1. when bored, create a sport that has so many rules that no one will ever remember them all.
2. make it "dignified".
3. make it wholly unplayable in the rain.
that sums up the gist of cricket. First, it is NOT like baseball at all. there are no bases, just a strip of sand that you run back and forth across when you've hit the ball far enough to score. the batter does not swing the bat over her shoulders, pitchers are called bowlers, the things they are aiming to hit are called stumps, if they hit them they've got a wicket, the average game takes about six hours to play and there's a tea break in the middle. players often wear white--all white.
aaanyway. I spent many tuesday and thursday evenings at cricket practice learning how to windmill a ball and not die when i got hit by a pitch. I eventually graduated to playing two games for the club and finally found myself going "on tour" at the end of the undergraduate year. Fourteen of us headed to Norwich in the East of England, about a three hour drive from the university. During the drive up it rained. It continued that night and into the next morning. So we weren't surprised when we got a phone call saying the pitch (field) was far too waterlogged to play any proper cricket. Actually, the pitch was flooded--all of our matches would be cancelled for the entire tour.
We were disappointed but received a small respite; the sun peeked out for a couple of hours. We headed to the seaside instead and played some improptu cricket on the beach. In hoodies and jeans with the wind kicking up sand behind us, but still. Great Yarmouth is about a thirty minute drive from Norwich and is an ugly hybrid of Las Vegas meets Atlantic City meets the Kmart Carnival of my youth. Think Santa Monica pier but ten thousand times tackier.
we still had fun.
Annie and me, representing "diversity" on the team (she's norwegian!)
impromptu cricket
if i were good, i would have hit that ball
getting ready to bowl
chicketers!
skipping stones on the beach
a rare glimpse of blue skies
really sad:0(
we spent the next day dodging the rain and wandering around norwich and its castle and cathedral. photos soon.
