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The England & Wales Cricket Board has announced that it will be doubling its investment in Chance to Shine, the cricket charity that was founded in 2005 to address the decline of the sport in state schools.Following a decade of pioneering work in the grassroots game, during which time more than 3 million schoolchildren have been introduced to cricket, the ECB yesterday announced that, from October 2017, at least ￡2.5m will be donated annually to Chance to Shine, with a further ￡500,000 to be made available for matched funding.According to Luke Swanson, Chance to Shines chief executive, the extra investment will targeted on primary schools, with the aim of reaching an additional 200,000 children a year. This places the charity right at the heart of the ECBs game-wide strategy, as spelt out through their framework, Cricket Unleashed, to inspire more people, especially families, to get involved with cricket.When we work in primary schools, we have the opportunity to introduce the game to every child irrespective of background, gender or parental involvement, said Swanson. In a primary school, cricket has the chance to reach the whole community, and give kids of all backgrounds the chance to play together.Matt Dwyer, the ECBs director of participation and growth, said that the timing of the announcement was designed to maximise the opportunity that the sport has in the coming years to reconnect the sport with its public. With the Champions Trophy and Womens World Cup coming up on home soil next year, followed by the mens World Cup and the Ashes in 2019, the drive to attract new players and supporters begins now.It is not just about seeing cricket survive, its about seeing cricket thrive for generations, he said. As a game we are very much focused on inspiring that next generation, and taking cricket to classrooms and playgrounds across the country.We believe cricket is uniquely placed to enrich the lives of young people, whether that be through the development of nine of the 10 fundamental movements skills, the fact that we are the only sport that incorporates our values into the official rules of the game, or the fact that cricket can deliver so many in-class curriculum outcomes.Cricket has the ability to inspire kids in our communities in a way like no other and we will do that together with Chance to Shine.The funding boost was announced by Colin Graves, the ECB chairman, during Chance to Shines annual awards dinner at Lords on Wednesday evening, following a coaching session at St Mary and St Peters Primary School in south-west London, attended by the England batsman, Sam Billings.Every career starts at the bottom level so its fundamental that these kids get the chance to play many sports, especially cricket, said Billings. In many schools around the country its football dominated, cricket is not on the curriculum.Certainly in Bangladesh with England we had this conversation. I think its about a 50/50 split in terms of who went to state and independent schools, and club cricket plays a massive role too in getting that relationship right. Club cricket was a great benefit to me growing up but again, it starts with the schools.Byron Murphy Womens Jersey . The No. 1-ranked Nadal tweaked his back warming up for the Australian Open final, which he lost almost four weeks ago in a major upset against Stanislas Wawrinka. His first stop after the layoff is the clay in Rio as he tests the back and tries to stay healthy for the French Open in three months. Zach Allen Womens Jersey . Nine days before the opening ceremony, organizing committee chief Dmitry Chernyshenko said Wednesday that Sochi is "fully ready" and will deliver safe, friendly and well-run games that defy the grim reports that have overshadowed preparations. http://www.thecardinalsshoponline.com/hakeem-butler-cardinals-jersey-zj/ .J. -- Marshawn Lynch said Thursday it will be good to get back to football after the Seattle quiet talking running back wrapped up his final mandatory media session of Super Bowl week. Andy Isabella Youth Jersey .Y. -- Leading 3-0 with only 11:25 left, the Colorado Avalanche committed a seemingly meaningless penalty to give the New York Islanders a power play. Adrian Wilson Cardinals Jersey . -- Adam Snyder returned to the San Francisco 49ers this season because the offensive lineman thought it was his best opportunity to win a championship.There was a time 10 years ago when it was considered normal to poison your neighbors cat if he (your neighbor) didnt agree with you about statistics in baseball. It sounds absurd, but sabermetrics was the biggest issue in the 2006 mid-term elections. Activists outraged at the inclusion of VORP in school textbooks urged on massive book-burnings outside major league stadiums. The AL Central briefly seceded from the American League. Thousands of fans moved to Canada when they didnt like the general manager their favorite team hired.Ten years later, we live in a world scarcely imaginable to a loyal traditionalist of the time. The four teams in the two league championship series last week were all, according to an ESPN ranking of teams devotion to analytics in 2015, in the top two tiers of statheadiness. The Cubs and Indians, this years World Series entrants, were in the top tier, All-In. The Blue Jays and Dodgers were labeled Believers, and each team has only strengthened its stathead credentials since then. (The Blue Jays, for instance, poached a president and general manager from that All-In Cleveland front office.) The front offices of all four LCS teams trace their lineage to the Big Four stathead fortresses of the late 2000s: The Dodgers top executives are descended from the Rays and As; the Cubs from the Red Soxs; the Blue Jays from the Indians; and the Indians from, well, the Indians. Three of the four even hired employees right out from under me at Baseball Prospectus, where I was their editor. But no hard feelings.This is not going to be some sort of victory lap, I promise. There is no victory because there was nothing to vanquish: The scouts/stats war was always overblown, pretty much every team integrates both traditions proudly these days, the traditionalist wisdom has been validated many times in the past decade, the analytics have been far from infallible, players are not number-generating machines, and this paragraph has been written countless times because it is so uncontroversial to most analytical writers. Today, at least 28 teams could be described as analytical, and probably 30 could be described as traditional. Again, you are not reading a victory speech.But a postseason so dominated by True SABR is a fine occasion to survey postseason baseball in 2016 and see how it compares to the utopian/dystopian vision that partisans on either side might have had for it in 2006. How have these playoff teams differentiated themselves so far?1. The sacrifice buntingSince the playoffs expanded from two rounds to three in 1995, the sacrifice bunt has been a staple of October offense, with teams averaging .39 bunts per game. Ozzie Guillens small ball White Sox in 2005 provided the perfect clash with Moneyball orthodoxy at the time, as Guillens club bunted eight times in just 12 games, compared to the defending champion Red Sox, who didnt bunt once in the 2005 playoffs. But it wasnt just the White Sox. The Cardinals bunted six times, the Angels eight, and the Astros 18 times in 14 games. Those four teams made the league championship series, and the Astros and White Sox made the World Series, inspiring premature obituaries for Moneyball from even fantastic baseball writers:One additional passenger joined the Chicago White Sox on their private plane here and flew off into the sunset with manager Ozzie Guillen, slugger Jermaine Dye and the rest of baseballs champions.That would be the concept of Moneyball. ... The idea that Billy Beane and his Oakland As had discovered the divine formula to success at the expense of traditionalists, scouts and supposed dinosaurs was laid to rest in a postseason that culminated Wednesday night with Chicagos four-game dismantling of the Houston Astros to win the World Series.Since then, the bunt has steadily withdrawn from the game, to the point that Tim McCarver warned gloomily in a 2013 broadcast that we may be in a period where the bunt may be phased out of the game in the next year or two. Not exactly, but bunts per game in the regular season have dropped in each of the past five years, and this was the year that the drought reached the postseason. With just 11 so far, the 2016 postseason has seen just .19 bunts per game, half the established rate. Thats the lowest frequency since 1951, and a 17 percent drop from the most bunt-averse season of the expanded-playoffs era, 1969.Notably, the decline isnt explained by a no-bunts philosophy alone. Consider Game 6 of the NLCS: Dexter Fowler led off the game with a double. There was a time when runner on second, nobody out in the first would be a bunting situation, especially with a pitcher like Clayton Kershaw on the mound. Even Joe Maddon has called for eight bunts in such situations in his career. But with more teams following the stathead idea that the best hitter should bat second, the Cubs had Kris Bryant coming up to the plate, which takes the bunt off the table, throws it in the trash, and takes the can out to the curb for pickup so the dog cant get into it. The rest of the LCS teams most frequent No. 2 hitters this postseason: Josh Donaldson, Corey Seager and Jason Kipnis, stars all. No hitter batting second has laid down a bunt this postseason, which would make it just the second postseason since wild-card play began.More notably still: This is not a uniform boycott! Terry Francona has called for five sacrifice bunts from his position players, which is how many Dave Roberts got from his position players all season. Franconas club was third in the AL in sacrifice bunts this year, just four sacrifices ahead of the oft-caricatured stathead extremists in Houston. Which means two True SABR teams can have completely opposing positions on a tactic like the sacrifice bunt, which is important, and which leads to...2. The bullpen usageYes, youve heard enough about how Francona revolutionized modern bullpen usage by bringing in his best reliever, Andrew Miller, in the fifth and sixth innings of close games instead of saving him for the three-out save situation. But perhaps the most interesting aspect of bullpen usage in this years stathead postseason is not that Francona did it this way, but how other managers didnt do it this way. Each had his own way of using the bullpen.The Dodgers used Joe Blanton and Kenley Jansen in ways that resembled Franconas Andrew Miller usage. Blanton (who, it helps to remember now, was very good this year) entered games in the third inning and (twice) in the sixth. He threw 31 pitches in a clean, five-out appearances in the NLDS, then came back the next day and threw 19 more. Meanwhile,, Jansen entered a save situation in the seventh and entered in the sixth when the Dodgers were trailing in the NLCS Game 6.dddddddddddd Only twice in seven appearances did the Dodgers hold him until the ninth inning. He threw 51 pitches in a game. The Dodgers used 10 relievers in all, three more than any other LCS team, as they treated middle and late innings with extreme -- at times, almost erratic -- urgency.The Blue Jays, the one team in these series with a below-average bullpen, went the opposite direction: They rode their starters harder, limiting their bullpen usage to just six pitchers and just 26 ? innings. (The Dodgers relievers threw 45.) Their top two relievers, Roberto Osuna and Joe Biagini, actually threw a higher percentage of their teams relief innings than Miller and Cody Allen did for the Indians. But Osuna was used in a more traditional way, just twice entering a game in the eighth and never earlier. His more reasonable pitch counts kept him available every day, and the Blue Jays boosted his usage by bringing him in liberally to keep deficits manageable, rather than waiting for him to have a lead to protect.(Its worth mentioning, too, that the Blue Jays bullpen was below average in part because of a preseason decision to move Aaron Sanchez from the bullpen -- where hed been elite -- into the rotation, where hed been poor. Plenty of teams have passed this option up after introducing their top pitching prospects into the majors as relievers, e.g. the Reds with Aroldis Chapman and the Cardinals with Trevor Rosenthal. That the Blue Jays had a below-average bullpen was not their preference, but it was a choice, made to deploy Sanchez in a role in which he might have more value.)The Cubs spent more on their best reliever, Aroldis Chapman, than any other LCS team, but he pitched less than any other teams best. He never threw more than 21 pitches in an appearance, twice leaving games before they ended but always being fresh for the next game. The Cubs instead leaned heavily on matchups -- they were the only team in the LCS to get less than an inning per appearance from the bullpen as a whole -- and on Mike Montgomery, a versatile trade deadline acquisition who had outings ranging from two batters to 16 batters.So whats so interesting about this? In the quarter-century after Dennis Eckersley and Rick Honeycutt pitched for Tony LaRussas world champion As, the trend was consistently toward predictable roles, toward titles, toward a model that was about finding a funky southpaw to be your lefty specialist, an expensive fireballer to be your closer, a less expensive fireballer to be your set-up guy, a fringy starter to be your long man, and so on. Even this year, in the regular season, there was little deviation from these narrow ways of using relievers. There are benefits to that rigidity, to be sure, especially in the regular season, but there are crippling limitations, too, especially in the postseason. If theres something to take from the four teams in the LCS, its that you dont fix the rigid model by putting a better rigid model on top of it. Rather, you create a model that works with the specific personnel in each bullpen and that maintains some flexibility to account for the situation.Unlike the way that, say, Ned Yost managed in the postseason last year. But speaking of Yost ...3. The Yost Influence?Last year, as the Cubs were on the verge of being bounced from the NLCS, president of baseball operations Theo Epstein said this:The only thing I know for sure is that whatever team wins the World Series, their particular style of play will be completely en vogue and trumpeted from the rooftops by the media all offseason -- and in front offices -- as the way to win.That team would end up being the Royals, one of modern baseballs stylistic outliers, managed by one of baseballs least enthusiastic tacticians. The Royals have plenty of statheads in their organization, to be sure, but the influence of these analysts is less apparent on the field or in the dugout than for almost any other team. So, assuming Theo Epstein cant, by law, be wrong, what did he and the other LCS teams take from the Royals?Not that much. Three of these four teams were among the worst basestealing clubs in baseball. No team invested in contact-oriented hitters like the Royals did, with none of the four LCS clubs finishing with one of the 10 best strikeout rates in the majors. Yosts extreme version of bullpen rigidity was not only not followed, but rejected. While Yost rarely made lineup changes and allowed a low-OBP leadoff hitter because it felt right, these clubs valued versatility and platoons and pushed slugging, high-OBP leadoff men like Jose Bautista and Carlos Santana to the top the lineup. While the Royals employed a poor framing catcher who earned his Gold Gloves with a superior throwing arm, all four of these teams carried excellent framers and unexceptional (or worse) throwers.The most persuasive comparisons are in each teams bullpen personnel -- where the Indians and Cubs both spent heavily to get a version of Wade Davis, believing one ace reliever wouldnt be enough -- and in the quick hooks that almost every starter had this fall. But each feels like a stretch to connect to Ned Yost.Its not surprising, though, that four committed stathead teams wouldnt resemble Ned Yost on the field. But its also not wrong to say that they all have more in common with Yost than the groupthink criticism of baseball analytics would allow for. If theres something that these playoffs really taught us, its that 10 years after the Join Or Die culture war reached its peak, there is little sameness in baseball strategy. What makes these four teams progressive has nothing to do with toeing the line on bunts or intentional walks or closer usage or draft preferences or fly-ball pitchers or infield shifts. Rather, its the Cubs launching mental skills programs for their players. Its the Indians trying to study something so tangled as team chemistry. Its the Dodgers running sprinters academies, or training cricket players, trying to find undiscovered talent. Its the Blue Jays -- well, the Blue Jays wont even say what theyre doing, and its that, too.One of the arguments against analytics 10 years ago was that they would make baseball boring. (Ive made the argument, too.) But these have been among the most exciting playoffs in years. That there were teams doing things differently was a big reason why.[url=http:/at they would make baseball boring. (Ive Jerseys[/url] ' ' '