Jiminy ....

Cricket.  With the AFL and rugby on hiatus, cricket is all the rage here.  Laura and I went to a match featuring the "exciting" format of this sport.  If you DVR Sunrise Earth to have something exciting to watch on the weekend, this is the game for you.  If you fall asleep reading this post, you're in the same boat as a good number of fans and even the coaches.

Before the match started.  Jeff was happy and not sleeping.

So the basic parameters of the game ... The batting team has two batters on the field at all times.  The batters are at either end of the pitch.  The pitch is a hard packed surface about 30m long in the center of a very large oval field.  There is a wicket, or stumps, at either end of the pitch which the batters "defend".  The team in the field consists of ten players, one of which is the bowler ... the guy that throws the ball.  A bowler throws from one end of the pitch towards the batter at the other by any means necessary.  The only thing he can't do is bend his throwing elbow and cross the line 20m from the batter.  A bowler bowls six balls from one end, called an over, and then is replaced by another bowler who bowls from the opposite end.

the Pitch

A batter can score three ways and get out three ways.  Batters score by:
     1)  Hitting a ball over the boundary line on the fly (not called a home run) which is 6 runs
     2)  Hitting a ball that rolls over the boundary line which is 4 runs
     3)  Hitting a ball into the field and running back and forth between the wickets with the other batsman, you get one run for each time both batsmen reach the other wicket

Batters get out by:
     1)  Somehow whiffing on a bowled ball that hits the wicket ... this rarely happens as the bat is massive and the bowlers don't always go for the wicket
     2)  Getting a ball caught on the fly off the bat
     3)  Not reaching the wicket before a fielder hits it with the ball when trying to score runs running between the wickets ... basically the ball getting to a base before you do if you relate it to baseball

I think there are four formats for this sport, but I only know details of two.  The international format is a five day Test Match.  I tried watching Australia vs. New Zealand in one of these on a Saturday after a big Friday night.  They literally break for tea during these things and the coaches are often caught on camera lounging and asleep.  The pay must be good as I can't imagine how one would muster the resolve to sit through five days of this without losing the will to live.  I had the match on for five hours and neither batsmen got out over that period of time.  In this format, the sides only switch after one side has gotten out all 10 of the other sides batsmen, or the side batting feels like they have enough runs to win.  A team must bowl out the other team twice in order to win a Test Match, so you might do this if you've only bowled the other team out once, are up a couple of hundred runs, and it's getting late into day 4.

The exciting format we went to watch is called a Twenty20.  It only last about three hours.  Basically one team bats for twenty overs (120 balls), then the other team bats for twenty overs.  Whoever has more runs at the end wins.  It is not exciting.  What's worse is they've tried to manufacture excitement through cheesy neon uniforms, horrendous mascots, and pyrotechnics that fire off for seemingly every ball regardless of what occurs.  The only exciting thing we got to see was "the Michael Jordan of cricket" come out of retirement Brett Favre style for the match we attended.  He got rocked for 19 runs on two overs.

Cricket legend Shane Warne bowling

So cricket is massively popular here and I'll never understand why.  It's essentially baseball with a twist, except it lacks ALL of the drama of baseball.  You don't get a pitcher trying to work his way out of a 1 out bases loaded jam, or 2 out in the bottom of the ninth down one and a full count.  It might get close at the end of a cricket match, but it took five days to get there and may take another five days to declare a winner if it ends in a tie the first time.  And I'm not sure I can even go to another Twenty20 match.  As much as I appreciate that they have tried to generate a more interesting format for perhaps the world's most boring sport, I'm irritated at how poorly it's done.  This is the list of nicknames for the teams in this league:  Heat, Sixers, Stars, Scorchers, Hurricanes, Renegades, Strikers, and Thunder.  Yeah ... so it gets hot here and you get 6 runs for hitting it over the boundary.  Other than that, none of these names mean anything to these people and they're playing in uniforms which appeal to fans aged 0-2.  The team called Hurricanes is based in a city which has never been hit by a hurricane ... or typhoon as they're actually called over here ... since the beginning of time.  Even better, the two major sponsors of the league are  fine American companies.  KFC and Jenny Craig.

Creepy Star/Shark mascot for the Melbourne Stars.  Notice
the haze on the field from the pyrotechnics.

.... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

At least the night ended on a good note ... fish jerky and Fart Bombs