Cricket: Tastes Like Chicken

 

I Went to the T20 World Cup of Cricket last Friday.  Ireland vs. Canada. 

Backstory

My first introduction to the game of cricket was during a brief trip to England in the 90’s. I was a taking a walk with the sister of my girlfriend and we came upon a middle school. There were some kids playing and I asked if I could take a swing. 

They said there was no pitch (the hardened surface that the bowler bowls on) they were just hitting fungos and practicing fielding. They handed me the bat and I flipped the ball in the air and crushed it. I was in my thirties when such a thing was still possible.

The ball was high far and gone. They were screaming, “Six! Six!” I looked around quickly but not seeing Patrick McGoohan anywhere I gave them back the bat, thanked them and continued on. 

Later in the trip I acquired a small cricket bat, kind of like the miniature bats they give out on bat day, (The Yankees are cheap bastards! My full size Yogi Berra Bat day bat served me all through High School) but that was more of a souvenir and, as it turned out many many, years later, a great tool for keeping my kids in line.

OK, that part is not true. But it really would have been perfect for the job if I were a completely different human being.

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Several weeks ago I was visiting my cousin on Long Island. We were driving near Eisenhower Park, and we passed the stadium. She said it was for the World Cup and that they slapped it up in under a month and would take it down after it was done. I said we have to go. 

She’s a baseball fan and I like going to games with her. The Mets. The Long Island Ducks… and now we would do the T20 World Cup.

We chose the Ireland vs. Canada game mostly because the tickets were $60 apiece as opposed to India v. Pakistan. That match was priced like the Super Bowl.

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Getting Ready

I prepared for the day in two ways. The first was watching a YouTube Video called “Cricket Explained For Baseball Fans”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWpbtLIxYBk

It helped quite a bit.

The second way involved going down to my old Junior HS ball field that, due to an influx of South Asians, and the conversion of the school to condos and offices was now a cricket field with an actual pitch.  The teams were made up of  a combination of Indians and Pakistanis, who by the way, got along really well with each other proving that if you take people out of the firing line, they tend to treat each other like human beings.

When they heard I was going to the T20 World Cup they were delighted to help me understand the game. T20 is a shorter and way more popular version  of the game. A cricket match can last for five days, the T20 matches only take around three hours. The twenty stands for the number of rounds.

I asked a guy about how anyone can go to a five day match and he said, you become like family with everyone in the stands. Yeah… I don’t think I could handle a five day Yankees / Red Sox game, and there’s no way I’m able to treat a Red Sox fan like a human being.

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Three Cool Things I Learned About Cricket

1) The Match Is Played With A Single Ball

Consequently, in the beginning of the match  the teams use their faster bowlers (pitchers) because the ball is in perfect shape and is more aerodynamic. Towards the end of the match the ball is seriously scuffed, and they bring in the junk ballers.

2) A Team's Best Hitter Is Called “The Danger Man”

Early in the match Canada’s “Danger Man” made an early Wicket (out) and was done for the day. The Danger Man is an artist with the bat able to hit ones and twos with ease but can also go deep for fours and sixes. Think Edgar Martinez. 

A batter gets a four when the ball reaches the outer boundary. It can roll or bounce. The fielder does what he can to stop it from reaching it sometimes looking like a soccer goalie diving full out to deflect the ball away. Hitting it over the boundary on a fly is a six. 

Now I know why those kids were yelling, “Six!” 

3) They Play Ominous Music During Reviews

As in all sports there are judgement calls and while I'm not sure who gets to ask for a review there were a couple of plays that required a second look. 

For example, there was a pivotal moment in the match where a fielder caught the ball on a fly and they needed to determine if the ball was tipped or if it was off the bounce on the pitch. It was difference between a dot – no run but the still pitch counts - and a Wicket – the batter is done.

While they looked at the tape and the AUDIO,  (There’s an audiometer because often it’s the sound of the ball hitting wood that is the determining factor)  they play music right out of a horror movie. Dark. Foreboding. Cool.

Three Things I Thought Were Stupid Until They Were Explained To Me

1)When A Player Makes A Great Defensive Play The Entire Team Congregates To Congratulate Him

Picture Verdugo makes a great catch and then he and Aaron Judge walk all the way to home plate so Judge can go, “Nice Catch!” It made no sense.  

Here’s what is actually going on.

In cricket the entire team does all of their at-bats in sequence so the defense doesn’t leave the field until ALL of the other team has batted. There is no sitting in the dugout in between innings to go over what is happening on the field. No opportunity for a defender to point something out to another one. 

When they congregate it’s like a quick time out and a chance to prep for the next batter.  

2) The Bowlers Start Their “Windup” Around Twenty Yards In Back Of The Point Where They Release The Ball.

It is sort of like what a javelin thrower or Fred “Twinkle Toes” Flintstone does. 

Long run then release, EVERY TIME. They can get the ball into the eighties and nineties that way.   

It seemed like a lot of needless running. Some do a shorter, ten yards, run up but most do the long one. One of the bowlers, after doing the short one made a nice play on a ball hit right back to him and I surmised it was because he wasn’t exhausted.

The reason for the run up is… the bowler is not allowed to bend his elbow, so everything is over the top and the only way to generate speed is by running up.

 Three Cool Things About Being There

1) The Food

 

Who doesn’t want to eat ball park chicken tikka marsala? I went with the curry which was actually quite good. There was another stand with Fish and Chips for the fans or Ireland, but I had to go South Asian. Canada has no food unless you count Tim Horton’s coffee and bacon cooked in beaver grease.

 

2) The People

Despite this not being a particularly well attended match, as the ticket prices indicate, the people in the stands came from all over the world. As an aside, India Pakistan will be SRO and watched by over a billion people on TV.

Sitting next to me was a guy from Australia who flew in for the match. He was VERY helpful in understanding some of the subtleties. Not so much on the fan side.

I asked him what were some good insults to yell at the batters, and he replied, “You’re always playing off your pads!” (Doesn’t hit the long ball). And, “Can’t duck the short ball.” (Still not sure why this is an insult.)  Obviously, he was rooting for Canada. 

Little linguistic tip... don’t ask a person from Australia who they are rooting for because in Australia “rooting” means having sexual intercourse.

Compare and contrast him with the old Irishman sitting behind me who was dismayed at the seeming lack of hustle displayed by the Irish squad. It was late in the match, and they were behind by a lot and running out of balls.

I turned to him and said, “What’s wrong with them? Where’s the urgency?  Someone needs to step up and light a fire. Where’s the manager?”  and looked at me and said, “Probably at the pub.”

3) I Finally Got It

The team at bat goes through their entire line up, runs up a score and then they switch.

It would be like the New York Giants get the ball for the entire first half and then the Cowboys get the ball for the second half. OK, that’s a bad example because the Cowboys would win on the first possession.

The challenge of watching has to do with figuring out where the tension is. Being down 84 runs seems like a lot, but is it?

There are two main ways to follow the score.

The first is knowing what a batter is capable of and then watching them meet, exceed, or fall short of the number of runs they are capable of. (See the Danger Man example above.)

The second, and the one that worked for me was… there is a finite number of pitches and so there is a finite number of runs that can be scored.

As every base is a run you can see when a lack of hustle to score the extra run is going to catch up to the team. 

Also, there’s a point when the trailing team pretty much has to go for the fours and sixes because being down 54 runs with 30 pitches to go is not where you want to be and every pitch that they come up short on is a wasted opportunity.  

Sort of like wasting a possession in basketball when you’re down by 12 and there is less than four minutes to go.

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There’s a lot more that I didn’t touch on… the round field, that the players don’t have to run after they hit the ball if they don’t think they can make the base, the insane amount of trotting that takes place when they hit it far enough to just get the run. Not big on hustling. (Gleyber!)

Bottom Line

I would do it again.  I would even like to try playing it, especially since I can’t go faster than a trot anyway and I think I can still bang a six if the bowl is away from my pads. Well, at least a four...