Thursday, November 23, 2006

"A cup of tea and a short match of cricket"

Do you doze off during three-and-a-half-hour college football games? Are you bored to death by scoreless soccer games? Do you scream at the TV every time a veteran pitcher takes 30 seconds between pitches?

Great. Good. I do too. But you ain't experienced nothin', mate! Come to Australia, watch one cricket match, and you'll be begging for a Toledo-Bowling Green Tuesday night football game.

The length of a cricket match? Well, there are one-day matches, which usually run about six hours. But currently The Ashes, a Test Series match between Australia and England, is taking place. Today was the first day. The Ashes is like a five-game series in the MLB playoffs. Only there's one catch: Each "game" is five days. And - just a reminder - each day takes about six hours.

So, you think, nobody could possibly watch this. Nobody could possibly sit through this. Oh, c'mon, grow up. Every day of the Ashes is sold out. More than 40,000 attended Day 1. And everybody in the office here was listening on their computers, pretending to do work like we Yankees do during March Madness.

Blokes in Australia love their cricket like a good Yankee loves their baseball.

But cricket is just so... wack.

An inning in baseball is an "innings" in cricket. An out in cricket is celebrated like a Kansas City Royals victory at Kauffman Stadium. You really should see it. Since outs happen about once every two hours, the 11 players on the fielding team hug each other for 10 minutes before they realize that they still need nine more outs.

Yes, teams need 10 - not three - outs to end an innings.

A run in cricket is about as exciting as a popup in baseball. It usually involves the batter hitting the ball and running to the wicket opposite him while the "non-batter" runs to his wicket. But there are a million other ways to get a run. It's not quite as simple as crossing home plate.

There are no "first base" and "home plate" in cricket. Just wickets, which the "bowling" team tries to knock over.

Cricket may be boring, bland, as exciting as a neurology conference, but it definitely trumps American sports when it comes to breaks in the action. While all us Yanks can come up with is the seventh-inning stretch, at cricket matches there are tea breaks and a lunch break. The players actually get to take a reprieve, grab some crumpets and kick back and relax.

After the strike in 1994, MLB could have instituted tea breaks during the games (maybe after the third and sixth innings?) to revive interest in the sport. Stadiums could have offered $1 hot dogs and $3 beers during these breaks. That way, baseball fans wouldn't have needed the 'Roids Rage to bring them back to the ballpark.

No Sammy, no Big Mac? Who gives a hoot? We've got tea!

Outfielders could probably learn some great passing-time techniques from cricketers. After all, there are 11 players on the bowling team at a time, but only the bowler bowls, the wicket-keeper occasionally catches, and once in a blue moon a fielder has to chase down a ball.

Hey, Milton Bradley, you think it's tough standing in that Bay Area sun for 30 minutes? Try six hours. Try going that long without abusing a voluble fan.

Watching cricket teaches you life lessons. It teaches you patience. It teaches you focus (never know when that out's gonna occur!). And it teaches you to take back what you've always said: that you'd never meet a sports competition you wouldn't enjoy watching.

It also makes a college football game seem as long as a Jennifer Lopez marriage and a scoreless soccer match as entertaining as a Tyson-Holyfield fight.

1 comment:

Ashley d'Entremont said...

cricket is just...whack.

I extremely enjoy your word-choice, as alway, Mister Jake.