. He was the captain who rejected early declarations and he followed

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. -- The dozens of floral arrangements surrounding Pat Summitts statue showed the respect for the coach and the love she received around Tennessees campus.Summitt died Tuesday morning at the age of 64, five years after announcing she had early-onset dementia, Alzheimers type, a disease that prematurely ended a womens basketball coaching career in which she led the Lady Volunteers to eight national titles and won a Division I-record 1,098 games. The news created a somber atmosphere on Tennessees campus as fans gathered at Pat Summitt Plaza, the home of a statue of the coach standing and smiling rather than wearing her trademark glare.Amy Palmer of Knoxville said its like weve lost a family member after joining the dozens of fans who signed a We (Heart) Pat sign that was taped to the wall behind Summitts statue.Its very solemn, Palmer said. Theres just a hush. Theres a different air. I think it will always be that way. It will never be the same, ever.Over the course of the day, hundreds of fans visited the plaza featuring the 8-foot, 7-inch bronze statue of Summitt, which reflects the steely resolve she showed in building the Tennessee womens basketball program and leading the fight against Alzheimers disease. Notes, balloons and even a couple of basketballs were placed alongside flowers at the foot of the statue.Its amazing when I came in, how many people were here honoring her at the statue, said Tennessee womens basketball coach Holly Warlick, who played for Summitt and worked as an assistant on her staff for 27 seasons before replacing her. Theyre not basketball players. Theyre just normal people wanting to pay their respects. ... What a great tribute for her.Sandy Sutton of Louisville, Tennessee, picked some Easter lilies from her yard and left them at the feet of Summitts statue. She noted the flowers were just like Pat -- homegrown, a nod to the coachs status as a Tennessee native.Im probably going to cry all day today, Sutton said. She was an outstanding Tennessean. Everything about her just brought inspiration to all of us.Tennessee Waltz was played at campus landmark Ayres Hall at 8 p.m. in honor of Summitts eight national titles.As fans gathered in the plaza, numerous school officials gave emotional press conferences while offering their memories of Summitt across the street at the campus studio. Warlick and athletic director Dave Hart choked up on multiple occasions as they discussed what Summitt had meant to them.No other coach has ever impacted a sport the way she impacted womens basketball, Hart said.People around campus said Summitts loss was evident as soon as the news came out that she had died.Shes a part of all of us, from the custodian (to) the teachers, the professors and the kids, said Samuel Henry, a Knoxville custodial worker who used to shine the floors of the Thompson-Boling Arena basketball court that bears Summitts name.Joan Cronan, Tennessee womens athletic director for much of Summitts tenure, got the news early Tuesday morning and immediately planned to leave her home and head to where the coach had been staying. Then she realized she hadnt made her bed yet.Pat always taught discipline, Cronan said. I remember at the first day of camp, she would ask all the campers, `Did you make your bed this morning? Guess who went back and made their bed this morning. I did.The mourning around town wasnt restricted to Tennessees campus.Knoxville mayor Madeline Rogero announced on Twitter that the lights on the Henley Bridge in downtown Knoxville would be switched to the Lady Vols colors of orange, white and blue in remembrance of coach Summitts deep devotion to Knoxville.Dana Hart, the president of the Womens Basketball Hall of Fame in Knoxville, said the facility had about six times more visitors than they get on a typical summer Tuesday. Summitt played a major role in bringing the Hall of Fame to Knoxville.We always say without Pat Summitt, the Hall of Fame wouldnt be here and there may not even have been a Hall of Fame, Dana Hart said. Cheap Air Max 90 . Pierce was ejected in the third quarter of Indianas 103-86 win Monday. George Hill stole a bad pass and was going in for a layup, and Pierce hustled back and appeared to be trying to wrap him up. Wholesale Air Max Shoes . Just as Montreal was settling into the first full working week of a new year, the Impact announced the appointment of their new head coach. http://www.airmaxclearance.us/ . This should be celebrated because it will not always be this way. With the amount of money given to players by their clubs these days, it is a wonder that so many of those teams allow the sport to continue to take away many of their assets so they can play for a different team in the middle of their season. Air Max Sneaker 2017 . -- Aaron Murray threw for 408 yards and three touchdowns, ran for another score, and led No. Air Max 90 Clearance . The news was first reported on Gonzalezs Twitter account and confirmed by the Rockies. Gonzalez has a six-week window before position players have their first workout at spring training in Arizona. The Massive Bat Incident, or I Like Big Bats and I Cannot Lie Much of crickets future was seeded in its earliest universe. Its distant past as a rogues game saw betting, match-fixing and ball-tampering long before overarm bowling or the cover drive.The Massive Bat Incident of 1771 marked the first debate over the size of crickets key implement. In a game between Chertsey and Hambledon (effectively Surrey and Hampshire) at Laleham Burway, Chertseys Thomas White walked to the crease with a bat carved to the width of the stumps. Hambledons players objected, and having won the game by a single run, their fearsome fast bowler Thomas Brett wrote a letter of protest that resulted in the Law being altered to introduce a maximum bat width.So stood the bat for the next few hundred years, a blade of 38 inches in length and 4? inches wide, its weight and depth unspecified and yet limited by the physical capacity of the batsman to wield it. The 1970s saw new shapes like the Jumbo, the Scoop and the V12 turn the bat into a marketable item, and then, with the dawn of T20 came its revolution as an object: reimagined as a new and lightweight weapon of war by pod-shavers who pushed the willow to its limits in its dryness and effectiveness. And yet it would mean nothing without the intent and desire of the players using it, new shots played with new style and new muscle, these effects indivisible from the impact of the bat itself.For the first time since the Massive Bat Incident, the size of the bat was reconsidered by MCC, and we will soon have a maximum depth too. The debate has been polarising, the eye and gut of the old pros - These big bats they have now… - challenged by the irrefutable laws of physics. The bat must slim down but it will not change new batting. The argument will rage.Muralis Bowling Action, or The Truth About Flex Science has slowly demystified the physical processes of cricket, at first in small increments and then with a roar of discovery. Shock No. 1: batsmen dont really watch the ball at all - or they only do for around 57% of its flight. The rest of the time is spent looking at the spot where the ball may land or the region its expected to be struck. Shock No. 2: most bowlers do not keep their arm straight when delivering the ball. Instead, there is a variable but measurable degree of elbow flex in almost all of them.Muttiah Muralitharan, son of a candy-making family from Kandy, twirled into the public consciousness when he bowled to Allan Border in a tour game back in 1992, the first sight of his action greeted with as much astonishment as the prodigious spin imparted with the unlikely whirr of shoulder, elbow and wrist. It couldnt possibly be legal, could it? Darrell Hair didnt think so, nor Ross Emerson. Science said the naked eye was wrong, and Murali, who played the game with a smile and the iron backing of Arjuna Ranatunga, even performed in a cast to prove his arm didnt straighten during the act.As a bowler Murali will always divide opinion (even now, his ESPNcricinfo player profile opens with a line about his polarising effect) but his epic career made us understand better what happens when a ball is delivered, and has helped to remove the unnecessary stigma around chucking, which had at one point meant only shame and exile. Like batsmen, bowlers change techniques. They are human. They get tired and they falter. At least now, like batsmen, they can repair that technique and begin again. This is Muralis legacy, along with a fighters heart and a glimpse of the gloriously possible.Will India Ever Accept the DRS, or Does Hawk-Eye Really Work? It is crickets sliding-doors moment, the point at which an alternative future can be not just predicted but revealed. With the use of GPS, or laser beams, or magic pixie dust or however it operates (I havent quite got the science down), ball-tracking technology can let us know what would have happened had that pad - usually Shane Watsons - not interrupted the leathers progress. Combined with the heat-seeking Hot Spot and the all-hearing Snicko, justice for both bowler and bat can be swift and assured…Except, can it?The initial revelation that a batsman propping forward to spin was often plumb lbw changed batting and bowling. The use of the two-reviews-perr-team system politicised and made tactical the fair implementation of the Laws.dddddddddddd The strange, Schr?dingers cat-like notion of a batsman being both in and out to the same ball depending on the margin of the on-field umpires original decision was just plain spooky.Technology that had been developed with the intention of entertaining those watching on TV was driving the game. It didnt, to the hardened observer, always look particularly accurate, and India to date do not use it. Other series sometimes cant afford it. Thus a two-tier system of adjudication exists, with a plethora of different equipment used around the world. Will the DRS ultimately take over? Im calling for a review.The Meaning of Mankading Mankad Again Traps Bill Brown ran the newspaper headline describing an act that has passed into cricketing infamy.Where you stand (no pun intended, although its quite a good one) on mankading - the act of running out the non-striking batsman should they leave the popping crease while backing up - is probably generational. Cricket can be a place of antiquarian manners and customs, its Laws set in stone and yet mutable when subjected to what is deemed right and proper. Back in Vinoos day, the notion of stealing singles was not the same as in the high-pressure, stats-driven environs of now - although Bradman is said to have backed Mankads decision.And yet the act retains its dastardly edge. In the Under-19 World Cup quarter-final last February, Keemo Paul of West Indies mankaded Zimbabwes Richard Ngarava in the final over of the match with three runs needed. Ngarava had left his crease, his bat trailing on, rather than behind, the line. The umpires conferred, asked West Indies captain Shimron Hetmyer whether he wanted the appeal to stand, and went to the third umpire, who confirmed the dismissal. West Indies won the game and ultimately the tournament. Asked if he felt the mankad was within the fabled spirit of cricket, Hetmyer replied, Probably not. Here was the perfect test case: a close mankading in the final over with a definite effect on the match result. And opinion? As divided as its ever been, although the MCCs new attempt to clarify the Law, and to stress the advantage unfairly gained by the batsman, suggests a future in which Vinoos name may be refracted in a new light.Steve Waugh and Mental Disintegration, or Does the Sledge Work? ESPNcricinfos Jarrod Kimber once told a story about meeting Steve Waugh in a lift and, in his nervousness, cracking a lame joke. He received in return not a polite laugh but the same chilling, flint-eyed stare that had confronted Australian opposition (and occasionally errant members of his own team) for a generation.Waugh saw the psychological hinterland of cricket as a battlefield that must be won as surely as session one on the first day of a series, and no one was better at it. As myth would have it, he was the deliverer of the greatest, most effective sledge of all time: You just dropped the World Cup, son, to Herschelle Gibbs. He was the captain who rejected early declarations and he followed on in their most famous defeat in favour of grinding the opposition into puffs of dust. For Waugh, cricket was won in the mind before it was won on the field. Fans love the notion of this superiority being expressed verbally, either in the kind of brutal aside Waugh supposedly delivered to Gibbs, or the earthy humour of a Merv Hughes or a Shane Warne (another master of the side-of-mouth comment to an incoming batsman). Clips of stump mike conversations go up on YouTube, books of amusing sledges are published, after-dinner tales are told.But does it work? The truth is, Australia won because they were a team full of legends, captained skilfully by Waugh, a rounded man with a life away from cricket. Its what great teams do, how they work. During the last few Ashes series, questions about sledging have been brushed away as irrelevant. It has become more important to the public than the participants. Waugh even confessed that he couldnt remember exactly what he had said to Gibbs (though he did eventually). And yet the myth of sledging lives on. ' ' '