Sonstiges » And not just because he is only

SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- Dino Babers has watched his winning percentage as a head coach drop nearly 6 percent during his first year at Syracuse. Hes still adamant the program is headed in the right direction, even after a lopsided loss on Senior Day.I think theyve written the introduction, this senior class, Babers said Monday, two days after a 45-14 home loss to Florida State, which is up two notches this week to No. 15 in the AP Top 25 . I think this program is trending up.Syracuse (4-7, 2-5 ACC) was trending big-time five weeks ago after Babers gave a stirring postgame speech after the Orange upset then-No. 17 Virginia Tech in the Carrier Dome. That win was followed by another, at Boston College, before reality returned.Syracuse has now lost three straight , outscored by 100 points, also beaten by No. 4 Clemson (54-0) and N.C. State (35-20) during the late-season swoon.Before Saturdays game, the school handed out bobbleheads honoring former Orange All-America Floyd Little, one in a long line of stellar tailbacks the university is renowned for -- from Jim Brown to Heisman Trophy winner Ernie Davis to Little to Larry Csonka, and so on. Then, with its offensive line banged-up and starting quarterback Eric Dungey out for the second straight game, Syracuse was outgained 654-233 and its run game was stopped again in its tracks, managing 37 yards on 35 carries.Syracuse enters the final week of its regular season ranked 122nd in rushing (ahead of only six other teams), averaging 109.7 yards per game and 2.99 yards per carry, a telltale statistic for the teams scoring woes.Even with Dungey putting up big yardage numbers earlier in the season, the Oranges up-tempo attack has had a difficult time scoring -- Syracuse ranks 112th, averaging 22.5 points. Before he was hurt in early November against Clemson, the Orange averaged just over eight points in the second half of seven games against FBS teams, failing to score in six of 14 quarters after halftime.The key to any football game is being able to run the football and being able to stop the run on the other side, Babers said. When you can do those things, you can always be consistent. You can write it down, its never going to change.Before the opening kick on Saturday, Florida State passed the eye test, especially on defense. The Seminoles had seven players on the line 280 or bigger, and 5-10 freshman Levonta Taylor was the only player in the secondary under 6 feet.Recruiting that sort of lineup is foremost on the mind of Babers, now 41-23 as a head coach.Its been my most challenging year, mainly because of the process and making sure everyone understands how difficult this was, Babers said. A lot of guys are not playing the positions they were recruited for. As this process moves forward and we start to bring more personnel in, I think its only going to get better, faster. It takes time.Were going to be back to where we need to be. Were trying to build this to last so that it never breaks down again.Dungey, sidelined by a vicious first-quarter hit to the shoulder and head at Clemson, and backup Zack Mahoney are the only ones listed this week on the depth chart for Pitt. Babers said Mahoney likely will be the starter and reiterated that he did not know if Dungey had received results of further tests regarding his injury.---More AP college football: www.collegefootball.ap.org and https://twitter.com/AP-Top25---Follow Kekis on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Greek1947Wholesale Bulls Jerseys .C. - The Carolina Hurricanes have placed backup goalie Anton Khudobin on injured reserve with an unspecified lower-body injury. Chicago Bulls Store .C. -- Manny Malhotra had two goals and an assist, leading the Carolina Hurricanes to a 6-3 win over the Ottawa Senators on Saturday. https://www.cheapbulls.com/ . Numbers Game examines the deal that sees Michael Del Zotto and Kevin Klein switch places. The Predators Get: D Michael Del Zotto. Bulls Jerseys China . That left plenty of energy for pitching books and swatting away free agency questions. Anthony had 24 points and nine rebounds, and the Knicks avenged an embarrassing home loss with a rout of their own, beating the Boston Celtics 114-88 on Wednesday night for their third straight victory. Bulls Jerseys 2020 . Clarkson had been dealing with an elbow injury in early January and will be out of action for at least one week. He has three goals and five assists through 36 games with the Leafs this season.In the first Test against Bangladesh last month, Gareth Batty took four wickets, went for fewer runs an over than Moeen Ali and Adil Rashid, and England won. For the second Test, England dropped the veteran offspinner in favour of his Surrey team-mate, the left-arm orthodox spinner Zafar Ansari, who went round the park some and got only two wickets as England lost by a fair bit. Yet it was Ansari and not Batty who lined up against India in Rajkot earlier this month.In England last summer, Batty took almost twice as many first-class wickets as Ansari. Of course, Ansari is 15 years younger with a long career ahead of him. As a left-armer, he offers variation to Moeens offspin and Rashids leggies. But could it be, though, that the England selectors always had Ansari pencilled in for the India Tests, with an eye on cricket history?England have only ever won four Test series in India. Each time, a left-arm spinner has featured prominently. Monty Panesar in 2012-13, Phil Edmonds in 1984-85, Derek Underwood in 1976-77. Douglas Jardine took two left-arm spinners to India in 1933-44, Hedley Verity and James Langridge, who took 33 of Englands 58 wickets. Never since has an England cricket team left for India without a slow left-armer in their touring party.Batty might have spun the ball more than Ansari in Rajkot, and offered Alastair Cook more control. He might even have got more wickets. But he wouldnt have been able to send down the sort of delivery with which Ansari almost got Cheteshwar Pujara in the first innings. Bowling round the wicket to the right- hander, Ansari trotted in close to the umpire and the wicket before leaping out wide in the delivery stride to create an angle and firing one in towards off stump. As it landed, the ball straightened - not enough to take it away from the batsman but enough to alter the natural angle of the delivery, which without the straightening have gone on to leg stump.Pujara, expecting a bit more turn than there was, played outside the line, was struck on the pad, and given out by umpire Chris Gaffaney. The decision was overturned using the DRS, as the ball was found to be bouncing over the stumps, but later in the innings Ansari dismissed nightwatchman Amit Mishra and Ajinkya Rahane with similar deliveries.Geoff Miller, who toured with Underwood in 1976-77 and was an England selector at the time of Panesars series in 2012-13, says that conditions in India suit left-arm spinners. It will turn out there but not always straightaway and not every ball, he says. That inconsistency makes the ball that straightens slightly particularly deadly. If the ball is not spinning, the left-arm-around angle gives the bowler a chance to beat batsmen on the inside as well as the outside.Ravindra Jadeja has taken 67 wickets at 18.73 on home pitches. He doesnt spin the ball that much or that often, but hes always an lbw threat. Pakistans Abdur Rehman caused England all sorts of problems on similar pitches, in Dubai in 2012-13. Fourteen of his 19 wickets in that series were either bowled or lbw.Former England left-arm swing bowler John Lever, who made his Test debut on the 1976-77 tour, says that when the left-armer bowls wide of the stumps, the right-hand batsman finds it more difficult to line up the delivery. The batsman has to decide, late, whether to play or leave, he says. If it doesnt turn and you leave it, theres a problem.Unlike with offspinners, the angle at which left-armers deliver the ball means that they dont actually have to bowl a doosra to cause the batsman an additional problem.The sort of ball that Ansari got his wickets with in Rajkot, the sort Jadeja bowls and Rehman bowled, starts off looking like its going to slide in with the arm. On landing, it straightens marginally or just holds its line. This presents right-hand batsmen with a confusing set of angles to deal with. Particularly a batsman who sets himself early against the balls original trajectory, towards leg stump. Or who, like Pujara against Ansari, plays outside the line, expecting it to turn away from the bat. These are the sort of deliveries that Kevin Pietersen had problems with a few years ago.Nine of Panesars 17 wickets in 2012-13, were either bowled or lbw. So were ten of Veritys and Langridges 33, but only three of Edmonds and five of Underwoods 1976-77 tally. As Ansari showed when he had R Ashwin caught at cover on the final evening in Rajkot, as England chased an unlikely victory, left-armers can get wickets with flight and traditional spin too.Even when left-arm spinners havent won series in India for England, theyve still been in the side, pressed into service for India duty. On Englands second tour to India, in 1951-52, Malcolm Hilton, a left-armer from Lancashire, played two of his four Tests and took 11 wickets. In 1963-64, England picked Yorkshires Don Wilson for the first time. A horse for the Indian course, Wilson played only one more Test, seven years later, against New Zealand.dddddddddddd Ian Blackwell went to India in 2005-06.Regulars Tony Lock, Norman Gifford, Phil Tufnell and Ashley Giles have also toured India with England.Offspinner James Tredwell, who went to India in 2012-13 as back-up to Panesar and Graeme Swann, says that left-arm spinners have another advantage over other types of slow bowlers in that they tend to bowl the ball into the pitch a bit more, with a bit more pace. Peter Such, the former England offspinner and current ECB lead spin coach, says that this is an advantage on slower pitches, like those in India. Underwood, Edmonds and Panesar could all get the ball through at a strong pace without losing the ability to spin the ball, he points out.Englands left-arm spinners in their winning series in India have been both economical and a wicket threat. In 2012-13, Panesar took 17 wickets as England came back from 1-0 down to take the next two Tests. In the final match, with England needing a draw to clinch the series, he bowled 52 overs for just 81 runs. Edmonds too was miserly in 1984-85. In the second Test, in Delhi, where England won to square the series, he sent down 88.2 overs for just 143 runs (while taking six wickets). During the series, he went, on average, at 2.11 an over. Underwood, too, kept the runs down when he wasnt taking wickets. His economy rate, 2.01, was the lowest of all England bowlers in 1976-77. Deadly would put the ball on the spot all the time, create pressure, says Lever, who bagged 26 wickets on that tour himself. Underwood hated going for runs, you could see it in his body language, in his facial expressions. He was always trying to bowl dot balls. A dot ball is a good ball, hed say. Last ball of every over had to be a dot ball.Such observes that left-armers have another way of keeping the score down - bowling over the wicket into the rough outside the right-handers leg stump. Giles did this to great effect in 2000-01, much to Sachin Tendulkars annoyance.Tredwell adds that left-armers can also cause trouble for left-hand batsmen later in the game, when rough starts appearing outside their off stump from right-arm seam bowlers following through on the pitch. There arent as many left-arm seamers, so offspinners spend more time bowling on the good part of the wicket, he says.Not that this has mattered much down the years. In 49 Test matches spread over 13 tours and 84 years, only 14 left-hand batsmen (of whom only six are recognised batsmen) have played for India against England in India.The preponderance of right-handers is borne out by figures from Indian domestic cricket. Of the top 20 all-time Ranji Trophy run-makers, only four are left-handers. Not hugely surprising, then, that ten of the top 20 bowlers are left-arm spinners. As Such says, Spinners are more effective when their stock delivery turns away from the batsman.The left-armers magic didnt work every time for England. Tufnell struggled in 1992-93, as did all the other England bowlers. Panesar and Ian Blackwell took five wickets for 383 runs between them in 2005-06, and on the next tour, Panesar averaged over 50. Even Underwood struggled on the flat, lifeless pitches that India prepared in 1981-82. Its also worth pointing out that in all four series in which they were successful, England scored heavily enough for the sort of attritional approach favoured by their left-arm spinners to reap dividends.Ansari is very much Englands third spinner. His job is to keep things steady, in shorter spells, while Moeen, Rashid, and maybe, given the right conditions, the seamers, threaten Indias batting line-up.In some ways it will be harder for Ansari to do this than it was for his more illustrious predecessors. And not just because he is only starting out on his career and is as yet unproven at Test level, but because cricket isnt such an attritional game these days and batsmen are adept at finding ways of scoring off even the most miserly bowler.The DRS might make lbws more likely but it also encourages batsmen to play with their bat rather than bat and pad. In the past, a stock ball from a left-arm-round like Ansari, angled into the pads, might have brought a tentative prod forward, the batsman unsure whether the ball will straighten or turn. These days, batsmen are more flexible, less patient.If, though, Ansari can provide England with a solid third spinning option, and along the way snaffle out one or two Indian batsmen with the sort of awkward delivery that did for Mishra and Rahane and almost got Pujara in Rajkot, then Trevor Bayliss, Cook and Co, will be happy. And the legend of the left-arm English spinner in India will live on. ' ' '