Good one, Tom.
Sunday, July 08, 2012
What playing cricket looks like to Americans
George Bernard Shaw once described cricket as "a game played by 22 fools and watched by 22,000 fools”. It is one is the most boring games in the world (perhaps even the universe) yet at the same time is mind-bogglingly complicated and difficult to follow. Leg break, no ball, maiden over? Incomprehensible. And the worst thing about the game? Test matches go on for an eternity but seem much longer.
Good one, Tom.
Good one, Tom.
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Okay. And how does it look to non-Americans?
ReplyDeleteThe title should probably read "North Americans" because I'm Canadian and I see cricket this way too.
ReplyDeleteBut!!! It's all wrong! You can't take a left counter-thripple straight after a dunderplork is awarded. Whatever are these people thinking?
ReplyDeleteQuite right, Soubriquet! They must have meant RIGHT counter-thripple. You really are on the ball today, old chap.
ReplyDeleteOh, come on, No counter-thrippling at all subsequent to a dunderplork, unless deep cover exchanges places with silly-mid-on, and there's a 'r' in the month. Unless you're using the pre-1812 north american rules, where two hurons can be exchanged for an iroquois. But then, that all went out of the window after the war, with cricketers enduring forced retraining in combined baseball and ice-hockey. Of course, the ice-hockey never really was popular in the southern states, in summer, because of the time spent rearranging cubes.
ReplyDeleteSoubriquet, your brilliant understanding of the complex rules of cricket leaves me mightily impressed. Is it because I'm a girl that it makes no sense to me?
ReplyDeleteEnglish girls can understand, and even play cricket. I should know, because back when I was a teenager, the arrtactive young blonde neighbour was captain of the England Women's First 11, and I think their world championship prowess was better than the men's.
ReplyDeleteI grew up next door to a cricket field. My childhood weekends were spent with other kids whose dads played cricket, at village cricket pitches all over Yorkshire. And of course, I played cricket, badly, at school. I never had any great interest or aptitude for it. Nor did my two brothers, whereas my father was involved in cricket all his life, from village to national level.
I can confidently state that there are many aspects of cricket, that even after having played it, I do not understand. It is immensely complex, not least, tactically.
If given a ticket to an international match, I'd give it away, but, there's no finer thing, on a sunday afternoon in the Yorkshire Dales, than to drowse, with a pint of ale and a good book, idly watching a village cricket match, with the sound of a hard leather ball struck off a willow bat, and a faint ripple of clapping, it's the quintessence of summer.