Cricket

Robert
Treborlang
Australia

Cricket

The Americans do not have to play cricket because they beat the English, fair and square, in the 1776 War of Independence. Australians, who have not as yet had the chance to get stuck into the English on some great battlefield in open warfare, hang onto cricket, hoping thus to prove themselves the better and the stronger.

  Cricket is essentially an agrarian game, designed to give every villager a go. What is rather good about cricket is that, like most village games, it requires the minimum of effort over the maximum amount of time.

  Not that much different from working for the public service, really. (After all, the public service itself is nothing more than an urban extension of the village mentality.) Look at the conditions.
  The game doesn't start till about ten.
  There's a lot of standing around.
  A fair amount of gossip and rivalry is exchanged.
  People break for lunch and tea.
  The moment conditions aren't just ideal, everyone stops.

A friend, new to Australia, (actually it might have been me), after hearing a great deal about the game but never having seen it played, insisted that his girlfriend take him along to a match. Once installed in his seat, he ate and drank along with everyone else, oblivious of the passage of time. Towards late afternoon, however, when the food and beer were beginning to run out, he turned to his friend and said with polite but casual curiosity:
  "So tell me, when is this game going to start?"

  Fortunately most of the boredom of cricket, for the players at least, has been removed nowadays by widening the game to include the drinking of beer and heavy intoxicating liquor on television commercials.

So as long as you are reasonably intact, without visible signs of cerebral palsy, and can stand up for seven or eight hours without falling asleep (a ball will fly past you ever now and then), your chances of making it through the game are fairly good.

  If you also happen to be fairly dull, well-behaved, and have the stomach to drink with the more influential cricket team selectors, your chances of becoming captain of the side are even better.

  Should you be willing to forget the inconveniences of travel, or those of standing in a field somewhere in England, the Caribbean or Asia - hoping that whatever flies towards you is a ball and not a bomb - you might in fact become a cricket great, adored by hundreds of thousands of screaming fans.

  Patience, after all, makes many things possible. Even turning you into a great Australian.

Copyright © 1991-2002 - Robert Treborlang

Robert
Treborlang
Australia

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