Outside The Line

The Structure Is Set, Ya Never Change It With A Ballot Pull (FINAL Vol.)

Well, what better way to break an unannounced hiatus than by presenting the Final of Outside the Line’s search for the Ultimate Cricket Shot. I know what you're thinking -- Jesus, that thing is still going on?! And I say, hey, we treat our cheap bloggy conceits very seriously here at OTL, and we will ride them to their ultimate resolution, no matter where that may be.

There's a very strong possibility that the last poll was compromised in some way (incidentally -- fuck you, Vizu Poll Widget!). The tally was lower than expected again, and it seems some votes just don't get counted. It beats me as to why that is.

Nevermind that, since the two finalists were far enough ahead of the pack to show a trend, we'll let them move on. After the final, we might rest the poll for a little while. Here were the results for the third heat:

                                                               

Brian Lara's slash had no problems forging ahead (can a slash forge? Or does a slash charge? These are the thing E.B. White never tells you), and gathered votes from all parts of the globe and across every demographic. Well, we assume it did. (Vizu problems, and all that...) 

The second finalist is an old favourite of the site's, and a man who was in the scene for painfully too short a time period. (We can thank our old jokester friend, Emperor Graeme the First for that one.) Nice to see Zulu still dominating all comers, though. Few characters as mythical as his will ever be seen, in any sport.

Michael Vaughan's efforts also deserve credit, but we already have Mark Waugh in the final to represent the cover drive, so we'll try to do without duplicates.

So here we are, at long last, the Final. The options stare at you on the right. How can you deny them? Get votin'.

The Structure Is Set, Ya Never Change It With A Ballot Pull (Vol.8)

This was definitely the 'Ato Boldon heat' of Outside the Line's search for the ultimate cricket shot. Remember how Ato Boldon was near the top of the sprinting world for more than a decade, always competing against the best, always making it to the podium, and yet he never actually won anything?

(From my entire childhood, all I remember vividly about athletics was Bob Beamon's long jump record, Michael Johnson's 19.32 in Atlanta, and Ato Boldon getting either a silver or a bronze. First to Frankie Federicks and Linford Christie, then to Donovan Bailey, then to Maurice Green, then to Tim Montgomery... Ato was always second prettiest at someone else's ball. He's a strange kind of legend -- good enough to remember, but never good enough to be best.)

It seems VVS Laxman will be playing the Ato Boldon role in this competition.

                                                                   

Laxman cruises easily into the final with his gentle clip off the pads, but there's no doubt who was No. 1 here. With half the vote, Sachin Tendulkar's straight drive commandeers ahead decisively, and looks as strong as anyone in the finals (Last week, we had Rahul Dravid's block and Mark Waugh's cover drive moving forward.)

Not much else to cheer beyond the two Indians. Jesus McChesty Matthew Hayden couldn't even a muster a single mercy vote, and goes back to Queensland empty-handed. (I'm sure he could catch a live shark with those bare hands anyway, so he won't remain that way for long.).

Jacques Kallis, however, definitely will not like the disappointing single-figure total for his masterly on-a-length leave. He came into this competition looking to keep his weekly poll average above 15%, yet he's failed to reach it by more than half. A rare lapse in concentration from old Zhaahck.

Last heat this week, and this one should be the tightest one. We need two more finalists. Options, as always, are on the right. Gotta rock the vote, yo.

The Structure Is Set, Ya Never Change It With A Ballot Pull (Vol.7)

The first heat of Outside the Line's search for the ultimate cricket shot is now over, and we have our first pair of finalists. Here are the results:

                                                                                                              

We didn't prepare seedings beforehand, but if you had asked me who the favourites would've been, I probably would've said Mark Waugh and Rahul Dravid.

I can't say I really expected Dravid to be so utterly dominant, though. I mean, a defensive shot capturing almost half the vote? I think that tells you why Test cricket will never become a mainstream sport -- the joys for the casual fan and those for the geek are just far too different to be reconciled.

It was also surprising to see Pietersen's switch-hit ranking as high as it did... as a shot, it is obviously still in embryonic form and, to my eye at least, looks rather ungainly. Give him another decade or so and a few hundred Twenty20 games to work on it, and things could change. (It must be noted that all the votes KP received came from England.)

Anyway, on to the second heat. Another six classics, another two finalists just waiting for your vote.

The Structure Is Set, Ya Never Change It With A Ballot Pull (Vol.6)

Outside the Line's weekly poll had been put on rest for a little while, partly because the results for the previous one were too close to call, and partly because we never got around to changing it. Voting has now tapered off, so here are the final results:

                                                                                          

So what do these results tell us? For one, that Michael Hussey seems to overachieve in every activity in which he's involved, even lowly online polls. Voters obviously decided he would be as ruthlessly efficient at illegal trafficking as he is at building middle-order innings,  so we can't argue.

Initially, we thought Parthiv's cherubic face would help him rank him higher, but it's clear that the boy is truly growing up. Chin pubes may not win you back a place in the Indian team, but they'll definitely alert customs officials.

We also learned that no matter what he does, Nathan Bracken will never get any love. We thought the fact that he's so often overlooked, while still performing as well as anyone else, would make him an ideal candidate for illicit activity. It turns out he got overlooked even for that.

Finally, we also learned that our readers are racists. (Why else would Russel Arnold end up as the second-highest vote-getter? Has he broken the law before? Has he had a history of indiscipline? Does he have any record of drug use?) Shame on you, people.

On to this week's question. We want to find out what the ultimate individual batting shot is in cricket, and who plays it. There were too many candidates to fit into just one poll, so we've decided to divide it into three different heats, with the top two vote-getters advancing to the final. Vote it up, peoples.

The Structure Is Set, Ya Never Change It With A Ballot Pull (Vol.5)

Among all the commotion regarding the end of the IPL, the two current Test series, the NBA Playoffs, and a swad of unrelated errands, it seems that we forgot to update the (not-so-)weekly poll. Here are the results from the last one:

                                                                              


It seems that Andre Nel is overwhelmingly considered the most responsible of the lot, which is intuitively hard to believe, but it does make some kind of sense. Your kids might end up on a deep sugar rush and jumping on the walls after a visit from uncle ‘Dre, but they probably won’t be punching anything/one or starting any fires.

On to this week’s much more timely Q: Which cricketer would you choose to have as a drug mule? Options on the right. Get a-votin’.

The Structure Is Set, Ya Never Change It With A Ballot Pull (Vol.4)

                                    

Cricinfo is running another poll at the moment ranking the most popular commentators. The results are not what interest me -- we all know the honour will go to Richie Benaud with a typically Stalinesque margin of victory -- but who the nominees are. If you look through the list, you might notice someone's name is missing.

That's right everyone... even Cricinfo thinks Greg Chappell is such a lousy commentator that he doesn't deserve to be mentioned. (When you're getting left out and guys like Waqar Younis are still in the mix, you know you've done something horribly wrong with your life.)

Far be it from us to pile on the man's misery, but this was the orchestrator of the underarm incident, after all... so here are the results of last week's poll! The question was, "If you were given the power to remove someone's voice box from their body till the end of the IPL, whose would it be?" Do I even need to tell you who won? 

                                                     

A valiant effort from the "Well, duh..." twins, Aamer Sohail and Ranjit Fernando, but this one was Chappello's to lose from the very start. Jackman and Siva were there only as decoys... as Verbal Kint tells us, you never put five guilty men in a lineup.

On to this week's Q: "If you needed to find a babysitter a.s.a.p., who would you call first?" Options are on the right.

The Structure Is Set, Ya Never Change It With A Ballot Pull (Vol.3)

Last week’s poll was a tricky one. It didn’t just ask “who’s the ugliest cricketer around?”, which I’m sure has been asked before, and would’ve been a little too simplistic in our minds. Instead, the question asked a hypothetical that made you deal with your own psychological expectations about other people: “If you were asked to date one of these cricket players’ sister, having never previously seen or met them before, whose would it be?” Here are the results:
   

                                                                

 
Because the question was kind of complex, interpreting its results is also hard. Sohail Tanvir and Ajit Agarkar got equal top votes, which either makes them the better looking ones of the bunch, or the ones with physical features most conducive to transmute into female beauty. It’s hard to say.

On the other hand, something that is obviously clear is the hideousness of Kamran Akmal, who failed to grab even a sympathy vote. Ouch. I guess there’s not many guys out there looking for girls with monobrows, horse teeth and shrieking nasal voices. Hard to believe.

(How the hell Nantie Hayward got 5.6% of the vote, though, is something I’d be very interested to find out. Maybe that’s our margin of error. Seriously, though, have you seen this guy?)

                                                  

Anyway, he's probably a cool guy, so I'm glad there are people out there who are not as shallow as us, and can overlook the whole "aborted Martian fetus with third-degree burns look" thing. Good on them.
On to this week's question: "If you were given the power to remove someone's voice box from their body till the end of the IPL, whose would it be??" Get to voting.

The Structure Is Set, Ya Never Change It With A Ballot Pull (Vol.2)

The results of last week's poll -- asking "Which cricketer would you most like to make cry? -- are in, and while the ultimate winner wasn't terribly surprising, I have to admit that the actual margin of victory was a little unexpected. When almost two-thirds of cricket fans want to see you bawling like a little babe (in a field with both Graeme Smith and Harbhajan Singh), you know you've got an "image problem". (To put it mildly.)


                                                                                                      

 

The interesting thing to note was the extent of geographical variation in Ponting-hate -- he was wildly unpopular in four different continents, even gathering votes from Australia. There were pockets of Ponting-hate from places like the American Midwest, the U.A.E., and the Bahamas. Quite impressive, really, and a great sight to see. We weren't just tilting at windmills at Outside the Line, after all.

On to this week's Q: "If you were forced date one player's sister, having never previously met her or seen what she looks like, whose would it be?" The options are, as always, on the right. We tried to keep it IPL-specific, but there was one Hall-of-Famer we just couldn't leave out of contention.

The Structure Is Set, Ya Never Change It With A Ballot Pull

Blogs are nothing if not derivative. Of other blogs, of the mainstream media, hell, sometimes of themselves. Cricket blogs are especially bad in this regard. (It's to be expected, really -- the ratio of existing blogs to original thoughts must be at least 10 : 1, and considering the amount of new blogs propping up every day, that number is bound to rise.) With that in mind, here are the results of Outside the Line's inaugural weekly poll!!

The question was simple: "Who keeps it the realest?" (And if you wanted to point out that, grammatically speaking, it should actually be "most real", then you're not keeping it real.) Here are the results:

                                                                                 

As you can see, the Heather Brooke of world cricket, Kumar Sangakkara, emerged victorious. It was neck and neck between him and Lance Klusener for most of the week, until Sanga played that glorious 94 against Mumbai and charged ahead. (Obviously, people are starting to forget some of Zulu's exploits.) It's interesting to note that VVS Laxman got no votes in the end... I guess that's what he gets for faking outrage at, for once, being made to play on a pitch with some juice in it.

On to this week's question, inspired by recent events: "Which cricket player would you most like to make cry?" The choices are on the right column.