By Garfield Robinson, USA

Viv Richards hit 61 off 36 deliveries © Getty Images

Viv Richards once surprised an interviewer by telling him that he thought his best innings was the 61 he made in 1983 against India at Sabina Park. I was there. And I can tell you that there is no innings that stands out more in my memory than the one he played that day.

Considering the many great innings that he played, why was that innings of little over a half-century so special to him? I don’t know the answer to that; I can’t recall if he gave one. I can tell you, however, why it was special to me.

It was my first time at a Test match. My friend and I decided to cut afternoon classes in order to watch the final session, despite everyone telling us we were in for an evening of boredom. Though I am yet to understand how an evening spent watching the likes of Holding and Roberts and Marshall and Garner could ever be called boring—whatever the state of the game.

The West Indies had replied to India’s 251 in the first innings by scoring 254. The entire fourth day had been lost due to rain, and the game seemed heading for a tame draw at tea on the last day with India 168 for 6. Andy Roberts thought otherwise. His rousing spell after tea, liberally sprinkled with short balls threatening rib cage and throat proved too much for the Indians and they quickly succumbed, leaving the West Indies with 172 to make and about 28 overs to make them.

Greenidge and Haynes added 46 before Haynes got out going hard for runs. His 34, it turns out, was made off just 21 balls and it was clear that he understood the urgency of the situation. Greenidge, on the other hand, was batting much too slowly for our liking, and we let him know.
He had scored a painstaking 70 in the first innings and it appeared, to us at least, that he had set out to play in similar manner.

We thought assault and battery was what was required and so we were not disappointed when he was out for 42, scored without a single boundary. Lloyd, in the meantime, had decided to come in at 3 when we were expecting the Master Blaster himself. He didn’t very last long, scoring only 3, and so it was now Viv’s turn.

He strode to the wicket like he owned Sabina Park and immediately set about the bowling. His first scoring stroke was a huge 6 and the onslaught had begun. Strokes to all parts of Sabina Park served to whip the crowd into a frenzy. At one point it seemed that every fielder was manning the boundary ropes, yet Richards was still able to beat them.

One straight hit landed in our section of the crowd and my friend went berserk. He so lost control of himself that he strayed onto the playing area, and only returned to his senses after being barked at by an angry guard dog that almost escaped his handler in striving to reach him.

What an evening it turned out to be! Viv’s 61 came off only 36 balls* with five fours and four sixes, and everyone there knew that they had witnessed something truly special. He returned to the pavilion at 156 for 5 with 16 needed for an unbelievable victory. Without his awesome innings West Indies would surely not have won, and victory was still only achieved in the very last over, with Dujon hitting a full toss for six, in fast fading light. Next day at school we made sure everyone knew that we had been there.

Dedicated to Elaine Hanson, 1949-2012. She loved sports.

*This blog originally said Richards' 61 came off 31 balls. It has been corrected

The bowler’s biggest ally is variation; unfortunately, this skill never makes it to the statistics © AFP

By Arvind Kumar, Germany

Whenever a bowler is hit for a boundary these days, commentators resort to all kinds of clichés to describe the shot, followed by remark on how the bowler should be bowling ‘in the right areas’. With batsmen increasingly dominating, ‘bowling in the right areas’ is one of the most heard phrases in contemporary commentary. It certainly gives the impression that the commentators know what these so called right areas are, but they hardly ever elaborate; the comment is rarely followed up with a sensible, implementable suggestion.

So, let us try to narrow down these ‘right areas’ by isolating the bad areas. Let’s start with a bad line to bowl. Down the leg side is, not surprisingly, never considered good: a slight error and the delivery will be a wide, and the umpires cannot rule lbw to all balls pitching outside leg and most in the vicinity. Too much outside the off stump and the batsman has the room to play a shot or the opportunity to leave it well alone. So unless the bowler can move the ball a touch in or out, there is not much point to this line either. Next, the length of the ball. Bowling too full or too short is out, with an area something like two-thirds of the length of the pitch being ideal. Short balls without much pace only invite well executed pull shots; too full and, once more, it’s rather easy to pick off if it is not combined with swing. So, that’s it then, that ball at about two-thirds down around the off-stump, the so called ‘corridor of uncertainty’. But all bowlers know this; this is the ball that they practice, over and over.

It is not true, however, that a ball bowled in the ‘right areas’ is guaranteed to get you a wicket, or even that it will trouble the batsman every time you bowl it. Evidently, balls pitched well within the ‘right areas’ are smacked for easy boundaries and balls pitched in the so called bad areas get you a prized wicket with some regularity. A little research using the Hawk-Eye data available on ESPNcricinfo can confirm this. So if you have played cricket at any serious level, you know that in reality there are no ‘right areas’.

There is no perfect ball which can give you a wicket every time you bowl it; you may get some success on few occasions but soon the batsmen will develop a strategy to play that ball for maximum score. From the innovation of leg-glance by Ranjitsinhji all those years ago, to the switch-hit of recent times, there are clear indications that batsmen can come up with an antidote to any delivery given some time. So, in my experience, the ‘right areas’ are a myth created by the modern commentator who wants to sound educated in cricket.

Once a batsman senses what a bowler is going to do, he can execute any shot with some efficiency. So the biggest enemy of the bowler is predictability, the influx of monotony in his bowling, no matter how elegant it appears from the commentary area. The bowler’s biggest ally is variation, a touch of surprise in his bowling. Unfortunately, this skill never makes it to the statistics; we think that Glenn McGrath was a great bowler because he consistently bowled in the corridor of the uncertainty, but I think you should watch another video clip of him. Not just McGrath, revisit videos of any successful bowler and you will find unpredictability was the main weapon in his armour. Not those fabled ‘right areas’.

From Darren Harold, New Zealand

Nothing tops watching a match live at the ground © Getty Images

What a fantastic time to be a cricket fan. As I pen this piece I am part way through a long cricketing day – in hours only, the time is positively racing by! In the space of one day, I’ll hear, read and see the exploits of six international teams playing in all three of the games’ formats via a seemingly endless list of media sources.

Over the course of a tiresome Friday in the office, I listened to my native New Zealand turn in a mediocre ODI performance against a Zimbabwean side in Dunedin still struggling to reacclimatise themselves to the rigours of international cricket. Though not the decisive victory they were hoping for, the feats of McCullum, Guptill, Nicol et al. were described via an audio commentary on my laptop, while I checked the details on ESPNcricinfo’s live scoring.

Upon arriving home, Aggers, Boycs and Blowers were setting the scene before the opening session of the third Pakistan versus England test from Dubai. Competing with the excited shouts of my young son, their dulcet tones filtered out of my iPad thanks to a digital feed via BBC Radio 5 Live’s Test Match Special (TMS).

Very soon, I’ll flick on the television to see if the hapless Indians can finally get a victory on their Australian tour in the second T20 from the MCG. The mute button will be on though so I can keep listening to the game in the desert – that, and I can only take so much of the Channel 9 cheerleading (sorry, commentary) team.

With the vast sums of money now flowing through our game and players seen as commodities to raise a profit rather than craftsmen playing their trade, the ever increasing amount of international cricket played across the globe provides spectators with endless opportunities to indulge their passion.

But it hasn’t always been so. Growing up as a child, international cricket was special for a couple of reasons –there was far less of it, and even less was broadcast outside the two countries involved. Stuck at the bottom of the world in our little corner of South Pacific paradise, we got very little coverage if New Zealand wasn’t playing.

New Zealand’s international matches were shown on a publicly owned television station (we only had two channels at the time) and every series were sponsored by either a tobacco company or a brewery. The same matches were broadcast on national radio, as were some of our domestic first-class matches. On a good day there was occasionally a comment on other international matches on the six o’clock news; if not, you’d have to wait for the newspaper to be delivered the next morning. How things have changed.

Cricket now operates in a global village where an internet connection provides access to matches the world over, regardless of where you call home. Just last week, I could listen to three Test matches in the course of a day, though none illustrated the power of digital media, and the changes in cricket commentary, more than a short session in Abu Dhabi. With the broadcast connections dropping out in the stadium during the second Test, the TMS coverage was off air for little more than a few minutes. It returned via an iPad Skype connection from Abu Dhabi to the studios in England and was then shared around the world. It may have been a little crackly, but it was worth it to see Messers Boycott and Blofeld talking into a tiny iPad microphone as I listened to it on the same device while laughing at Twitter pictures from the commentary box.

The choice of mediums to keep up to date is endless, and is broadcast from cricket grounds, large and small, the world over. There are many more than those I’ve already spoken of. Pay television, in all its guises, pushes pictures to countries where the only viewers are expats, and live internet video streaming means we can watch coverage at our convenience; but don’t tell the ECB – I hear they’re not happy about it. In T20, it’s even become commonplace to have the players miked up to give viewers another perspective, and no-one has done it better than Shane Warne in the BBL. He would describe how he was going to take a wicket, and then deliver - as Brendon McCullum found out. Twitter provides comment from scribes, punters and players alike, all in 140 character slots.

Established cricketer journalists write pieces for any number of websites and online publications and aspiring cricket writers make their point with blogs on every cricketing topic – take your pick, the choices are unlimited. Sites such as ESPNcricinfo provide a one-stop cricket library, including a statistics engine to satisfy even cricket’s most knowledge thirsty anorak – ever wondered who has the most Man of the Match awards in a losing ODI side?

Online cricket forums continue to pop up with the regularity of an Indian wicket, and we can access most of them via a multitude of apps on our mobile phones. There are plenty of other mediums and they just keep coming – thankfully, my better half is a cricket fanatic too, so I get to indulge my cricketing passion.

Many moons ago before we ever met in person she would email me score updates so I can keep up with the cricket during meetings. Even with all the media choices, there is still nothing that tops watching a match live at the ground. It would be easy to never leave the couch, the television, the laptop and the phone, but there is nothing that beats the atmosphere of a live contest. I took my young lad, and his mum, to the final of the HRV Cup T20 a couple of weeks back – his first introduction to our great game.

He left three hours later having tried to evade a security guard and invade the field of play, ridden an old roller and clapped Colin de Grandhomme launching the Canterbury attack out of the ground. But the thing that stuck with him? He got a sponsor’s hat that he now tells all and sundry is his ‘cricket hat’ - you can’t get that kind of involvement at home or social media. Finally, if the media all gets a little too much but you still need your cricket fix, get yourself a copy of Wisden. Cricket’s bible has been around since 1864 so the editors must be doing something right – will Twitter have the same longevity?