Hello from Philadelphia

Irish person here but dropping in to say hello! Very cool to see people across the pond playing!
Ritchie from Admin saying welcome to you over in The Emerald Isle. We are a small but friendly forum with a multi national membership. If you, like us, dont like trouble makers then rest easy and post in peace as we have forbidden trolling. Why not take a spin round the place to familiarize yourself. The forum is currently in the process of updating our rather dreary software to a cool dark mode. Will keep you posted on its progress....
 
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Hi Ritchie, thank you for the warm welcome! I'm relatively new to cricket but conducting some research about the sport so I'm enjoying reading through the many threads here and seeing the knowledge of the members :)
 
Hi Ritchie, thank you for the warm welcome! I'm relatively new to cricket but conducting some research about the sport so I'm enjoying reading through the many threads here and seeing the knowledge of the members :)
Hi there! I'm Jessica from the UK. Great to have you on board. Join us in the quizzes if that's what you enjoy :thumbsu:
 
Hi Ritchie, thank you for the warm welcome! I'm relatively new to cricket but conducting some research about the sport so I'm enjoying reading through the many threads here and seeing the knowledge of the members :)
What do we call you mate. I have been a strong supporter of Irish cricket during their long bid to become a Test status nation. Is a pity our game is run by a visionless organisation such as the ICC as Ireland has been a Test playing nation since 2018 yet you could count on one hand the amount of Tests she has played. Australia is yet to play your blokes, hoping that will be remedied soon perhaps even before next England Ashes tour in '27.
 
Hi there! I'm Jessica from the UK. Great to have you on board. Join us in the quizzes if that's what you enjoy :thumbsu:

Hi Jessica! That sounds fun, when do they run? I confess I know relatively little about cricket but I'm conducting some research for a college project into the knowledge gaps of pro and amateur players. I realised how technical cricket is during the recent world cup so have been trying to learn more about it in this regard as I think it would make an interesting study :)
 
What do we call you mate. I have been a strong supporter of Irish cricket during their long bid to become a Test status nation. Is a pity our game is run by a visionless organisation such as the ICC as Ireland has been a Test playing nation since 2018 yet you could count on one hand the amount of Tests she has played. Australia is yet to play your blokes, hoping that will be remedied soon perhaps even before next England Ashes tour in '27.

I'm Ferdia, Ritchie. Yes, it seems like there are barriers to growing the game in Ireland. I've been chatting to a lot of players as part of my study and many have expressed similar sentiments. There is definitely a strong connection between Ireland and Australia so hopefully that will happen soon as you said 👍
 
Hi Jessica! That sounds fun, when do they run? I confess I know relatively little about cricket but I'm conducting some research for a college project into the knowledge gaps of pro and amateur players. I realised how technical cricket is during the recent world cup so have been trying to learn more about it in this regard as I think it would make an interesting study :)
Our quizzes are in the 99.94 thread :thumbsu:
Just join in, it's a great place to mingle too with other members.
I like watching cricket and we played it at school. I much prefer it to football.
 
Ferdia you are talking with a cricket tragic of many decades, so please feel free to pick my mind for anything cricket, technical or otherwise.
Is Ferdia short for Ferdinand?
 
Thanks Ritchie, I appreciate it and would love the opportunity to chat with you! How best should we go about it? Would a video call work or would you prefer to keep communications on the forum?

I was wondering would it be okay to make a post about our research somewhere on the forum but I'm conscious not to spam your members, we definitely don't want that. Some folks might be interested in it though and I'd love to hear their thoughts. Essentially I'm research ways to potentially bridge the knowledge and skills gaps between amateur players and professionals in different sports. Some sports like long distance running, road cycling etc are less relevant because technique will only get you so far if you're competing against people with much bigger V02 maxes than you. But for highly technical sports like cricket I think the gap could be bridged or, at the very least narrowed, if the right knowledge was out there. But I'd love to hear folks' thoughts on it who have experience playing or coaching the game.

Oh and Ferdia is an Irish (Gaelic) name on its own, not short or long for anything :)
 
Would a video call work or would you prefer to keep communications on the forum?
Any question pose them here as it is private otherwise post on the Baggy Greens thread.

If you want to reach a far wider audience go the the Whirlpool Forum/Cricket section. But feel free to stay here to talk cricket and have fun in our 99.94 Club.
 
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Cool, thanks Ritchie :)

Okay so we have got a survey running with the questions, the link for that is here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1...hYW0i7IkqCqVvkkqFCyDviUg/viewform?usp=sf_link

I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on another aspect though; do you see a dichotomy between "training" and "coaching" in cricket? To give a really simple explanation of what we mean with that, let's say you play sport and you want to improve your 40 yard dash. Most amateur players will probably do some extra squats in the gym and then run 10, 20, 50 or however many 40 yard dashes as practice in the hope of getting faster. But, in the pro level of sports, they'll run maybe 2 or 3 dashes and a coach will come in and say "Your head is in the wrong place, you're heel striking, you're not driving your arms" etc. Essentially out theory is that this kind of knowledge exists in the pro level and knowledge, unlike talent, can be shared.

So would you say a similar dichotomy exists in cricket?
 
So would you say a similar dichotomy exists in cricket?
Yes. Amateur sport is mostly done for the love of competition and achievement, whereas the over riding reason for professional sportsmen/women is monetary qain. The greatest sporting event on the planet, the Olympics remains amateur because athletes want to represent their nations above all else. Tennis went from a great sport to a business once it went professional. I grew up watching the amateur greats of tennis, Laver, Rosewall, Roche, Emerson, and several Americans whose names escape me. This was great tennis with every point played with passion as well as sweat, then a hand shake and a trophy at the end of the match instead of a $million bucks and an attitude problem as of today. I hope this helps.
I need to sleep now.
 
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