My own interest in sport started with cricket, which is still its main focus. Historically, cricket is very much associated with the legacy of the British Empire - all of the main cricket-playing nations are former English colonies - but it also has a life of its own as a world sport: its popularity in the subcontinental nations (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh) make it a rival to soccer for this title. Apart from the countries mentioned, the major cricket-playing countries are the British colonies of the Carribean (who play collectively as the "West Indies"), South Africa and New Zealand.
Cricket was a good game for a beginner spectactor, since, like baseball, which is the most obvious point of comparison, there is a period time between each action taking place for explanations and the division of labour between the different positions on the field is very clear. Let me try in turn to Explain Cricket.
CRICKET?
Like baseball, cricket has innings in which one side is fielding and one side is batting. Rather than the "diamond" with "bases" at each corner, it is organised around a "pitch" with "creases" at either end: a 22 yards x 10 feet strip of rolled grass, laid (like the diamond) in the middle of an oval playing field.
There are always two batters (usually called "batsmen" - "batter" is considered an"Americanism" (!) - but I will use the more inclusive term) in at any given time, at either end of the pitch, and one bowler (the equivalent of baseball's pitcher) who delivers the ball in sets of 6 ("overs") from one end or the other.
The aim of the batter is to hit the ball away from the pitch (and the fielders) and to make "runs": each batter runs to the other end of the pitch, each length made successfully by both batters counts as one run to the score of the batting side. They have to stop running once the fielding side returns the ball to the pitch: at each end of the pitch is a "wicket" - three wooden poles ("stumps") stuck into the ground with two small wooden bars ("bails") sitting across them, and if the wicket is "broken" (the bails removed) by the ball (or by a player using the ball) while the batter is outside of their "crease", then they are out.
There are other ways of getting out, major ones are being "caught" - the batter hits the ball and it is caught by a fielder before touching the ground - and being "bowled" - the bowler's delivery itself breaks the wicket. Unlike baseball, there is no penalty against the batter for not hitting the ball, but hitting the ball is a) the only way to make runs (almost - long story) and b) one of the best ways the batter has of protecting their wicket - by hitting the ball away, the batter prevents the ball from hitting the wicket, even if the ball is not hit away far enough to make runs (this is called a "defensive shot").
"First class" cricket
In "first class" cricket, each team generally has two innings (ie two innings batting, two innings fielding). The batting innings of a team is automatically over once 10 batters are out (there are 11 on a team, but because there need to be two batters, the game is over when there is only one remaining). The winning team is the one with the most runs after all innings have been played.
Now for the shocking part: such a game may last UP TO FIVE DAYS (a day contains about 6 hours of play), and if all innings have not been got through in that time (ie if there are still at least two batters not out by the end of play), then the game is officially DRAWN, even if one team has made many more runs than the other.
There are ways of avoiding such a situation: the captain of a batting side with a lot of runs may "declare" his team's innings closed and so give himself more time (hopefully) to get the other side out - this is called "playing for a result", but of course runs the risk that the result will be a loss rather than a win. On the other side of the fence, if a batting team has no hope of making enough runs to win the match, they may try to "play for a draw", ie just focus on not getting out rather than making runs, and so avoid loss. (In the "olden days", there was no fixed time limit on the game - they went on for as long as it took to get a result, so you could have games that lasted 10, 11 days!).
First class cricket matches are often organised in "series" of 3 or 5 games, all of which are played even if one side has won the series (by winning the first 2 or 3 games) before the series is over.
"Limited over" cricket:
- "one-day" cricket, where each innings is set at 50 "overs" (50 sets of 6 balls), and each team only bats once, the winner being whoever has the most runs at the end of the day. The Cricket World Cup, held every four years, is a tournament of one-day games, as you can imagine the impracticalities of trying to hold a tournament between all the teams where each match can go up to 5 days.
- "20/20" cricket: where each innings is set at 20 overs, thus resulting in a game that can be held in a single evening/afternoon/morning.
In limited-over cricket, the focus is on getting the highest score possible within a limited time rather than avoiding getting out (as it doesn't matter how many batters have been dismissed as the end of the limited period), so batting is usually a lot more aggressive (and thus risky) than in first-class cricket.
Limited-over cricket is often frowned upon as a more "commercial" or "populist" form of the game, pandering to a modern decline in attention spans and rise of "mere" thrillseeking, and the demands of television programming. However, while it is true that the "institutionalisation" of one-day cricket on an international level is historically inseparable from the actions of Australian media magnate Kerry Packer in the late 70s and his commercial interests (another long story), the vast majority of cricket played recreationally throughout the world since its beginnings has been of a "limited-over" sort, or had some sort of other artificial restraint put on it to enable it to be played within a time-period compatible with work and other obligations. "First-class" cricket is thus more accurately described as the "high" rather than the "pure" form of the game.
The prejudice also seems to be to do with ideas derived from the notion that cricket is something played between members of the English nobility, or in the manner of such play. As an aristocratic pastime it therefore should be neither a commercial activity (noblemen do not have to make money) nor a spectacle for entertainment (noblemen do not play on stage).
There is a great deal that can be objected to here - from historical, theoretical and ideological points of view - that I won't get into. But this image of cricket (probably the most immediate one) as a polite game between gentlemen forms a perfect backdrop to what I must write about some time soon: the Ashes and Shane Warne.
Some other links on cricket:
- Explaining Cricket to Americans: another basic explanation of cricket using baseball as the point of reference
- An Explanation of Cricket: a much fuller account, but introductory-style language
- Midwest Cricket Conference: website of a local cricket competition
No comments:
Post a Comment