Even though Moriah and I are in India, baseball rudely started the season at the beginning of April. Luckily we have been able to make due with baseballs older and distantly related cousin, cricket.
As we detailed in an earlier post, I played a bit with some of the locals, and it is pretty much always on tv. Today we joined a fellow British medical student, Steve, on a trip to see the Chennai Super Kings, which if you ask me is just about the most awesome name in all of sports (aside from the Yankees of course. Wait, are there Super Yankees?). To make it even better, they were playing the Rajasthan Royals, luckily not the Super Royals.
Cricket shares some things in common with baseball, but there are some important differences.
Field=pitch
Pitcher=bowler
Catcher= wicket keeper(also the only guy who gets gloves, though oddly enough they use baseball gloves during warm ups to protect their hands)
Batter=batter (likewise for bat)
Ball=ball
Out=wicket
Run=run
Outrageous drunken fans=outrageous sober fans(no alcohol allowed in the stadium, and no bars near it.)
And the fans really were outrageous. They cheered constantly, even counted down the seconds till the end of a time out. The men in the crowd were especially fond of the cheerleaders, who we learned were from Russia, flown in to provide cheering related services. And of course, "We Will Rock You" was blasted at full volume before the Super Kings came to bat.
A quick version of the rules
The bowler takes a running start, and throws the ball overhand towards the batter, and generally has the ball bounce a few feet in front of the batter in an attempt to hit the stump (three sticks behind the batter) to knock over the wicket (two small sticks placed on top of the stump). The batter tries to hit the ball, and unlike baseball, can hit it in any direction, even directly behind him. Also unlike baseball, he is under no obligation to run after he hits it, he can do so only if he thinks he can make it to the other wicket before the other team can knock it over with the ball.
You score runs by running between the wickets. If you hit the ball to the boundary on at least one bounce, you get 4 runs. If you hit it over the boundary on the fly (like a home run) you get 6.
In any version of cricket, the batter continues to bat until the opposing team makes a wicket, which can be done four ways: the bowler hits the stump and knocks over the wicket, the batted ball is caught in the air, or the batter is thrown out while running (the fielder has to knock the wicket over with the ball before any part of the batter crosses the line). You can also be called out if a ball that will hit the stumps hits your shin guards before hitting the bat.
There are three varieties of cricket played professionally, and differ by how long they last. The original version lasts up to five days! (played all day) and is probably thusly named because it is both a test of the players' stamina as well as the fans ability to pay attention to a game for 8 straight hours for five straight days. Each team gets two innings to bat, but in a sharp deviation from baseball, an inning isn't determined by how many wickets, rather all 11 players bat around. And as I said, they each get to keep batting until they make a wicket, in which case they have to go back to the bench and sit down, probably take a nap or do their laundry until it is time to start the next inning, which may be house or days away. So there is really no incentive to try to take the cover off the ball, because if you miss, its a long wait till your next chance. So you get a lot, and I mean a lot of defensive swings at the ball, occasionally they decide to run back and forth to score runs, and rarely they will hit it hard enough to reach a boundary. Unless the game is drawing to a close and they are behind. Then they get more aggressive and smack the ball around a bit.
In an attempt to bring the sport to those who are unable to watch/play a game for five full days, 50/50 cricket was invented, this lasting a mere 8 hours. In this version, each team gets to keep batting for only 50 "overs" or six balls (300 balls), or until all 11 men are out.
In another refinement, they invented 20/20, where each team gets only 120 balls. The game starts with a coin toss to determine which team bats first. One team bats through all their overs, then the other team tries to top the score to win. Teams will usually only go through 4-5 batters, and because of the limited overs, this version is much more aggressive, favoring teams that swing for the boundaries early.
Not having 5 days to do nothing but watch cricket, we saw a 20/20 match. The Royals won the toss, and elected to bat first, forcing the Kings, excuse me, SUPER Kings, to play the field first. Steve thought this was deliberate to make them spend their time in the field during the hottest part of the day, topping 102 F with near 100% humidity.
They Royals started out quickly, hitting lots of 4s and 6s, but after 10 overs they slowed, going through a couple of overs without scoring at all. Only three batters lost their wicket, but they put up a relatively disappointing score of 146 runs after their 20 overs. The SUPER Kings took the pitch in excellent shape.
But unlike the Royals, they were not aggressive early, and seemed to lack intensity both batting and running. They had hit only a few boundaries through 15 overs, and were settling for one run when two appeared possible. With only 5 overs left they were several runs off the pace, and it appeared their chances of winning were dim.
Then, as if a switch were flipped, they shed their defensive batting and running, and began to score. Still not many boundaries, but they squeezed two points out of one 4 balls in a row, and scored at least one on every ball.
They still looked like a long shot heading into the last over, down by 10 runs, needing almost 2 runs per ball. And instead of swinging for the fences, they patiently hit solidly, and stretched to get two. With one ball left, they were down by only one run, needing two to win, having clawed their way back from a deep hole.
I still don't really know what "deep backwood square leg" means, but apparently that is where the batter hit the final ball, with just enough juice to again squeeze two runs out for the win. The stadium erupted, and our first cricket match was a tension packed resounding success.
Cricket, at least 20/20, wins my approval. I won't be giving it up for baseball anytime soon, but it was a very exciting day and well worth the trip to chennai.
Dave
As we detailed in an earlier post, I played a bit with some of the locals, and it is pretty much always on tv. Today we joined a fellow British medical student, Steve, on a trip to see the Chennai Super Kings, which if you ask me is just about the most awesome name in all of sports (aside from the Yankees of course. Wait, are there Super Yankees?). To make it even better, they were playing the Rajasthan Royals, luckily not the Super Royals.
Field=pitch
Pitcher=bowler
Catcher= wicket keeper(also the only guy who gets gloves, though oddly enough they use baseball gloves during warm ups to protect their hands)
Batter=batter (likewise for bat)
Ball=ball
Out=wicket
Run=run
Outrageous drunken fans=outrageous sober fans(no alcohol allowed in the stadium, and no bars near it.)
And the fans really were outrageous. They cheered constantly, even counted down the seconds till the end of a time out. The men in the crowd were especially fond of the cheerleaders, who we learned were from Russia, flown in to provide cheering related services. And of course, "We Will Rock You" was blasted at full volume before the Super Kings came to bat.
A quick version of the rules
The bowler takes a running start, and throws the ball overhand towards the batter, and generally has the ball bounce a few feet in front of the batter in an attempt to hit the stump (three sticks behind the batter) to knock over the wicket (two small sticks placed on top of the stump). The batter tries to hit the ball, and unlike baseball, can hit it in any direction, even directly behind him. Also unlike baseball, he is under no obligation to run after he hits it, he can do so only if he thinks he can make it to the other wicket before the other team can knock it over with the ball.
You score runs by running between the wickets. If you hit the ball to the boundary on at least one bounce, you get 4 runs. If you hit it over the boundary on the fly (like a home run) you get 6.
In any version of cricket, the batter continues to bat until the opposing team makes a wicket, which can be done four ways: the bowler hits the stump and knocks over the wicket, the batted ball is caught in the air, or the batter is thrown out while running (the fielder has to knock the wicket over with the ball before any part of the batter crosses the line). You can also be called out if a ball that will hit the stumps hits your shin guards before hitting the bat.
There are three varieties of cricket played professionally, and differ by how long they last. The original version lasts up to five days! (played all day) and is probably thusly named because it is both a test of the players' stamina as well as the fans ability to pay attention to a game for 8 straight hours for five straight days. Each team gets two innings to bat, but in a sharp deviation from baseball, an inning isn't determined by how many wickets, rather all 11 players bat around. And as I said, they each get to keep batting until they make a wicket, in which case they have to go back to the bench and sit down, probably take a nap or do their laundry until it is time to start the next inning, which may be house or days away. So there is really no incentive to try to take the cover off the ball, because if you miss, its a long wait till your next chance. So you get a lot, and I mean a lot of defensive swings at the ball, occasionally they decide to run back and forth to score runs, and rarely they will hit it hard enough to reach a boundary. Unless the game is drawing to a close and they are behind. Then they get more aggressive and smack the ball around a bit.
In another refinement, they invented 20/20, where each team gets only 120 balls. The game starts with a coin toss to determine which team bats first. One team bats through all their overs, then the other team tries to top the score to win. Teams will usually only go through 4-5 batters, and because of the limited overs, this version is much more aggressive, favoring teams that swing for the boundaries early.
Not having 5 days to do nothing but watch cricket, we saw a 20/20 match. The Royals won the toss, and elected to bat first, forcing the Kings, excuse me, SUPER Kings, to play the field first. Steve thought this was deliberate to make them spend their time in the field during the hottest part of the day, topping 102 F with near 100% humidity.
They Royals started out quickly, hitting lots of 4s and 6s, but after 10 overs they slowed, going through a couple of overs without scoring at all. Only three batters lost their wicket, but they put up a relatively disappointing score of 146 runs after their 20 overs. The SUPER Kings took the pitch in excellent shape.
But unlike the Royals, they were not aggressive early, and seemed to lack intensity both batting and running. They had hit only a few boundaries through 15 overs, and were settling for one run when two appeared possible. With only 5 overs left they were several runs off the pace, and it appeared their chances of winning were dim.
Then, as if a switch were flipped, they shed their defensive batting and running, and began to score. Still not many boundaries, but they squeezed two points out of one 4 balls in a row, and scored at least one on every ball.
Cricket, at least 20/20, wins my approval. I won't be giving it up for baseball anytime soon, but it was a very exciting day and well worth the trip to chennai.
Dave
one of my favorite things that has ever been written is a bill bryson passage about listening to cricket on the radio. everytime i read it i laugh so hard that i almost pee my pants. i would post it, but it's kind of long. i'll find some way to get it to you, though. it's from his book about australia.
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