cricket

So a couple weeks ago I was at the pub with some friends who started telling me everything I never wanted to know about cricket, but I pretended I needed great ammunition for my blog partially so as not to hurt their feelings and partially because it was clear there wasn't going to be a conversation about anything besides cricket anyway so I might as well get something out of it.

If you don't like this blog post, it's all their faults.

If you do like it, it's clearly because the writing covers over a multitude of (drat!  you can't make "boredom" into a countable noun like this reference requires) boredomnesses.

But again, if you don't, it's not my fault.

Anyway, I have this vague feeling I was coerced into promising the title of this post would be "The Don," but since I don't really do capitalization in my blog post titles that would throw off the rhythm of the blog something dreadful and I get the impression the capitalization was pretty important to them.  And also I don't like to be coerced into promising things about my blog, so ha!  Uncreative title it is, too!

The reason I'm supposed to call this post "The Don" is because Don Bradman is, quote, the best batsman of all time, end quote.  (These boys have a real way with words, let me tell you.)  What's more, Don Bradman (I refuse to use the definite article with anyone other than "the Queen" or "the President") had a batting average of 99.94, which was I supremely impressed to discover was that much better than Ivory soap (99.44% pure) until they explained that, technically, it was possible to get higher than 100, at which point they lost me entirely, because I'd been assuminactg he really was that good and it was more or less like an American batting average but it turns out that isn't right at all and, well, you'll have to find your own cricket expert to explain to you why not.

The other thing that's super great about Don Bradman is that after he made his last shot (is that what they call it?) he missed, which was the shot that lost him that really cool mark of being over 100, and so it was, naturally, a very, very, very bad moment at the time and everyone was completely devastated as he walked off the field until they decided that actually it was a great thing because if he'd gotten over a 100, no one would have remembered the exact number, but now everyone remembers 99.94 and it's like, practically Australia's lucky number.  And no one would ever have known what Australia's lucky number was if Don Bradman had actually made that final shot.

And before my informants get all up in arms that I've left out this salient detail:  Don Bradman was a real sportsman in the sportsmanlike sense of the word.  Even when he knew he'd just lost that precious 100 mark, he did not throw a dirty, rotten tantrum on the field, but simply turned and walked off.  (This is the part where you're supposed to get goosebumps.  Please try to, for their sakes if not mine.)

As  a counter to this incredible story that rendered Don Bradman the greatest sportsman in Australian sport history (just realized!  Australians use "sport" quite a lot more where Americans would use "athletics" ... or "sportS" at least) even among -- and this is an impressive feat, I am vociferously informed -- those who do not consider cricket their favorite sport but prefer, say, rugby (obviously here I mean rugby union and not rugby league).  Everyone thinks of Don Bradman as the greatest -- to the extent that, if I'm re-reading my notes correctly, Australians know where they were the day Don Bradman died, much as Americans recall where they were during the JFK assassination or 9/11.  I'm kind of hoping I'm misinterpreting my notes, but Australians really haven't got so many world famous politicians (hate to break it so cavalierly, but it really is true -- Bill Bryson kindly offering to attempt to keep tabs on who the Australian Prime Minister is because, as he puts it, he figures at least one person outside the country should know) so it possibly is correct.

Anyway, I was about to offer the counter story to Don Bradman's great depiction of what "cricket" truly is, in both senses of the common phrase.  The story of the guy who wasn't goes like this:  it was akin to a game roughly along the lines of the bottom of the 9th of the 7th game of the World Series (it was a Test, which is a 5 day long game, at least if it is a "Test Series 5"), though there was some disagreement as to exactly how major of a Test it was, but regardless, suffice it to say it was a very tense moment.  Australia was playing New Zealand.  They are arch-rivals, which again proves my rule that the archest of rivalries generally develop between teams/nations/school districts/universities that are most similar (Calvin, I love you, but in the big scheme of things, you're not all that different from (gasp! am I even saying this?!) ... that other school in West Michigan ... Though of course a million times better!).

So it was more of less the bottom of the 9th with 2 strikes already (surely all sports are like baseball, much in the same way as all unusual meat tastes like chicken, right?) and Australia was winning but New Zealand was up to bat and needed only one run to win when Trevor Chappell, who was pitching for Australia, had a brief powwow with his brother, who was also on the team, and then did the utterly unthinkable:  he bowled the ball underhanded so that it rolled along the ground instead of soaring through the sky as it was meant to.

Perhaps you have already obtained goosebumps again (of the bad variety, of course) of your own accord here, but it took me awhile to work out what exactly had happened and why exactly it was a bad thing.  The boys explained this laboriously to me and I might be able to remember a few pieces of it for you.  Basically, it is just Not Done to bowl underhand.  It is not even a remote option.  It's like throwing the bowling ball instead of rolling it, except completely the opposite.  It was so obviously not how you're supposed to do it that they hadn't even written a rule to specify it, but had to after Trevor Chappell did, much like Americans took out that whole unlimited reelection policy after FDR proved you could keep getting elected till you died, because, really, it just. wasn't. cricket.  Kind of like they don't write a rule that says your pet parrot isn't allowed to come along and stuff your golf ball down his beak and regurgitate it in the hole to give you a hole in one.  It's just obvious that isn't supposed to happen, even notwithstanding the fact you're not legally supposed to be keeping a pet parrot.

Or something like that.  I never claimed to have all the finer details of it, but basically what Trevor did was Really Bad and Highly Embarrassing and Very, Very, Very Not Cricket, but not technically against the rules.  And so Australia won the game, but a bitter, bitter win it was.

The boys themselves looked sheepish as they told me, almost as if they'd been the ones to do this very, very not cricket thing, but then speedily drew my attention back to Don Bradman and how very, very wonderful and very, very cricket he was and that, really, he was the one I should be blogging about and not that Other Incident.

Aside from those two stories, they told me lots of other stuff about cricket, too, but neither had any concept of starting at the beginning and explaining all the rules to me in any semblance of order, and I don't think they realized how very, very little I actually knew about the sport.  Basically, I think if you look at it as a sort of 5-day baseball game played in white outfits you have the general idea, but if it's details you're after, here are the ones they gave me.  In the order I got them.  And they wonder why I'm still confused about cricket:

--There are three ways to get out in cricket:  you can be caught, bowled or stumped.  Actually, you can also be run out, which is very similar to but different from being stumped and I know just the guy who'd love to explain that difference to you because he knows it and is very clear on the difference but possibly not so clear that I took legible notes on it.  And also LBW means "leg before wicket" (no one bothered to tell me what a wicket was, so I can't tell you either) and it is bad, too.  I'm thinking it sounds vaguely like being offsides in football, but seeing as I know roughly as much about football as I do about cricket, I could be wrong on either account.

--Batsman

--Protect the stumps

--Score runs!

--Century

--Duck = bad

--Golden duck = 1st ball = out

--Ritchie Benno wore cream jackets and used to play cricket but is more famous for being a commentator

--wickets (they seem to have come up again; still undefined)

--King pear = 2 golden ducks

--Peter Roebuck

--balls - on top of stumps

--Don Bradman was from Adelaide and then moved to New South Wales.  He lived in the 1940s or 50s ish.

--a test goes for five days and each side gets 2 innings (so that's different from baseball, the way the innings work, but they still call them innings which is slightly but not overly confusing) -- in an inning, everyone must get out OR they must declare (maybe you could google this verb if you don't understand it) and it's a draw if they don't finish 2 innings.  I learned a bit more about innings, but it's getting late and I can't quite remember it all.

--The Boxing Day Test Match is huge.

--The Flying Burrito Brothers -- Bali.  That might have had to do with something else.

--Shane Warne:  best spin bowler.  Oh, yes.  I was supposed to dedicate a paragraph to him, too, because he is very talented.  He is the only guy to be the best player of the century while still playing, if that makes sense to you.  He bowled the ball of the century to the captain of England, whose name is Mike.  It was the first ball in the Ashes, which I have vague recollections of blogging about before.  It is the test match between England and Australia and a slightly sore subject in recent years, but not historically.  Basically, Shane Warne bowled a ball that went behind the batter's legs, which is just gravitationally very amazing.  I don't claim to be up on my physics, either, but it was a monstrously impressive feat of physics, though you'd have to see it on youtube to really get it.  So would I.

--Stumping -- bowler bowls and the batsman runs out and I'm in front of line and wicket keeper grabs it and hits stump because batter missed.

--Run out -- hit ball -- run -- partner runs -- fielder -- throws and hits stumps or to someone. 

Ah yes, this is the difference between stumping and running out.  As I said, I know a guy who can explain it.  At length.  Stopping him will really be more your difficulty.  Good luck.  Break a leg.  Whatever works.  Hopefully it won't take as long as a test series, but don't hold your breath.  Oh, and laugh at his jokes.  It takes effort, but it makes him happy.  Possibly so happy he'll change the subject.