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The most recent cricket Test between India and South Africa would surely rank as one of the most boring contests in the history of any sport.
India won by the huge margin of 337 runs, but even worse the inevitably of their crushing victory was delayed by the glacial speed in which South Africa succumbed.
South Africa was strangled out for 143 off 143.1 overs, India delivered 89 maidens. Umseh Yadav took 3-9 off 21 overs with just under 80 per cent of all the overs he bowled being maidens.
Due to its sheer length cricket is often falls victim to extreme periods of tedious play. Remember when Kiwi Geoff Allott took 77 balls to make a duck in a Test?
What are the most boring sports match in history? What is the most boring sports match you have ever seen? Here are a few contenders to start with.
The 111 lineout match
On March 9, 1963 Wales beat Scotland 6-0 in a Five Nations Test at Murrayfield. There is nothing especially noteworthy about that, accept for the fact the match featured 111 lineouts. Given the planning around lineouts today, that number would almost consume the entire match.
It’s not the highest number of lineouts ever recorded – there were reportedly 114 line-outs in the first ever match between New Zealand and South Africa at Dunedin in 1921.
The radio commentary on the 1953 Wales-New Zealand match held by the New Zealand national sound archives records 75 in that match, including 17 in the first nine minutes.
Kicking the ball out on the full, accept from inside the 22, was outlawed to prevent teams just seeking the touchline the whole time in 1970.
The Welsh captain that day was legendary scrum-half Clive Rowlands who authorised the turgid Welsh tactic. He had one of the most impressive and varied rugby careers.
All his 14 Welsh caps were as captain and he was later a successful national coach, winning the Grand Slam in 1971. In 1989 he was manager of the British and Irish Lions when they beat Australia. His career culminated in the presidency of the Welsh rugby union and in his role as a bilingual broadcaster.
Giovanni Pettenella: The cyclist who did nothing
Giovanni Pettenella won a gold medal at the 1964 Olympic Games in the sprint. He became known as “the flying poultry man” because he used to sell chickens before he moved to Milan and became a great track cyclist.
The Italian’s speciality was doing nothing, which was a great skill in itself, on a bike with no gears and no brakes. In tactical head-to-head sprint races, where first across the line wins, he would balance on the pedals at a track stand, or sur place, waiting for his rival to take the initiative.
In the semi-finals at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, he held steady, without moving, for 21 minutes.
The rules were later changed to limit the sur place to a maximum of three minutes.
The 222-0 American football match
John Heisman is a famous American football coach who gave his name to the trophy that is still awarded every year to the season’s most outstanding player. In 1916 he was the ‘mastermind’ of a 222-0 scoreline against his own team.
Seeking revenge for a 22-0 rout of Georgia Tech’s baseball team by Cumberland College, from Tennessee, which had fielded professionals in their line-up in 1915, Cumberland had stopped playing football. He however failed to notify Georgia Tech and had to fulfil the fixture under threat of paying thousands of dollars in compensation to Georgia.
A random group of students were rounded up, and they were hopeless from start to finish in Atlanta. It was 126-0 at halftime, at which point Heisman told his team, “We’re ahead, but you just can’t tell what those Cumberland players have up their sleeves. They may spring a surprise. Be alert, men.”
At least he agreed to shorten the second half to 15 minutes.
High school basketball snore
Earlier this year two Alabama high school coaches combined their strategies to create the most boring game possible. In the end, Bibb County held on to an early lead to defeat Brookwood. 2-0.
The score ties a national record for the lowest of all time. The last time a game ended at 2-0 was in 1977, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations.
Bibb County jumped on the board in the first 15 seconds, when Brandon Rutledge scored off the rebound of a teammate’s missed three-point attempt. From there, Brookwood intentionally slowed everything down.
The Brookwood players just held the ball until the end of the first quarter, finally taking a shot at the buzzer.
Brookwood coach Thad Fitzpatrick said the game plan was to slow down on offense because it was the team’s fourth game of the week, and several players had cramped up in the previous night’s game.
Not to be outdone, Bibb County followed suit to start the third quarter.
With 15 seconds to go, Bibb County finally forced a turnover. Brookwood had to foul to keep the game alive.
The teams collectively took seven shots in those final 15 seconds, all of them failing to find the net.
Australia humiliates American Samoa
Sure there were a lot of goals, but when Australia fielding a team with several rarely used players beat American Samoa by a record international score of 31-0 in 2001 this became a boring farce. Archie Thompson scored 13 goals for Australia who didn’t reach the World Cup finals the following year, exiting the Oceania confederation to join Asia.
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