The Game Of Cricket For The Uninitiated
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People attempting to explain the game of cricket to Americans often compare it to baseball, but this is a big mistake and leads to much confusion. The English game of rounders is very like baseball, but if you are trying to understand cricket it is best to forget about baseball completely.
Cricket has been played in England for centuries and is thought of by the British as a very English game. Its popularity is still mainly limited to former British colonies and Commonwealth members: Australia, India, Pakistan, South Africa and New Zealand are the best known cricket-playing countries outside of the UK. For some reason it never caught on in Canada. Within the UK most of the best teams are in England. Glamorgan (Wales) is an exception.
The best way to understand cricket, if you have no idea at all, is to ask someone from a cricket-playing country to explain what is happening while you are watching a game. Of course you can read up on the rules but this will not be enough to teach you to play correctly or even understand what is happening on the pitch as you watch a game. I am not even going to try to explain the rules here.
Local cricket games in England are often a friendly affair, with one village playing another. Many of the Oxford and Cambridge colleges have an annual cricket match, staff against students. You might assume that the students would win, but the staff team includes young and fit porters and scouts (janitors), barmen and kitchen staff and in many colleges the staff team wins year after year.
Cricket and rugby, the other major British Commonwealth game, became involved in controversy in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s because of their popularity in South Africa. While South Africa retained apartheid and banned black players from their national team, the question of whether other national teams would play against South Africa was a political issue almost every year. The black cricket star Basil D'Oliveira moved to Britain from South Africa in the late 1960s in order to be able to play cricket at a professional level.
Cricket matches can go on for several days, but the one-day match is becoming more and more popular. Cricket requires fine weather and play will stop in heavy rain. However, because of the popularity of cricket in both hemispheres, top class matches can be played in one country or another all year round.
A cricket Test is a series of matches between two countries which will be played over several weeks. The Ashes is a biennial Test series between England and Australia that both countries take very seriously indeed!
Many cricketing terms have transferred into the English language, at least in British English. Being "on a sticky wicket" means being in a difficult situation. "Underhand" (a style of bowling which is not illegal in cricket but not well considered either) means unfair or sneaky, as does "it's not cricket".
Cricket is often thought to be a slow game because a match takes so long, but the play itself can be very fast and entertaining. As with American football, there is a lot of time out. Watching it on TV is not the best way to appreciate it. Attending a one-day cricket match or playing yourself is a much better way to enjoy the game of cricket.
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