Sport | Cricket
Scorers have the worst job in the world
Twenty20 is fast-paced and full of excitement. No one would have ever thought of cricket turning out to be so quick a game.
- By K. R. Nayar, Senior Reporter
- Published: 23:03 June 18, 2009
Trent Bridge: Twenty20 is fast-paced and full of excitement. No one would have ever thought of cricket turning out to be so quick a game. But those who planned this format did not spare a thought for the people behind the scene who gather information ball by ball and relay it to the world.
The plight of scorers here has to be seen to be believed. The number of columns that they need to fill in the score sheet following a dismissal hasn't reduced just because it is a Twenty20 match. It is the same as in Tests or One-dayers and the time they have for all of this is minimal.
With the batsmen sitting in the dug out, the time that it takes to reach the wicket after a dismissal is only 90 seconds. And within this gap the scorer has to fill the number of balls the dismissed batsman has faced, the partnership, the boundaries and sixes he hit, the fall of wicket, and also enter the name of the next batsman.
In Tests and One-dayers, scorers can fill everything at ease because the batsman walks out of the pavilion and very often down a series of steps slowly to the wicket. By this time the scorers are able to complete all details and be ready for the next delivery.
It is all about calculations, and given the pace at which news is relayed these days, a wrong score can reach millions of readers in a flash. The days when scorers used to use different colour pencils to mark boundaries and sixes, wides and no balls have ended with Twenty20 because by the time you search for the right colour the next ball would have been bowled.
At the Oval, I happened to sit next to the press box scorer and the poor man could just not budge from his seat even for a cup of tea. Yet he managed to announce the number of balls since the last boundary was hit and how many balls it took for the new batsman to score his first six.
Frankly, after watching the scorer work at such an express pace, I realised how lucky I am when compared to him. At least, I have the time to throw a glance at the beautiful cheerleaders at the fall of a wicket.
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