01, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
Fixed now. Instead of a country name you have to input the whole flag file name, though - so it's now picture_file = Flag of Bermuda.svg |, say. Sam Vimes | Address me 22:08, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Great stuff. A couple of comments: do you have to define a font? It is a bit jarring in, for example, the classic skin. (I have only just noticed that {{Infobox Test team}} does the same - which shows how often I edit those articles! - and have the same concerns). Secondly, should draws/ties be added to the win/loss record? -- ALoan (Talk) 10:40, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

I have added an ODIs section. For teams that have played ODIs, it seems a bit strange to give ICC Trophy and List A details, but not ODIs! JPD (talk) 07:54, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Now I have to go through all the teams that have played ODIs again! Seriously though, thanks a lot, it does make a bit more sense now! Andrew nixon 09:30, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
I was planning to go through myself, but caught up with something else. I think I've done them all now, though. JPD (talk) 10:28, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Good job, although you made a slight error on Hong Kong, which I've fixed. I can continue with my work on the affilaite nations now! I'm currently quite proud of my Myanmar cricket team article, especially as I've managed to wrie an article of that length on a team that only has five recorded games! Andrew nixon 10:37, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
To ALoan's point; no, you don't have to define a font. I just copied from the Test team infobox. Don't quite know how to edit it tho. Sam Vimes | Address me 10:56, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Removing the "font-family:...;" bit at the top looks ok to me. JPD (talk) 11:17, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
I just nuked it. Scream if it breaks something :) -- ALoan (Talk) 11:19, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Armchair Cricket

A few months ago I added this article about a rather old but brilliant card game some of you may know about. It would be good if other fans could look it over and amend it. Is it appropriate for the cricket portal? (ie can we put the little cricket ball picture etc?) I know it could easily be part of card games as well, but I've found that 'Army' is far more likely to appeal to cricket fans than to card sharks! Sumitrahman 16:31, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Oxford v Cambridge

I noticed that there doesn't seem to be anything about the University Match, ie Oxford v Cambridge. I was thinking of writing a short piece, but I'm unsure of what would be the best title, whether I should provide any alternative titles with redirects, what links to it I should introduce within other articles (if any), and what categories it should have. Any suggestions? JH 16:11, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Well the Rugby Union game is under The Varsity Match, so I guess The Varsity Cricket Match would be the best title. Andrew nixon 17:29, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the suggestion. I have an idea though that, traditionally, only the rugby match has been called the Varsity Match, with the cricket match usually being referred to as the University Match. JH 18:00, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
Good point, Wisden also has it under that name. But University Match is a little vague, so University Match (cricket) would probably be the best title. Also, perhaps an article on university cricket in general could be useful. Andrew nixon 18:30, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Quite right: "Varsity" is rugby, "University" is cricket. I also think University Match (cricket) is a good title. The match has a very long history of course and cricket was played at both universities in the 18th century. I can help with early references if needed. --BlackJack | talk page 18:57, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I'll go with University Match (cricket). At this stage, I only envisage producing a stub - maybe three or four paragraphs. JH 13:07, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
Oxford University Women's Cricket Club calls it a Varsity Match. Loganberry (Talk) 15:22, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Now created as The University Match (cricket), with redirects from The Varsity Match (cricket) and Oxford v Cambridge (cricket). Corrections or extensions welcome. The highest score and most wickets stats are from Cricketarchive, which doesn't break them down by opponent for individual player records, so I had to filter the lists, and hope I didn't miss anyone. JH 17:09, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Name of W. G. Grace's article

I've been having a disagreement with BlackJack about the correct name of W. G. Grace's article.

For a long time, it's been called W. G. Grace. Yesterday, Jack moved it to W G Grace and I moved it back. Then today he moved it to William Gilbert "WG" Grace, and I moved it back again.

We had a long discussion about this in /archive10 and agreed that either W. G. Grace or WG Grace was acceptable, but that W G Grace wasn't. (William Gilbert "WG" Grace can't be the right name, surely). Note, however, that the encyclopaedia-wide guideline, WP:NAMEPEOPLE, only allows W. G. Grace. Even if we do allow WG Grace too, WP:RfA/Jguk makes it clear that it's not permitted for an editor to change from an acceptable style that he happens not to like, even to another acceptable style, because that leads to edit wars.

Even though we had the previous discussion, Jack seems to ignore its conclusions and goes on a "remove-dots" blitz from time to time, often ending up with one of the formats which we explicitly rejected. I know he hates dots after initials, but I think this is out of order. But I wanted to bring this before the cricket community to get a reality check on my thinking, and see if it's me that's out of order. So what do other people think?

Stephen Turner (Talk) 09:45, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

For my 2p, W. G. Grace is clearly preferred over William Gilbert Grace or William Grace; WG Grace is passable, but W G Grace is not; and William Gilbert "WG" Grace is just bizarre. What is the problem here? -- ALoan (Talk) 10:43, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
The problem, from my point of view, is that Jack will not allow any format with dots in to survive, and periodically goes on a crusade against them. Stephen Turner (Talk) 11:07, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
What is wrong with dots? I put dots in my name. (And spaces.) -- ALoan (Talk) 11:16, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
See /archive10. Stephen Turner (Talk) 11:32, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
Oh, indeed. Perhaps we should re-run the poll, to see if a consensus now emerges?
Pragmatically, I think our current position (either is acceptable; don't move one to the other) is fine. Chances are that MOS devotees will move them to the ones that the MOS mandates, though. -- ALoan (Talk) 20:55, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
I would prefer "WG Grace", which I think would be the "British" style. Americans seem much more keen on dots, tending to put them not only after initials but after abbreviations such as "Dr" and "Mr" where the British would not. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jhall1 (talk • contribs) .
In British English, we don't use dots after abbreviations that end with the same letter as the word does; hence "Prof." but "Dr". That's not relevant for initials though, where I think dots and spaces are the still the correct format, except when space is at a premium.
I really didn't mean to raise the issue of the preferred format again, however. We discussed that at length in /archive10, and I don't think we'd get any further discussing it again; and in any case Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (people) is the correct place to discuss it. The issue here is about changing a valid format because the editor doesn't like it.
Stephen Turner (Talk) 13:36, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
I write articles without the dots because I think it looks much better in British English (so WH Hill), but I always try to set up a redirect from (eg) W. H. Hill to help users in terms of the principle of least surprise. I wouldn't change an article written with one to the other unless there was a clear policy or consensus that such a thing should be done - and where an article already exists within the acceptable framework, I don't think personal preference alone should come into it. Loganberry (Talk) 15:44, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Loganberry's view seems to me to be the most sensible: don't change what's already done, ensure there are redirects where there could be confusion (which is a good policy anyway) and always set up redirects to the alternative when creating a new article. In practice, there can't be too many instances yet where cricketers are better known by initials than by formal or informal first names (less than 20, I'd reckon). But they are likely to increase in number as people such as Hill are discovered and then covered. Johnlp 19:30, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, Colonel H. H. Shri Sir Ranjitsinhji Vibhaji, Jam Sahib of Nawanagar GBE KCSI (aka Ranji) is currently at K S Ranjitsinhji... -- ALoan (Talk) 20:35, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
Just as a guide, out of 493 cricketers who've played f-c/LA matches for Worcestershire, there are five who have only initials listed rather than a name. Given 18 first-class counties (all but Durham of at least 80 years' standing), two major universities, etc, that would imply that the total number of English cricketers for whom this is the case (not including those whose names are known, but who are usually known by their initials) might be somewhere in the region of 100. Loganberry (Talk) 23:20, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

My view on this is that its wrong for an editor to move an article name from a style which is has been accepted by consensus to a style which is his personal preference. Such changes should be reverted. The two accepted styles from my reading of past discussions on this are either with dots and spaces or with no dots and no spaces. ie W. G. Grace or WG Grace (the former is preferred but both are acceptable). Anything else is out of order. -- I@n 07:40, 11 September 2006 (UTC)


Use of full stops after initials and some abbreviations is NOT a convention and certainly NOT a consensus, except among the handful of Wikipedia members who once discussed the subject and who are hardly representative of the full membership, let alone the real world. In the literary and business world, full stops are disappearing fast and true convention is to write either W G Grace or WG Grace. The latter is probably most common since texting began.
If you reproduced a full cricket scorecard on here and used the players' initials as per normal scorecards, that would mean writing a total of 44 names over four innings. Plus umpires. Would you actually go through the lists and religiously apply full stops, perhaps a hundred or more in total, just to meet Wikipedia's current "convention"? Even more so if you used initials for fielders and bowlers too, as some cards do. And for a real world example of how to present players' initials in a scorecard and in a team list, see the BBC scorecards.
For the most recent LOI they wrote: Younis Khan c E C Joyce b J W M Dalrymple 47 and not Younis Khan c E. C. Joyce b J. W. M. Dalrymple 47. The England team was: A J Strauss, E C Joyce, I R Bell, K P Pietersen, P D Collingwood, J W M Dalrymple, M H Yardy, C M W Read, S I Mahmood, J Lewis, S C J Broad. Not a full stop in sight until you reached the end of Broad's surname. Modern business writing follows the same convention except that sometimes you will see JWM Dalrymple.
But presumably the BBC is not an authority where the English language is concerned? No, obviously a few Americans on Wikipedia are for more authoritative.
Full stops are an anachronism. They do not add value. They waste the writer's time and create additional editing difficulties. They do not make things easier for the reader. They are a nonsense and an outdated nonsense at that.
The only places where a full stop should be used according to common practice and accepted modern English grammar are: (a) at the end of a sentence; (b) at the end of an abbreviation where the last letter of the abbreviation is not the last letter of the full word, hence we have etc. and Dr (not Dr.); (c) in expressions such as e.g. and i.e.; (d) decimals; (e) website names and the like. --BlackJack | talk page 05:58, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
With respect, we are going to have to disagree.
The fact that we don't get 6 billion opinions on a matter does not mean that consensus cannot be reached between the editors who participate in the discussion. A new consensus may always emerge, but until then the agreed position should remain the position. In this case, the MOS mandates one style; however, after discussion, we have agreed two styles that should be accepted for cricket articles (however distasteful to proponents of the other style). Feel free to reopen the discussion, but it is just wrong to move articles to implement your personal preferences when there are clearly many opinions ranged against you.
I think the scorecard example is a straw man, by the way - how many scorecards do we have, and shouldn't they be at wikisource anyway? And an encyclopedia does not adopt "modern business writing" - whatever that is: in any event, I use stops all the time in my business writing. And quite how stops "don't add value", "waste time" or "create editing difficulties" is beyond me. Some have argued that spaces after punctuation don't add value, waste time, and create editing difficulties, but the convention is still to add space (sometimes even double-space or triple-space after full stops). We don't even have an agreed dialect of English, adopting US English or UK/International English as appropriate. As for AD/BC or CE/BCE and the serial comma... -- ALoan (Talk) 11:00, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
Scorecards and journalism meet my already-stated exception of "space is at a premium". Otherwise, omitting the stops just seems sloppy to me. But I say again, the issue is not about the correct format, which we're not likely to agree on — it's about whether it's permissible to change an article from a format which has consensus, even to another format which also has consensus, because of stylistic preferences. This has long been forbidden because it leads to edit wars. Stephen Turner (Talk) 11:22, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
Absolutely. -- I@n 13:36, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

(back to the left) There are three issues. (1) edit wars. (2) findability using Go and Search. (3) linkability. I suppose you previously discussed all three. By linkability, I mean both the cost to editors (time & trouble) and the cost to readers when redlinks are left to them.

Unfortunately, findability may be impossible to learn reliably except by experiment and it may change at any time. Does anyone know that even two article/redirects are generally sufficient? Given W. G. Grace and WG Grace, one a redirect to the other, what happens to the reader who searches for W.G. Grace?

For this particular player (who is not the issue, I suppose), why not William Gilbert Grace with multiple redirects?

The prose introduction should be "William Gilbert Grace (date - daet), or WG Grace . . .", perhaps with some adverb instead of or. --P64 16:15, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Nobody seemed to like that option in our previous discussion, when a player is best known by his initials rather than his names. Stephen Turner (Talk) 17:15, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Roy Scott and Wasim Raja, reprise

In an effort to break out of the loop we seem to be in and to move on, can I ask whether we have any news on the questions thrown up in earlier discussion on these two cricketers? It would be nice to think we can resolve some issues on this talk page. ;-o Johnlp 17:39, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Hobbs and Sutcliffe - or the dangers of POV

In the article on Jack Hobbs we find:

He is generally regarded as the greatest English batsman of all time.

While in the one on Herbert Sutcliffe we have:

(Sutcliffe)... was arguably the greatest opening batsman in cricket history...

So the Hobbs piece implies that Hobbs > Sutcliffe, but the Sutcliffe piece implies the reverse. Even making allowances for the qualifications "generally regarded" and "arguably", it's hard to reconcile the two. Personally, I would tend to put the WG of the 1870s ahead of both of them.

I suggest amending both of these claims, to read:

Many regard him as the greatest English batsman of all time.

(Sutcliffe)... was one of the greatest opening batsman in cricket history...

Perhaps we need citations? -- ALoan (Talk) 20:01, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
For the first that might be useful. For the second, one might say something like: "As shown by his Test average, Sutcliffe was one of the greatest opening batsmen in cricket history." In other words, his average might be thought to provide sufficient evidence. JH 20:34, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Well, not everyone reading the article is capable of drawing such conclusions from a batting average. What if we say: Sutcliffe's Test batting average is the highest among opening batsmen with more than 20 innings - and leave it there? Sam Vimes | Address me 20:40, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
It would be better to say it was the 3rd best, or whatever it is, rather than one of the best (plus a citation :) -- ALoan (Talk) 20:56, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
The claim that Hobbs is the greatest English batsman of all time could be supported by reference to this which occurs later in the article: "In 2000, Hobbs was named by a 100-member panel of experts as the third of five Wisden Cricketers of the Century. Hobbs received 30 votes, behind Sir Donald Bradman (100 votes) and Sir Garfield Sobers (90 votes)." Since he received more votes than any other English batsman, it implies that he was the greatest English batsman of the 20th century. (Which neatly sidesteps the issue of whether he was greater than Grace.) JH 21:13, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

(Back to the left margin.) I've now hopefully edited the Hobbs piece to avoid POV (as well as breaking it up into sections). I'll leave Sutcliffe to someone else. JH 17:45, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Template:Zimbabwe abbr

When updating Mark Vermeulen's article to mention his 10 year ban from English cricket, I noticed that Template:Zimbabwe abbr does not appear to exist despite it being linked to by around 70 or 80 pages. Is there a reason why this template does not exist? Even if there is, something needs to be done to get rid of the red links on the 70 or 80 pages. Also, I don't seem to be able to get the reference to appear at the end, can someone tell me what I'm doing wrong? jguk 17:58, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, it's supposed to say "ZIM". It's something that was introduced a while ago by Joshurtree; it does give a standard abbreviation, assuming we've made all the templates first. Sam Vimes | Address me 19:29, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Oh, and when writing <references> you need to close the tag with a forward slash, so <references/>! Sam Vimes | Address me 19:31, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Um, is there such a problem with writing "ZIM" that we need to write {{Zimbabwe abbr}} instead? -- ALoan (Talk) 20:05, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Key thing is that it's standard across all templates that use "country = Zimbabwe" now. There's no abbreviation tag in the template any more. But yes, I think it's a bit redundant, especially with all the "country code alias Zimbabwe" floating around the place. Sam Vimes | Address me 20:08, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Oh, I see - you add "Zimbabwe" and it finds the right abbreviation. Still seems like a sledgehammer to crack a strained gnat (or something). -- ALoan (Talk) 20:19, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
It also means that we can only have one country listed, unless we are going to make "England/Scotland abbr", etc. templates as well. JPD (talk) 08:40, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Similar templates could also be applied to the flag and adjective (i.e. English etc) reducing the four parameters down to just one. An optional second parameter can be included to handle instances where a cricketer has played for more than one country. This system also ensures that the abbrieviation is consistent over every cricketer. BTW which do people prefer. The abbrieviation in all caps or first letter capital only. josh (talk) 16:27, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Graeme Hick

Someone (an IP address, followed by three edits from User:Dar2020) posted a "detailed analysis of Hick's career" to his article today, and while there's a lot of good points to it, it could do with some citations and general POV clean-up (It's a little bit too sympathetic). See diff. So does anyone feel up to helping me with this, or guide Dar2020 in the intricate ways of Wikipedia? Sam Vimes | Address me 16:13, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Peer review/Virender Sehwag/archive1

Hello. Just a quick note that I have expanded the Sehwag bio and put it up for review. It does cover his international career with a proper account, so now would be a good time to lay down a marker for a general style for writing bios on modern cricketers. Being a very mathematically oriented person, I have tended to be very statistical based in my analysis, and have tried to avoid making generalisations about his playing style , whcih is due to my tendency to not put in any technique analysis which cannot be verified statistically and because comments about his style could amount to "sourced POV" - anyway please have a look - we have had two FAs on cricketers before, one was about a schoolboy cricketer who did a sextuple century and another was a player from before the ODI era. Thanks, Blnguyen | BLabberiNg 04:08, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

A poor showing, yes - we should add W. G. and the 5 Wisden Cricketers of the Century, at least (Warne will be the hardest as he is still playing, but Grace, Bradman, Hobbs, Sobers and Richards should not be too hard). -- ALoan (Talk) 04:21, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Prod

Someone has prodded Causes of death of English national cricket captains. Is there anyone here who is in favour of deletion ? Tintin (talk) 07:03, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't know...I can sort of see the argument, but it angers me when people's only argument for deletion is "cruft". Sam Vimes | Address me 07:43, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
Delete - it is not very interesting. Would you want to add the information to English national cricket captains? I would not, so why have this separate list, particularly when there are so many "living" (a cause of death for us all, I am sure!). -- ALoan (Talk) 09:21, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

I've removed the note about possible deletion (it said I could if I disagreed with it, so I presume that's ok). I started the list and would like to see it completed over time. There is some interesting information in there that is not readily available elsewhere. In particular, note how suicide is a common method of death for cricketers post-retirement - something which continues to this day, jguk 18:01, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Incidentally, I've just seen this. It seems the page has at least one other fan! jguk 18:05, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

The list has now been proposed for deletion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Causes of death of English national cricket captains. Go and make comments, for or against! Stephen Turner (Talk) 09:36, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Question on stubs

In my articles I've been creating on the non test nations, I've been pretty much making all of them stubs. Some of them are clearly stubs, no more than a paragraph. But I've seen some articles shorter than some of what I've called stubs without a stub tag on them. So is there any particular guideline on how long an article should be before it ceases to be a stub? Andrew nixon 18:08, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Rather inevitably, there is WP:STUB. It says:
A stub is an article that is too short to be genuinely useful, but not so short as to provide no useful information. In general, it must be long enough to at least define the article's title, which generally means 3 to 10 short sentences. Note that even a longer article on a complicated topic may be a stub; conversely, a short article on a topic of narrow scope may not be a stub.
HTH. -- ALoan (Talk) 18:40, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
Well that's about as clear as mud...... Maybe my best bet is to list the ones I think are probably a little too long to have a stub tag, and let someone else pick through them!
I personally think that the topics in some cases is a narrow enough one to warrant a short-ish article not being called a stub, but would appreciate anyones input! Andrew nixon 19:31, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
I looked at the first few of these (up to Japan) and I'll say that these definitely do not look like stubs to me. Some of them take up more than two screens, and perhaps a good rule of thumb is, "If you have to scroll, it ain't a stub"... -- Deville (Talk) 19:35, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
It's a judgment-call, ultimately. But WP:STUB also says:
Another way to define a stub is an article so incomplete that an editor who knows little or nothing about the topic could improve its content after a superficial Web search or a few minutes in a reference library. An article that can be improved by only a rather knowledgeable editor, or after significant research, may not be a stub.
which may be more helpful. Or may not. Stephen Turner (Talk) 09:40, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
Well I've taken the bull by the horns and removed the stub tag from those listed, as well as from Slovenian cricket team Andrew nixon 15:59, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

ICC members all complete!

You will all be pleased to know that we now have articles or stubs for every single team that is a member of the International Cricket Council, and the three teams that used to be members. At some point, I'll expand some of the articles, and add some articles on prospective ICC members, but for now I'm going to fill in the red links on {{National women's cricket teams}}. We're currently missing articles on four of the test teams there, which is a major oversight in my opinion. Andrew nixon 20:53, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Wow - quick and most excellent work. Hearty thanks and congratulations! Have some oak leaves to add to the barnstar from just over a week ago! -- ALoan (Talk) 23:33, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Ian Botham - navigation templates

Do we really need a succession of 5 navigation templates at the foot of his article? -- ALoan (Talk) 23:33, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps it would be worth while making them collapsable with Template:Tnavbar. josh (talk) 00:05, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
Unfortunately, that does not work for all skins. My question is really whether all of these templates add anything of substance to the article. -- ALoan (Talk) 12:04, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Graeme Hick

I've removed a huge chunk of material from Hick's article on the grounds that it was very largely an essay containing chunks of POV and original research, but have told the editor in question (Dar2020) that I would mention that here in case others felt I'd been too hasty. This diff shows what I removed; the only intermediate edit was the addition of the {{Englishmen with 100 or more ODI caps}} template by Twisted-chinaman; I have of course retained that. Loganberry (Talk) 01:10, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

I think you did the right thing. Stephen Turner (Talk) 19:28, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Last check-up for Indian cricket team

I do not feel I can do much more for the article Indian cricket team. It's already GA, PISA and been Peer Reviewed. I just request people to give it a quick copyedit and review it before it goes up for FAC. I'm also wondering as to how many citations are required in this page, because it really has very few citations. Most things on the page are obvious but considering the people who vote in FACs are sometimes not from cricketing nations, I don't know how many I should put up. Thanks. Nobleeagle (Talk) 01:56, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Indian_cricket_team#History could do with a major rewrite. At the moment, it reads like a random selection of people and events rather than a proper history. There are too many factual errors . For eg, the very first line says that "Cricket was introduced to India during the late 1800s, brought on as a result of the British rule of the nation." The earliest mention of cricket in India is from 1721 and Parsis have been playing cricket atleast from 1839. Tintin (talk) 05:15, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the comment. I'll work on that tomorrow. Can you provide a source as to the origins of cricket in India? Nobleeagle (Talk) 05:19, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
A reference for 1721 can be found in the reference section in Cricket in India (I know the person who wrote it. He dug up the Downing book from a library for it !). I'll find the details of 1839 in one or two days. Tintin (talk) 05:24, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
You may find this article from Wisden useful: Dates in Indian cricket history JH 08:34, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I had the opportunity to check a few books when I went home for lunch. Bowen says that "Indians were known to take part in matches in 1840". But some books give a slightly older reference :

  • Ramachandra Guha, The corner of a foreign field, p.13 says that in the early 1800s the natives in Bombay used to flock to watch matches and "Parsi boys were playing cricket here as early as the 1830s, 'their chimney pots serving as the wicket and the umbrellas as bats ...'. The quote about chimneys etc is from Shapoorjee Sorabjee, A chronicle of cricket among parsees and the struggle : Polo versus cricket (1897, p.8).
  • Boria Majumdar, Twenty two yards to freedom[7], p.78, gets a little closer : "The beginning of Parsi cricket can be traced back to the late 1830s" and quotes Sorabjee again.
  • A specific year appears in Vasant Raiji, India's Hambledon Men, a book on Parsi cricket[8]. The first line in the first chapter reads, "According to a reliable source, Parsee schoolboys were receiving instructions at cricket as far back as 1839". (p.13) He does not mention his source and the Sorabjee book is not listed in the bibliography. Tintin (talk) 09:55, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

There is a nice article on early Indian cricket here. Tintin (talk) 09:59, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. Nobleeagle (Talk) 23:47, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

O'Reilly dab

Talk:Bill_O'Reilly#New_Vote_on_Disambiguation_page Tintin (talk) 07:42, 22 September 2006 (UTC)


It looks like the argument cordial discussion over the locations of cricket / cricket (disambiguation) / cricket (insect) could be reopening. See Talk:Bill_O'Reilly and Talk:Cricket (disambiguation). -- ALoan (Talk) 15:49, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
The O'Reilly discussion still seems to be live: an earlier comment that seemed to concede that the status quo should be maintained has been overwritten. Johnlp 08:49, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Just to let you all know that I've now completed the red-links in {{National women's cricket teams}}. We now have stubs at the least for all women's national teams (that I know of). I've also expanded on some of the articles that were already there, and some still need expansion, especially Australian women's cricket team and Indian women's cricket team. Andrew nixon 09:17, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Blimey. You are a hero. Have some swords to add to the oakleaves. -- ALoan (Talk) 11:14, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
We're running out of awards, aren't we... :D Still, agreed. Well done Andrew. Sam Vimes | Address me 11:19, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
Thank's guys. I'm not running out of things to do though, and have just created an article on the Philadelphian cricket team that played first class cricket until the First World War. Andrew nixon 11:52, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
Well, I am saving up the diamonds and the gold star ;) ... -- ALoan (Talk) 12:42, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
Excellent. :) JH 10:01, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

English-bio-stubs, over-full, subcats proposed

I believe England is the first country to have its cricket-bio-stub type reach "needs to be split" proportions, so the question arises, on what axis to create subcategories? On the basis of the existing permanent categories, splitting by county, by form of international cricket (or maybe just a single merged type for internationalists?), or by historical era all look to be viable. I've blanket-proposed a split on one-or-other of these bases here; please comment if you have any thoughts. Alai 13:45, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I've replied there, but more opinions would be useful. Stephen Turner (Talk) 15:48, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
A related question is what should be the qualification for a cricketer to be notable enough to merit a Wiki bio as of right. Obviously all Test and ODI players (which I believe all already have an article). For English county players, perhaps something along the lines of 10,000 f-c runs or 500 f-c wickets or 500 f-c wicket-keeping dismissals might be a suitable cut-off point. That imposes a slight handicap on modern county players, now that fewer f-c matches are played than usaed to be the case. And you'd need different criteria for players who play their f-c cricket overseas. Also outstanding players who didn't meet the criteria for any reason (brilliant career cut short by injury, for instance) could still be included. (Then there are cricket administrators and writers.) The idea is that all who meet the criteria should be included, not that all who fail to meet them should be excluded. JH 10:10, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
Another criteria for English county players could be anyone who has captained their county, anyone who has scored more than 1000 runs in a season or taken 100 wickets in a season. Andrew nixon 10:22, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
Wow. That's a lot stricter than the project had before; the criteria we hammered out a year ago "played f-c/list A cricket, or ICC Trophy finals." We might never get articles on all of those, but that's not a reason for deleting them; there are things that can be verifiably written, since most of them had obituaries in Wisden and have dates in CricketArchive. Sam Vimes | Address me 11:23, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
I'd forgotten about that criteria Sam..... should probably keep that I think. But there does seem to be some need to subcategorise. Andrew nixon 11:37, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
That was before my time. :) Including every cricketer who has ever played f-c or List A cricket seems to me to be over-ambitious. I would think that the number of players might run into the thousands. There's no point in setting a target that can never be achieved. Also doesn't Wiki have a "notability" criterion for entries? It seems to me hard to demonstrate that someone who played one or two f-c games really justifies an entry. JH 15:37, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
WP:BIO refers to "sportspeople who have played in a fully professional league" so our criterion fits pretty well with that. I don't think it should be viewed as a target to include all such players though, just a criterion for them to be permissible. Stephen Turner (Talk) 00:15, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
Problem there is that prior to the early 60s, English domestic cricket at least was not fully professional. Andrew nixon 04:20, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

(returning to left) Actually what WP:BIO says is "a fully professional league, or a competition of equivalent standing in a non-league sport such as swimming, or at the highest level in mainly amateur sports or other competitive activites that are themselves considered notable". I don't think it's at all unreasonable to include amateur first-class cricketers in that.

As for the other question: I don't pretend to be a great writer, but I can do a reasonable bio of a good cricketer (say Brian Brain) in about a day, and of course with those cricketers for whom little information is available (eg Norman Jolly) it takes considerably less time. There are just short of 500 men who have played for Worcestershire at f-c or List A level (see User:Loganberry/Worcs for the full list). Even if no-one else ever wrote an article on one of them, and allowing for wikibreaks and suchlike, I think I could have something on all of them in a couple of years or so. I don't think that's a ridiculous aspiration.

Personally I'd be sorry to see any sort of harsher notability standards; I think the ones we have now are about right. I think anyone who has played f-c (or List A) cricket is pretty much by definition notable. Loganberry (Talk) 20:46, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm not going to go around trying to saw things off, but I think we should try and concentrate on the most notable guys first, so that we get a focus on the core concepts. I could choose to write articles on Domestic cricketers from South Australia, but I feel that it is best to go for the Test players first before going for some guys who have played a handful of county games or Ranji Trophy especially as there are 27-28 teams in Ranji Trophy.
I do see your point, but the honest fact is that, speaking for myself, I'm more motivated by the idea of writing bios on Worcestershire county players (even relatively minor ones) than I am by writing similar articles for, say, New Zealanders who played a couple of Tests but whom I know nothing about. I think I can do a better job on the former type of article than on the latter, simple as that. Loganberry (Talk) 22:52, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

In any case, I wonder if we should set ourselves a target of having at least on FA on a current player for each major cricket country by March next year. That way be can try to get an FA on the main page to coincide with the WC next year, choosing a player from a matching country to those which are playing in the final, semifinal, etc. Blnguyen | BLabberiNg 03:34, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

The Wisden Cricketers of the Century would be a good place to start (at least the four who have stopped playing - Shane Warne would be difficult), plus W. G. Grace. Only two of the seven articles in Category:Top-importance cricket articles are featured (although we have not done too much assessment, looking at the rather sparsely-occupied sister categories).
Perhaps we should reactivate the cricket collaboration of the month, with a view to getting some of them featured? -- ALoan (Talk) 10:04, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
We currently have one Good Article, namely Indian cricket team which User:Nobleeagle is trying to FA. In addition, my main wiki-task right now is Cricket World Cup (basing it on the FIFA World Cup and Rugby World Cup FAs) except I won't be able to expand on it for about a months to academic pressures. Btw, anyone heard of Tony Cozier's History of the Cricket World Cup. It would be a very valuable source of info for the article. GizzaChat © 12:19, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
I've been doing some major work on Canadian cricket team, including a major expansion of the history section. I'm currently making my way through the red-links on the page. I think that there is enough there that with a bit of hard-work, we could get that up to Good Article status. It's interesting to look at the comparison from what the article was like at the beginning of the year. http://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=Canadian_cricket_team&diff=77518893&oldid=30712168] Andrew nixon 13:32, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
Otherwise, Darren Gough should be a candidate, since we have a free pic and he's been in the media for other reasons than his cricket. Sam Vimes | Address me 13:08, 25 September 2006 (UTC)


Quick question on old photos

Maybe not the best place to ask, but someone might know. I'm going to be writing a quick article on the early 20th Century Dutch cricketer Carst Posthuma [9] and his cricinfo profile contains three photos, all of which are marked with "We have been unable to ascertain copyright details for this picture." The one I'd like to use is this one which does have a date on it (12 August 1901). The way I understand copyright on photos is that when the author is unknown, it expires 70 years after the date the photograph was taken. So am I right, and is it safe to upload this image, and if so what tag should I put on it? Andrew nixon 13:56, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, section 12(2), as amended: "If the work is of unknown authorship, copyright expires at the end of the period of 70 years from the end of the calendar year in which it is first made available to the public." So it looks like you're in the clear with a 1901 photo. I can't answer definitively about which tag should be used, but there is a {{PD-because}} tag which ought to do if nothing more specific is around. Loganberry (Talk) 02:36, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
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