Pretty cool
Well, I did it! Went to my very first cricket match. It was the Lashings - vs - Rainham Cricket Club (dutifully correcting myself, Krip). The Lashings are a retired pro team that travels around England playing various townie cricket clubs. I suppose the closest type of thing I can come up with would be like the Harlem Globe Trotters playing a townie in a basketball game, but they didn't do a bunch of stupid tricks and stuff. Although, you could definitely tell who were the pros and who weren't. The score turned out to be 270 - 175.
The game was a 20-20 match. Another words, I learned they played 20 overs. After watching the game, I'm beginning to understand overs. Overs are kinda like innings in baseball. When the bowler throws the ball to the batsman six times, that's considered an over. Since they virtually play with two batsmen, running back and forth between the wickets, they have two bowlers bowling (not at the same time, mind you). Bowler 1 bowls (right to left) six times and then he leaves the pitch, and Bowler 2 comes on and bowls to the batsman (left to right). It's done 20 times, or 10 times in one direction and 10 times in the other. And it's done all at once. Another words, at the end of the 20 overs, that's your score, and the other team has to try to beat that score. So unlike baseball, all your overs (innings) are done in one big clump.
The weather was beautiful, the crowd was jovial sitting on the ground in a circle around the field, and the players seemed to have a great time. So overall it was a grand time. I do have to say that, like baseball, you could do an awful lot of reading, knitting, whatever; and still be able to follow what was happening. The only thing you had to follow was where the ball was traveling, making sure that it wasn't headed anywhere in your direction, especially the grounders.
I asked Krip if all the games was like this, and he said the next game we went to would probably consist of the two teams, us, and a man and his dog.
Hmmm, I think I will probably take my book.
posted by Laura @ 9:45 AM
8 Comments:
which reminds me an ex-colleague recounting that she spotted on the cameras, an old dear was knitting; and an old geezer snoozing, and then upon hearing the applause, woke up and clapping, "i say, brilliant! brilliant!"
yes they have got the 20/20 international matches on the telly also :)
Now I have to start figuring out the wickets, outs, etc. I have found if I concentrate on one thing at a time, the game won't be so mind-boggling.
It's Lashings dear, Lashings...
It's the slippery slope to Englishness "is cricket", as Geoffrey might say. A simple game complicated by the rules, the theory and the practice visited upon the godless to give them an idea of "eternity."
Before you know it, you'll be there on day three dressed up as W G Grace or the the Sugar Plum Fairy along with everyone else, shouting "Barmy Army!"
You know? It really is a very simple game. And I can follow it pretty well, just don't throw all the gobbly-goop at me, and I will be just fine. Krip has explained outs, wickets, and I have grasped overs...and as Krip says, that's all I really need to know.
It would be nice if it was just a tad more exciting tho.
When you figure it out, can you put it in "I'm an American, I don't know cricket" speak?
Not bad, for a girl.
(Having already played the racist card with my comments about WV, I though I might as well go for the set. Now, do you have any disabilities or bizarre sexual preferences or religious allegiance so that I can go for the maximum).
Seriously, welcome to the wonderful church of cricket. I trust that you will derive as much joy from it as the rest of us. Shame you are too late to ever see a Tom Graveney cover drive. Definitive proof of the existence of God.
vicus: Erm, no, (looking all around myself), I'm pretty normal most times.I am on the cusp of Pisces and Aris...does that count for anything?
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