Sleepypete's Pillow

Not long since I got back in from gaming, I put the telly on and there’s Yet More Cricket on there ! This post will be a kind of live-blog … and it’s growing as I see more of the game 🙂

However, instead of the men toiling in vain on an unresponsive pitch, I’m taking my first chance to see England’s women playing in their World Cup. The two England opening bowlers (bowlers take it in turns in cricket) are Katherine Brunt and Isa Guha.

The differences between men’s cricket and women’s cricket shows up straight away in the form of the impish Isa Guha. She must be only about 5 foot 4 if that, so there’s a complete contrast to the 6 foot plus guys who play in the men’s team. However, there’s more energy going into her bowling than you’d see from a Steve Harmison or a Ryan Sidebottom (both those two are in my bad books). The diminutive frame bustles up to the stumps and there’s a whirl of arms and legs as she sends the ball down. It’s effective too, she hasn’t given too many runs away and has picked up a couple of wickets. Oh – she looks far prettier while in motion in the field than she does in that Cricinfo link !

It’s good to see when the skillful player does much better than the power player 🙂

Another thing that’s kinda good to see are the batters wearing caps and hats instead of helmets 🙂 Good because it’s nice to see a pretty face on the screen. “Kinda” because as someone who has been hit on the head, I’ll always get nervous when I see people not wearing a lid. The bowling speeds aren’t too threatening (70mph max, whereas most male fast bowlers send it down at 85-90mph) but a lid is always a good idea in case freak things happen like the two times I’ve been hit on the head while batting.

Seeing the hats brings back memories of me batting in a wide brimmed floppy hat, with everyone on the field knowing that at least one bowler would try and knock it off 🙂 Cricket can be an uncompromising game, with it being accepted that bowlers will try to physically intimidate batsmen by bowling the ball short so it’ll bounce up to throat or rib high. It’s a fun challenge, you can get hurt but it’s easier to whack the short balls a long way 🙂 I knew the hat was a bullseye target every time I wore it ! And the helmet is the same thing in the level of cricket I’d be playing. A bowler won’t intentionally go out on the field to hurt opposing players but they’d absolutely love it if they knocked a helmet off 🙂

The Indian batter bringing up the hat memories is one Mithali Raj, who is bringing a touch of elegance to proceedings, cleverly piercing the field when guiding the ball to an unguarded boundary.

I’m not going to be able to watch much more of this game due to having to work tomorrow but I’ve been enjoying what I’ve seen so far. It’s a very different type of cricket to the men’s game which relies far more on Brawn instead of Brain. What I’m seeing at the moment is bowlers containing the batswomen by being smart and out-thinking them.

Still wondering why the bowlers are only hitting about 65mph max, you’d think they’d be a bit quicker. Maybe it’s the shorter distance they run up, male fast bowlers need to really sprint in to hit 85mph. Trying that longer run is something I tried, however all I got for it was a groin tear ! The key physical differences between men and women aren’t really in how the shoulder is built, so I’m very curious as to why the speeds are so much lower. However, what they miss in speed is made up for in skill at making the ball do what they ask it to, I reckon I’d have a lot of trouble getting runs against these girls.

Did I mention anywhere that these girls are far better to look at than your Ian Bell’s and your Owais Shah’s ? They are definite proof that lady sportspeople can still look great, without needing to turn themselves into Amazons in order to do well in their game.

For lots more info and a few updates on how things are progressing, here’s a link to the Cricinfo site for the tournament. Plus I’ve sprinkled a few player links through the post, so you can see some of what I see 🙂 However, judging by how my Sky picture is breaking up due to the Apocalyptic Rain outside, I think it’s bed time (that and it’s now 1am). But there’s still time for one last link – here’s Isa Guha again trying some not-so-feminine wiles on an umpire 🙂

PS In case the Bell and Shah links make the ladeez think all cricketers are ugly, my Evil Ex only watched cricket if James Anderson was on as she thought he was highly cute and a Monty Panesar celebration will always make the hardest of heart crack a grin.

Doh – extra bit – don’t think I’ll be able to check out that guild in the game … US Servers vs European Servers 🙁

However, if you’d like a couple of guides, I wrote one for crash levelling cooking and another for fishing 🙂 (although the online ones will be better – i.e. they have pictures as well as Wall Of Text !)

PS I’m tempted to try a tank like what’s on that guild site … There’s a certain talent at the bottom of the Fury tree that allows you to use a 2 handed weapon in 1 hand. Big Choppa + Big Shield perhaps ? 🙂

David – don’t worry about it, some people get blank looks when others talk “game” around them, I get blank looks when people talk things like “cooking”, “fashion” and “gardening” around me 🙂 (lol!)

Yep – pretty much always been Horde, although you do tend to jump into one side and stick to it. I went by the majority opinion from when we were setting up the Mercenaries, people seemed to get on well with Horde. I started a few off as Alliance but didn’t take them too far, it’s not the same without the people you know.

Never taken Paladins too far, I’ve raided most with a couple of mages (Iceangel!), tanked with Bash mk1, shot stuff with Finlay the hunter and taken a Mr Shadow (priest) up to level 77 🙂

Will check out the guild site 🙂

PS Iceangel 2 was a bit of a sell out … The original one was undead, the second one was reborn as a Blood Elf.

Yay! Sometimes my greatest lament is that I didn’t roll horde, sadly the friends who drug me into the game had already made that decision for me.

Though… I must admit, my favorite class was Paladin and that’s all there was back in ‘the day’.

Hey, if you ever want to try a RolePlaying server where folks REALLY roleplay (it’s actually fairly fun) I’ve got very low levels (around 20) on Sisters of Elune, and they’re blessed Horde. Blood elfs… I know… I’m a sell out.

Anywho… check out Guild Site

At my original team, you could sometimes hear the wildlife come out when it was getting dark after a game 🙂

At the grounds I play at now, you can definitely hear them ! Although being city instead of country means the wildlife just go around on 2 legs when they’re not on their Funky Mopeds.

i like it when the crickets stay outdoors with their musical mating calls

I will send my brilliant college age son over, he will know exactly what you are talking about. hehe

Not had a good game of Scrabble for far too long.

I’ve touched the Magic Cards world in the past, as I had a little collection of friends at uni who were deep into it. That turned into a bit of an Arms Race though, as they’d spend silly amounts of money and time on improving their Decks. Fun game, shame about the powergaming.

I remember table tennis and Packman, even pinball, but have never played a video game. My kids collected Magic Cards. I play Scrabble and Netchick’s Meet and Greet.

Or more accurately, back to Kalimdor 🙂

I’ve broken the games drought, heading back into World of Warcraft. Kind of like a fresh start though, as instead of getting my highest level character up to a point where he can join in with the group stuff, I’ve been playing my latest Bashara. The reason for going back in is a touch of boredom, I tend to get bored of doing one thing all the time and I guess I’ve needed to pry my attention away from disappointing televised sport.

The original Bash was a girlie troll and her job half the time was Bodyguard. The way most Massive Multiplayer Online games are arranged is that the groups in the game need : Tank, Healer, Damage Dealer. Over my time in the game, I’ve done the Tank & Damage Dealer jobs quite a bit, with a taste of doing the healing job. My Bashara’s are always Warriors, which can either do the Tank job or Damage Dealer job. It’s a different Damage job as I did on my Iceangel characters, as Bash likes to get “up close and personal”.

Here’s Bash mk1, caught in a rare moment of idleness while waiting for a Zeppelin.

That’s Bash in gear from a little while ago, with the original Mercenaries of Darkness tabard on show. I’ve retired that character now, she’s happily sunbathing on a beach somewhere. The new Bashara is a cow, literally 🙂 I haven’t got any screenies though of Bash mk3.

One reason I keep coming back to WoW is the people, you just don’t get the interaction in a single player game that you get in something like Warcraft. Most of the time, I’ll be doing my own thing and barely acknowledging what’s going on (think Tunnel Vision!) but you get some magic moments. Plus one thing that does make me grin is being able to answer questions that crop up 🙂 My knowledge of newer Warcraft is pretty limited but I know a lot about the original game. I tend to be a bit solitary but can get very lonely, the multiplayer aspect takes the edge off that loneliness.

Oh – those warriors I like tend to wear Platemail armour, so seeing :

Tends to get the tank noticed 🙂 The fella in the dressing gown is Furil, who used to be our Chief Bodyguard. The character in the foreground there shouting “tank in a dress !” is me 🙂 It’s my original Iceangel the mage going around in typically unconventional outfits, although this predates me having a Pointy Hat stapled to my head.

There’s a lot of variation in Warcraft as well, although a lot of characters tend to just race through to the end game and not really notice what’s going on. Blizzard also introduced a lot of pop culture and in-jokes, like a little robot called Servo who uses lines from the 6 million dollar man. Some of them take more finding than others, like :

Yep – that’s a certain famous sea monster and that’s the Mercs posing in front of it 🙂 We did this one in the hopes of getting some free passes into the beta testing phase for the first expansion. Beta testing is where you can try out new software before it’s ready for release. The objective is to spot and fix all of the bugs before it gets unleashed on an unsuspecting public. Not too sure if I’d have taken advantage of that as any Beta progress would have been reset when we bought the game and I hate doing things twice. But I was very happy to tag along to get Bash mk1 (that’s her on the left side of the pic) into the entry that we did above. It would have been Wrong to not have the ex Guild Master in the picture.

The Mercs were still functioning fairly well when that picture got taken, although their ex-GM was suffering. That’s from quite some time ago and the situation’s been reversed … At the time of the picture, the ex-GM was getting torn up mentally by some out-of-game issues and the Mercs were doing fine. Since then, the Mercs tore themselves apart as a combination of lack of coherent leadership and a few idiots on the inside and I’ve come to terms more with who I am. I’d like to think I’m a more relaxed and mature person now, having answered the questions posed by a few whittling issues I had.

Wow – that’s a lot of wittering on for a post that was supposed to be short & sweet with a few pictures in ! I guess that must show how enthalled I am with the cricket at the moment. Cricket can sometimes turn into a “wait for things to happen” trench warfare and that’s what we have with the current West Indies v England Test Match. Could be another draw, hopefully not. Unfortunately it could be remembered more for the shortcomings of the umpires than the quality of the play. A game needs to be remembered for the players, however the quality of umpiring in cricket lately means the decision makers are being talked about when they should be invisible.

On cricket – the Sri Lanka tour to Pakistan was big news for all the wrong reasons this week. Good to hear that no players were killed and I hope they all can play again, however the 6 deaths to terrorism in that incident is 6 too many. Hopefully Pakistan will figure out who is misbehaving in their country so they can lock them away.

Last over of the day coming up, which means it’s close to the time when I’ll disappear back into the game again 🙂 Time to close up with one last screenshot :

The scene is Black Rock Depths, in a mountain in the middle of Azeroth. The 3 big guys and Polobuhj on the end are an example of why I was really proud of the Mercs. Of the 5 in that picture, only 2 were English. From starting as a work’s guild, we built something that attracted and kept people from all over Europe. So it must have been a good place to be around 🙂 Bash mk1 is the one making an exhibition of herself, front and centre.

PS That is a platemail bra, although I only realised after quite a few weeks ! It was the best thing available at the time in terms of stats, that’s my story and I’m-a sticking to it 🙂