Your Thoughts Exactly

What does a lazy lover of television do on his summer break? Why watch the summer of cricket of course. Cricket gets no love in the United States because no one understands the rules and we have baseball to provide daily three hour time sinks. Since the blog readership is overwhelmingly American, let me provide a few answers about cricket to you wankers.

What are the rules?: Well that depends of course, on whether you are playing traditional Test cricket or the limited overs one day internationals. Test cricket matches are 5 days long. Each team bats twice, with eleven batters per side. There are two wickets on the field, which are three poles maybe a meter tall, 50 yards apart or so. The opposing bowler bowls to the batter, whose job is to keep the ball from hitting the wicket and score runs. Runs are scored when the ball is hit into the field and the batter runs to the other wicket. There is a corresponding batter standing at the other wicket: he runs to the batsman’s wicket. So there are two guys batting at once. If you hit the ball on the ground to the end of the field, it’s a called a boundary and worth four runs. If you hit the ball out on the fly, it’s worth six runs.
Players get out if the bowled ball gets through and hits the wicket, if an opposing fieldsman catches the ball on the fly off the bat, if the ball hits the batters leg while on trajectory to hit the wicket (the dreaded LBW), or if one of the runners is “run out” (through pegging the wicket before the batter gets back.) You can also get out by getting “stumped,” although I am not sure what that entails and don’t think I want to know.
In one day matches, rather than letting everyone bat, the teams are allowed a limited amount of balls. The limit is 50 overs. There are 6 bowled balls per over. In both Test and One Day matches, the team much switch bowlers every over. They also change which wicket they are bowling to every over. Anyways I am sure the rules are perfectly clear to you now.

Do they really take lunch and tea breaks?: You betcha. Of course since the games last from 10 AM to 7 PM…it’s understandable.

So what are some good scores? The best batters average over 50 runs per time batted. Getting a “century” or 100 runs is considered to be an excellent achievement. A team of 11 is usually composed of 6 or so batting specialists and 4 bowling specialists. The bowlers usually aren’t that good at batting and are stuck at the end of the order. Thus, for an entire team to score 400 runs in an innings appears to be a pretty decent achievement. Scores vary on the conditions of the "pitch" however.

What countries play this stupid sport? There are officially eleven Test nations: England, Australia, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Team West Indies, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, New Zealand, and some other nation I appear to have forgotten. These teams also get automatic spots in the Cricket World Cup, which the US played in! (We didn’t win.)

Who is the best? Australia by far. They have won the last two world cups and have been dominating test series. The West Indies is traditionally one of the best teams, but has fallen out of form. India, England, and Sri Lanka, are Australia’s closest competitors in the official cricket world rankings.

Who are some of the best players? Some of the best batters include the West Indies’ Brian Lara, who holds the record for most runs in a test innings (400), India’s Sachin Tendulkar, who holds the record for most test centuries (34), and Australia’s Adam Gilchrist. The best bowlers include Australia’s Shane Warne and Glen McGrath and some Sri Lankan whose name I couldn’t possible spell.

How do you possibly spend six hours at a cricket match and not kill yourself from boredom? The same way you keep yourself sane at a baseball game: drink heavily.