cricket

i went to my first cricket game this weekend. james and gobbo took me down to the MCG on their bikes so we could watch the one-day India/Australia game. this was a short game. it only lasted eight hours.

in case, as is likely, you have no idea how the hell one plays cricket, i'll try to explain. it's taken me about a year to reach a point where i can say that i know what the hell is going on in the sport. i'm sure i'll get some of my terminology wrong, but this is close enough.

cricket is similar to a baseball except there are always two batters up, every base is home plate, and you "bowl" instead of pitch. is that clear?

first off, go outside now with a tennis ball and try to hit something large, like say a car, by swinging your arm backwards up and around over your head while running and releasing the ball so it hits your target on the bounce. that's bowling. the pros do it at 150 km/hr.

you've got a big oval field. towards the center there are two wickets facing each other, each behind a line. the wickets are three sticks stuck in the ground with a small piece resting over the top of them. if this piece gets knocked off by the bowler, or by anyone when you're not behind the line, you're stumped. which means you're out. unlike baseball, you never get up again once you're out. each team gets ten outs and then you're done. you can also get out by having a ball you hit get caught on the fly, or by only saving the wicket from getting knocked by the bowler by putting your leg in the way.

each side gets their turn (or turns, if it's a 5-day test) to bat, called "innings". the fielding side has their guys spread about the oval playing "slips" and "square leg" and "other weird positions" plus they have one dude bowling. they can swap bowlers in and out more or less however they damn well please. the batting side always has two batters up, one protecting each wicket. the bowler will bowl six balls towards one wicket in each "over" and then they'll swap and bowl towards the other wicket. the batter who's being bowled to is trying simultaneously to protect the wicket and to score runs. runs are scored by running back and forth between the two wickets while the fielders are off chasing a ball you've hit. frequently, balls will be hit weakly and no one will run at all. sort of like hitting a foul ball in baseball. you can hit weak balls all day and never score a run and never go out.

still with me?

the batters will hit and run, sometimes swapping ends (if they score an odd number of runs) and sometimes ending up back where they started. if you hit a ball all the way to the "boundary" (the lip marking the edge of the oval), you automatically score 4. if you hit a ball over the boundary in the air, that's worth 6.

and that's cricket. the batting team will bat until they've lost all ten wickets (got out ten times) or, if it's a limited-over test like the one i went to, until the predetermined number of overs have been bowled, which ever comes first. in this case, it was 50 overs. then the teams switch and the other side gets to bat. in the long tests, each side gets two "innings"; meaning each side gets to bat twice and the cumulative score decides the "test."

because it's played this way, you never know who's winning. it's either unclear or it's over. in the game i saw, Australia batted like crap. they were up first and a mess of their batsman went out with meager scores. the captain, Ricky Ponting, scored 0. he didn't score a single run before he lost his wicket. the Aussies didn't last the full 50 overs, instead going 10/159. that means 10 wickets lost, 159 runs scored. the Indians, up second, could play it safe as they only need to score 160 before they'd be declared winner and the match would end. to put that in perspective, in 50 overs there are 300 bowls, so the Indians only needed to score about 3 runs an over. which they did so they won. in test cricket, when there's no limit to the number of overs in an innings, it's frequently a draw. if both sides don't go out twice, too bad. draw. five days for nothing.

there are other rules to cricket which i'm picking up. for instance, if you catch the ball while fielding, you must immediately throw it up in the air, whoop joyously, and let your teammates crowd around you for some man-love. if you get out, you must immediately walk off the pitch without any emotion or you will be ponce. if you wait for the umpire to tell you you're out, you look like a petulant brat. if you scull an entire beer while the bogans scream "scull", particularly if you're large, have your face painted with the orange, white, and green stripes of the Indian flag, and are actually wearing an Indian flag, then they will reward you by chanting "you are a legend!" if you do this twice in a row because you have bought two beers, then your wife will get up and lead you out to be scolded. you are still a legend, don't worry. if you let the cops grab the very dangerous beach ball you were about to knock about, so they can pop it, then you are not a legend. you are wanker. this will be chanted until you are suitably humiliated. starting the "mexican wave" is grounds for dismissal and fines. as the crowd knows, however, "you cannot stop the wave." you can, if you are a policeman, drag bogans out by the neck, however.

and that's cricket. it makes a hell of a lot more sense then Aussie Rules Footy. you're on your own with that one.