A Note on Cricket

I've liked sports my entire life, and I think I understand them well. Especially the obscure ones. The first time I saw curling I was hooked and learned the game fairly quickly. I understand the intricacies of diving and even Jai-Alai, but while I've been in London, one sport has eluded me greatly: Cricket.

They love it here. It gets it's own page in the paper every day. There are bars and channels devoted entirely to it. They sell jerseys and flags with cricket team logos, and the national team competes all over the globe. Apparently, it's the second most popular sport in the world.

Here's the thing about cricket: It's the only sport I can watch for two hours and still have absolutely no idea what in the world is going on. It's stupid.
I sat and watched a match at Loughborough while I was waiting for a meeting yesterday, and the whole time I sat there scratching my head. Any nobody else understands it either. I asked the people around me what was going on, and they used uncanny, fake terms like wickets and overs, and something known as the popping crease. I think Marion's right - it's a conspiracy - nobody actually has any idea what cricket is, the British just do it to confuse us Americans. It must be their response to American football.

So here's what I gathered from sitting there for two hours:
I don't know how long into the match I showed up, since there is no clock or scoreboard, and nobody ever looks like they're into the game. There are about 35 people standing around this field, not really paying attention. Two of them have large fraternity paddles and body armor. I think the iron men are on the same team, but I'm not sure.

So play starts when a pitcher (I think he's called a bowler, but not like the hat or the PBA) runs about 300 yards and chucks a small wooden ball. Now when I say that he runs, I don't really mean that. He tends to trot, not really full speed, and he does a funny little dance right before he throws. Like I said earlier, I don't know if the guys he's throwing to is on the other team, since everybody is wearing white and are essentially indistinguishable. Anyway, he throws this ball at the ground, it bounces, and then another guy swings a fraternity paddle in hopes of hitting this. Alternatively, it looks like he occasionally tries to peg the batter for no apparent reason. Sometimes the batter misses, and the ball hits these sticks poking out of the ground, and everybody cheers. But that doesn't really matter, because the people who actually know what's going on cheer at random points when it appears that nothing happens.

So when the ball gets hit, everybody runs in a circle. Except when the guy hits it far enough (when you think he would run a lot), but in that case everybody just stands around watching it. It takes about five minutes for play to resume after that. The ball comes back to the pitcher-like guy, and the whole thing starts over. Unless they don't want to, in that case they just stand around talking. I'm not quite sure who the ref was, either, since he was wearing white too.

And the game didn't end in the time that I watched it. The games must go on for days, because I read in the paper that they have tea breaks, and that someone took two wickets on a jimmy in the fifth to put the bowler up before lunch break, whatever that means. And the score, you can forget me trying to keep track of that. In fact, I wasn't even quite sure it was an actual game. It could have been a scrimmage or practice, and I would have absolutely no idea of the difference.

The best part of cricket is reading it in the paper the next day. They talk about achievements like "centuries." Also, scores tend to be astronomical numbers, and nobody understands how they get there. The other day New Zealand beat England 176-5. I'm not quite sure how that happens, but they tied the next day, though N.Z. seemed to have two scores.