de edge. You just had the freedom to hit the ball wherever you wanted to.In the nets there I was a pretty good player of spin, but when you got out into the middle on Adelaide Oval or the SCG,

CHICAGO -- Star slugger Anthony Rizzo hit a soft liner for the Chicago Cubs final out, which only seemed fitting.While the rest of Chicagos lineup can take consolation knowing Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw is about to get a few days off, Rizzo and shortstop Addison Russell wont share in that small solace. The duo that totaled 204 RBI in the regular season is a combined 2 for 45 through six games in the postseason.Kershaw only underscored their struggles during Los Angeles 1-0 win Sunday night that tied the NL Championship Series at a game apiece.Rizzo and Russell were key contributors for baseballs best regular season team, but both have made everyone look unhittable in October, even as Chicago rolled past San Francisco in four games during an NL Division Series.Rizzo batted .292 with 32 home runs and 109 RBI during the regular season. Hes gone 1 for 23 in the playoffs with just a single and three walks.Russell hit only .238 in the regular season, but contributed plenty of power, with 21 homers and 95 RBI. Yet, like Rizzo, hes got only a single in his 22 at-bats.Kershaw yielded only two hits in seven innings and Rizzo was the beneficiary of the left-handers only walk. He also turned on a 1-1 fastball in the fourth inning for a towering shot that cleared the outfield wall in right by plenty -- it landed on Sheffield Avenue, behind Wrigley Field -- but hooked just outside the foul pole. Kershaw threw high and tight on the next pitch, then coaxed Rizzo into grounding out. That and a flyout to center in the first inning were the best Rizzo could do.It was closer than Russell, who grounded out in his first at-bat then produced a pair or routine flyouts. Cheap Nike Zoom Shoes Free Shipping Worldwide . "Jeff is a hard worker who was an important special-teams contributor for us last season," said Stamps GM John Hufnagel. Nike Zoom Clearance .ca looks back at the stories and moments that made the year memorable. http://www.cheapnikezoom.com/ . Carey Price didnt, but he still came out on top against one of his rivals for the No. 1 job at the Sochi Games. The Anahim Lake, B.C., native was stellar in making 39 saves in his home province and Lars Eller got credit for a bizarre short-handed winner as the Canadiens defeated the Canucks 4-1. Nike Zoom Wholesale . - Raiders general manager Reggie McKenzie never doubted he would bring back coach Dennis Allen for a third year despite back-to-back 4-12 records. Nike Zoom Shoes On Sale . -- Peyton Manning will have all of his wide receivers available for the first time in a month when the Denver Broncos begin their playoff run Jan. In the aftermath of Australias defeat in Pallekele there has been a raft of advice about how better to tackle the spin threat posed by Rangana Herath and Lakshan Sandakan. Ian Chappell and Ashley Mallett have had their say, so too Allan Border and even Simon ODonnell.A more contemporary figure with plenty of learnings about how to deal with spin bowling in Asia is the former captain Ricky Ponting, who had to learn the hard way through successive poor tours of India in 1996, 1998 and 2001. Like many Australian batsmen, Ponting did not take to the task naturally, and has admitted his troubles stemmed from a lack of suitable practice at home.What was difficult about working on playing spin in Australia in the off season, particularly in Adelaide, was, we were doing it all in the indoor nets and it was so false, Ponting told ESPNcricinfo in 2013. You could run down the wicket without any fear at all of getting stumped or one spinning past the outside edge. You just had the freedom to hit the ball wherever you wanted to.In the nets there I was a pretty good player of spin, but when you got out into the middle on Adelaide Oval or the SCG, where it used to spin a lot, against two of the countrys best spinners [Tim May and Greg Matthews] it was a different game altogether. It was right-arm offspin out of anything that troubled me the most.Eventually, Ponting sought the advice of Indian players, notably Mohammad Azharuddin, who spoke about reading and dealing with length as the most critical weapon in a batsmans armoury when facing spinners on turning pitches.On the truer wickets it was okay because you could get away with it, but the one thing I learned about playing spin in India ... the first couple of tours were horrible, but the last few tours I had there where I actually understood what I was trying to do a bit better, I actually had some success, Ponting said. It was all about not getting trapped to good-length balls. Not trying to predict where the ball was going to spin to. It was about trying to hit it before it spun or [well] after it spun, and thats what the good Indian players always did.Thats a concept that Australian batters dont have to think about because the ball doesnt spin very much in domestic cricket here. Even our current blokes, if you look at the struggles they had against [Graeme] Swann in the last Ashes series, it was because youre just not brought up seeing and playing quality spin, and more importantly playing it in conditions that actually favour the bowler. Even with our practice facilities in Australia you dont get that very often.The concept of not getting trapped to a good length ball should resonate with Australiaas players, given the high number who fell lbw or bowled in Pallekele.dddddddddddd Decisive footwork, either forward or back, is important to reading length, as Ponting saw from Azharuddin, MS Dhoni and others.If you watched the way he played, he was always out in front, flicking his wrists, and for us that was so foreign, Ponting said. Dhoni does it really well as well. Hes not actually a great player of spin bowling but hes got the technique there where they work the ball around and never get caught at bat-pad or done on length. When we go there we always get caught at bat-pad because were predicting where the ball is going to go.But yeah, I first heard it from [Azharuddin], he talked about getting to it on the half-volley before it has the chance to spin or get back in your crease and wait for it fully spin and play it from there. It sounds pretty easy but its difficult to do in the heat of battle against good quality spin bowling. But the technique makes a lot of sense.By way of a cross-reference, the former Test off spinner Gavin Robertson was counselled in how to bowl on the subcontinent by Erapalli Prasanna. Revealingly, Prasannas advice centred upon using length, accuracy and changes in pace to stop decisive footwork, and lock batsmen on the crease to good length balls - just as Ponting had been advised to try to avoid.Prasanna talked about how youve got to understand a batsman, Robertson said. You want to try to lock the batsman on the crease with the amount of spin youve got on the ball and your pace and dip. Youve got to combine that to make sure the batsman feels like if he leaves his crease to take a risk, its going to drop on him and hell lose the ball.So hell search quickly to defend, and that will cause him to feel nervous about leaving his crease, and thatll start to get him locked on his crease. Then youll get him jutting out at the ball and jabbing at it with his hands. Then hell start trying to use his pad and his bat together to negate a good ball. Finally he said, All you have to do is get that right pace and create that feeling, and then you have to do it for 20 or 30 overs in a row, and youll bowl them out.If these lessons are hardly new, or especially revelatory, they appear to be forgotten by successive generations of Australian cricketers. As Robertson put it: You could almost have all those learnings on a whiteboard or some sort of document that relays This is the plan for this, we know what weve been up against before, knock it over. We probably havent learned from those past tours. China NFL Jerseys Cheap Nike NFL Jerseys NFL Jerseys Cheap Wholesale NFL Jerseys Cheap Basketball Jerseys Online Stitched Hockey Jerseys Wholesale Baseball Jerseys Football Jerseys Outlet College Jerseys For Sale Cheap MLB Jerseys Wholesale Soccer Jerseys Wholesale Jerseys For Sale Wholesale NFL Jerseys ' ' '