at staying leg side of the ball, of planting their front foot down

CHICAGO -- While the Los Angeles Angels stumbled, Mike Trout soared again.Just too good to ignore.Trout won the AL MVP award Thursday for the second time in three years, and Chicago Cubs third baseman Kris Bryant was voted NL MVP in balloting by the Baseball Writers Association of America.To win it one time, its hard to do, Trout said. Twice, I guess you saw my emotions tonight, it was something special.While the Angels finished fourth in the AL West, Trout was his usual brilliant self. The center fielder batted .315 with 29 homers, 100 RBI and 30 steals. He scored 17 percent of Los Angeles runs, the highest percentage for an AL player since Rickey Henderson with the 1985 New York Yankees.Trout, who was a unanimous winner in 2014, had finished second in three of the past four years. He becomes the first MVP from a losing team since Alex Rodriguez for Texas in 2003 and just the fifth player ever to accomplish the feat, joining Hall of Famers Ernie Banks (1958 and 1959), Andre Dawson (1987) and Cal Ripken (1991).At the end of the season a lot of people were asking me about the same question, you know, if your team has a losing record is it going to hurt you in the MVP? Trout said. With this MVP this year, I guess it doesnt matter.Bryant hit .292 with 39 homers and 102 RBI in just his second year in the majors, helping the Cubs to their first World Series title since 1908. The No. 2 overall pick from the 2013 draft becomes just the sixth player to win rookie of the year and MVP in one or consecutive seasons.This year has certainly been one of the best years of my life, said Bryant, who is set to get married in January. I mean winning a World Series, now this, its just icing on the cake.The Las Vegas native is the first NL MVP from the Cubs since Sammy Sosa in 1998 and the eighth player from the club to win the award since 1935. The once-forlorn franchise enjoying its best run in decades also had two of the top MVP candidates, with first baseman Anthony Rizzo finishing fourth.Voting by BBWAA members was completed by the start of the playoffs.If it wasnt for Anthony and his protection and guidance, I wouldnt have won this award, Bryant said. I mean he texted me and I said the same thing to him, I said if it wasnt for you I wouldnt have been able to do this.Bryant was a runaway winner, grabbing 29 of 30 first-place votes and 415 points. Nationals second baseman Daniel Murphy, who batted .347 for the NL East champions, was the runner-up with the other first-place vote and 245 points. Dodgers shortstop Corey Seager was third after he was the unanimous winner of the NL Rookie of the Year award on Monday.Seager will look to follow in Bryants footsteps next year.Bryant was the unanimous NL Rookie of the Year after he hit .275 with 26 homers and 99 RBI last season. Bryant joins Dustin Pedroia (2007-08), Ryan Howard (2005-06) and Cal Ripken (1982-83) as the only players to go Rookie of the Year-MVP in consecutive seasons. Ichiro Suzuki (2001) and Fred Lynn (1975) are the only players to win the awards in the same year.Kris is just an impressive young man in every aspect, Cubs owner Tom Ricketts said. (He) is very mature, professional, light-hearted, but serious at the same time. Hes just kind of a dream player for any organization.Trout received 19 first-place votes and 356 points. Mookie Betts, who batted .318 with 31 homers, 113 RBI and 26 steals in 158 games for the Boston Red Sox, was second with 311 points, and AL batting champion Jose Altuve of Houston was third. Retiring Red Sox slugger David Ortiz got one first-place vote finished sixth in his final year in the majors.A well-deserved honor for a player that puts his name in the MVP conversation year in and year out, Angels manager Mike Scioscia said in a release. Mike is the consummate team player and deserves every accolade he receives on the field just as he should off of it for the person he is.---Jay Cohen can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/jcohenapKyrie 2 Shoes Black . Sgt. Eric ONeal says most of the arrests at Monday nights game were for public drunkenness, though one person was taken into custody on suspicion of trying to steal a seat from the stadium. Kyrie 2 Shoes Cheap .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. http://www.kyrieirvingshoescheap.com/cheap-kyrie-3-shoes-a.html . Its an influence in football and a big part of the game. Kyrie 4 Confetti For Sale . The 29-year-old Baines has established himself as one of the top attacking full backs in the country and was the subject of two bids from United during the last off-season. Everton manager Roberto Martinez says that keeping Baines at the club is a "massive boost and exciting for the future" because he brings "maturity and football knowledge in a very specialized position on the pitch" and an "infectious and positive influence to the rest of the squad. Kyrie 2 Shoes White . Hey!" The lower tier of the School End of Queens Park Rangers Loftus Road was packed solid with a very festive-sounding Chelsea choral section in this particular part of South Africa Road London, W12.When umpire Aleem Dar took his empowerment from technology to the next level, ruling Steve Smith out lbw in the WACA Test even when he was more than 2.5m down the wicket, amid the understandably heated debate, Channel 9s newest recruit and the man most in touch with contemporary cricket for them, Kevin Pietersen, made an astute point. Left-arm spinners bowling to right-hand batsmen and offspinners bowling to left-hand batsmen, Pietersen said, had brought lbws back into the game big time.Miles away, in Asia, the lbw and bowled to spinners - never mind the big turning pitches - have become the slow mens most potent weapon. More so when visiting batsmen face R Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja in tandem. It is often said about batting in India that it is all fine until the first one jumps at you and lobs up for a catch. With changing skills and pitches, though, the challenge of batting in India is evolving too. As Ashwin and Jadeja showed against New Zealand, and have indeed been showing for some time now, a batsman has to watch out for those two types of dismissals more than bat-pad catches or edges behind the wicket. It is a trend not limited to Indias fingerspinners: Sri Lankas spinners, led by Rangana Herath, dismantled Australia earlier this year through lbw and bowled dismissals. Over the last five years, the percentage of lbw and bowled dismissals for India spinners have gone up to 43.97 from 37.3 in years 2006 to 2010. The numbers in India have shot up dramatically since 2005: from 31.37% to 47.56% since 2011. Not just the Indian spinners, travelling spinners have benefited too: from 29.71% in the five-year period ending in 2005 to 40.51% since 2011. While the umpires have become more bowler friendly since the advent of DRS - and that effect plays out in non-DRS matches too - the numbers have actually fallen for fast bowlers: from 36.1% from 2001 to 2005 to 32.2% since 2011. This is no secret in the closed world of cricket circles. When Herath and friends were taking half of their 54 Australian wickets either lbw or bowled, the word around the visiting batsmen was: whatever you do, dont get beaten on the inside edge by a bowler meant to take the ball away from you. New Zealands coach Mike Hesson articulated this, and the challenge of batting in India, to ESPNcricinfo.In many ways it is actually natural variation, Hesson said. A lot of times you are actually not trying to bowl a straighter one. Sometimes it just lands on the leather and slides on. Other times it hits the seam and spins. You are obviously able to change the seam angle to have a little bit of control over there, but sometimes it is very accidental. That is the reality of it over here. And when it spins, it is extreme turn. You are just hoping that you play and miss.You need to be able to protect your stumps. If the ball spins past the outside edge, it is okay. We can accept that. You dont want to be beaten on the inside. Thats pretty much everybodys game plan. And around that you need to find ways to score. Iff it slides in, it is often going down.dddddddddddd. If it turns past the edge then you play and miss. And there is also a lot of balls that turn an abnormal amount. So you are dealing with three things. Thats the challenge of playing in India. Then as the game goes on, uneven bounce comes into play.Thirteen of the 27 lbws and bowleds that Sri Lanka spinners claimed against Australia were to the straighter delivery. New Zealand batsmen did much better when it came to not getting beaten on the inside: only eight of their 22 lbws and bowleds were to straighter deliveries from bowlers meant to take it away from you. Indias spinners showed great skill in finishing on the stumps by still having 22 lbws and bowleds in their 41 wickets; this 53.66% was a rise from 49.18% against South Africa last season.During the warm-ups on the third morning of the series between India and New Zealand, Ravindra Jadeja and coach Anil Kumble stood at the Green Park pitch in Kanpur and chatted. Kumble asked Jadeja to move his line for left-hand batsmen wider. The ball had started to turn appreciably now, and there was considerable rough outside the left-hand batsmens off stump. Kumble wanted Jadejas deliveries to end up on the stumps. Not that Jadeja needed an invitation to do so - he grew up listening to the wicketkeepers and captains shouting pag maan maar [hit the batsman on the foot] - but this has been the coming together of three spinners for India who just want to keep hitting the stumps again and again. It is a skill to bowl deliveries that both hit the batsman in line and go on to hit the stumps on pitches that turn so much.It doesnt translate into as many wickets for visiting spinners because the India spinners are much more accurate, and also because the India batsmen have slightly different techniques. They are adept at staying leg side of the ball, of planting their front foot down along the line of the leg stump and playing the incoming deliveries with their hands. So even when they get their inside edge beaten, because the umpire can see both the off and the middle stump, the ball is generally considered to be going down leg. Visiting batsmen try to get closer to the ball, thus plonking their front foot across and making similar deliveries look like they are hitting the stumps. When Tom Latham showed he was not going to get drawn across, denying Ashwin that lbw, Ashwin gave him the next test by moving over the wicket and successfully played on the outside edge.The drier the pitch, the more the natural variation. The more accurate you are, the more the chance for the natural variation to get you wickets. Thats why India and Sri Lanka spinners have done so well, and have become a mighty challenge for visiting teams. Throw in DRS-empowered umpires who are likely to support the bowlers, and you know how fingerspin has been revived in this post-doosra world. ' ' '