Sunday sportsmen
This afternoon Tom and I went over to watch a cricket match in Madison. Or, as I said earlier in my post about my plans, we watched part of a cricket match. The teams were all adult Indian men, guys in their twenties and thirties. I gather from overheard snippets of conversations that they were a mix of doctoral students and computer folks.
We were two of the three non-playing spectators. A middle-aged guy, clearly American, was sitting near us and one of the players, a co-worker, was whispering details to him, explaining what had just happened. This was very helpful, but I was not quite close enough to catch it all.
When we arrived, we asked where we could sit -- it was a bring-your-own-chair kind of event -- and a friendly fellow pointed out where we might set up and see what was going on with little danger of being hit by a ball. (I listened to your advice, Sunny!) We explained that we knew nothing about cricket. Well, I had looked at an instructional YouTube video and printed out a brief introduction for dummies, and Tom and I had read it. The guys smiled wryly and warned, "It's a long game."
We admitted we had heard as much.
We stayed for an hour, leaving when they took a break. Don't ask me what happened. It was very leisurely, but even knowing as little as I do, it seemed to move more quickly than American baseball. There was a lot less standing around while the bowler (think "pitcher") looked around at everyone on the field two or three times. The chatter was quite different, too. I don't recall hearing American baseball fans shout, "Lovely! Lovely batting!" or "Good running, boys!" Not sure how much of that is owing to it being cricket and how much to them being well-educated Indians. I heard (or at least recognized) not a single profanity.
Tom had brought his Kindle so that he would have something to read, but I noticed that he soon put it aside and paid attention to what was happening on the cricket ground.
Now it is a sign of his generous spirit that Tom accompanied me at all, cricket being something that had caught my attention, not his. And to do so, he passed up watching the FireKeepers Casino 400 NASCAR race at Michigan International Speedway. As soon as we got home, however, while I took care of hungry cats, Tom went to the television to check on the race. There were ten laps left and his favorite, Joey Logano was in the lead. Joey went on to win, his first Sprint Cup victory of the season. I told Tom Joey must do better when Tom isn't watching.
Anyway, that was our sports Sunday.
3 comments:
what was happening?
Spo,
Some guy was throwing the ball overhand really hard at the sticks that the batter, who looked more like a hockey goalie, was standing beside/in front of and occasionally tapping the ball off in one direction or another and then running, or not, to the other end of the pitch while another guy ran to his end of the pitch and sometimes they turned around and ran back and sometimes they just sort of stood there and periodically someone on the side would yell out "Bowlers name?" and some one would shot back a name and people would yell "Good running!" and "Good bowling!" and at one point there was some problem with the ball and they ran out with handfuls of balls and everyone consulted over that and then things went back to the way they were and from time to time someone would yell out "35" or "43" or "47" and after two batters were out (?) or at least left the field individually and were replaced they all came off the field for a water break or some such thing. It was actually rather interesting.
I LOVE your explanation of Cricket in response to Spo. Thanks for the good laugh.
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