Method behind the madness - How I wrote the article.

*This is the third of three posts. First, I'll post a short match report that would be published immediately after the event. Secondly, I’ll post an opinion piece on the match that I would have more time to build a story of the match. Finally, I’ll post how I recorded the match and went about writing it.* 

In one of my very first lectures, I was taught a method by my lecturer John May. Although it applied to football - unfortunately, most things on my course do - the method was how to keep up with a live sporting event for your report.


John's method was to split a page in half, have a half for each side and write any incidents within the game in the relevant teams column and then, infront of you will be a time log of events in the game and a clear idea of who had the better of the game.

With football, I like this method. It allows a clear, uncluttered time log of the game that I can access effortlessly when writing a match report.

However, with cricket, it doesn't work. In cricket, there's too many stories within the game. Most importantly, there's two innings (or four in a Test match), so I need a new method. I'll be experimenting with methods over the coming weeks to establish a foolproof, effective method.

The first one was during the Big Bash League contest between Adelaide Strikers and Melbourne Stars.

My method was simple. 

Team sheets at the top and a basic ball-by-ball commentary with wickets highlighted.

Write the team sheets and any relevant notes and then run an extremely basic ball-by-ball commentary of factors that occured in the game.

Being English, reporting on an Australian cricket game, my obvious bias meant that Kevin Pietersen was the main focus of attention and therefore, I went into a slightly more detailed ball-by-ball commentary during his innings.

This was helped by the fact he was wearing a mic, of course. 

I then decided to do a basic innings summary that I could reflect back on when writing an end-of-match report. Once one innings was done, all I had to do was do the same for the second innings. Simple.

In fact, my job was made even more simple as Adelaide romped to victory. This meant that half-way through their innings when victory seemed certain, I could put down the notepad and begin writing my report.

Using the notes I took of each player before the game (I did the same during the second innings for Adelaide batsman), I knew vital information such as Tim Ludeman being ecstatic to have the chance to open again after Alex Hales had taken his place last season.

This knowledge allowed me to sculpt an opinion piece centred around Ludeman's phenomenal performance.

In terms of the match report, I decided to mainly focus on the performance of the showpiece star Kevin Pietersen and the performance of the Melbourne Stars. 

Writing this piece I was alerted to how Adelaide weren't filled with superstars like Melbourne yet looked the better TEAM.

This was then followed by a tweet via Greg Baum:

 

This was true. Delhi had faltered when he was there.

It wasn't just him, however. Teams with a high number of big-name stars just didn't seem to work. The Galacticos of cricket, perhaps. 

But on the other side of the Galacticos is the other style of team. The Moneyball team.

They prefer statistical evidence of productivity and unfancied players to the stars earning a colossal amount of money.

Yet, these Moneyball teams continually won T20 competitions looking back through the history of the T20 game. As soon as this data proved right, my opinion piece could write itself.

On top of this, I can write a data analysis piece on the effectiveness of a Moneyball team. Joy.

The reports were generally easy to write, but this was a one-sided game in a format that suits a basic method of recording the match.

Plus, Cricinfo is a god-send for cricket writing.

In regards to future recording methods, I'm not sure this method has legs.

Upon reflection, I will print out a team-sheet before the game to write any notes and comments on certain players that could potentially be used during any writing during or after the event.

I will also use separate pages for the innings as I did so during this method. However, I will need to find a better form of recording the data rather than one, long continuous list that didn't leave much space to write thoughts and opinions. 

I'll need to find a method that allows space for noting down opinions along with all wickets, runs and any important milestones in a game.