As an American sports lover I will answer with my opinion.
Cricket is boring as all hell. It’s the most boring team sport I’ve ever watched. It’s the least physical team sport I’ve ever watched, and I watch alot of baseball which isn’t very physical. Are there ever injuries in cricket? Do they run fast enough to injure themselves?
Also, I think Cricket is too similar to baseball for us to get into. At least in baseball you get to see fast pitches and long crushes into the stands. Baseball is pretty boring sometimes too.
This post is Exhibit A of why Cricket is not popular in the US. It appears to be written in English, but remains incomprehensible. Even the premise of the game is indecipherable.
Weird. It’s not sport if there’s no body-checking?
Injuries are mainly caused by being hit with a five-ounce ball travelling at upwards of 90mph (in some instances) - the odd one gets through the helmet grille, or sometimes a finger gets squished against the bat-handle despite padded gloves. Occasionally a hamstring will get pulled, and there was the occasion when a fast bowler snapped his knee while he was running in to bowl. Apparently it sounded like a pistol shot. Still, let’s not deceive ourselves, it ain’t up there with cage fighting.
In a recent incident from the current World Cup, six successive deliveries got spanked into the stands. It’s rare, but then, I don’t know how common six home runs in a row would be either.
The Marylebone Cricket Club have also released a humorous summary of the rules of cricket:
You have two sides: One out in the field and one in.
Each man that’s in the side that’s in goes out and when he’s out he comes in and the next man goes in until he’s out.
When they are all out the side that’s out comes in and the side that’s been in goes out and tries to get those coming in out.
Sometimes you get men still in and not out.
When both sides have been in and out including the not outs,
That’s the end of the game.
Actually, this is the first times it’s been explained that it makes some sort of sense.
We had a Brit come into work with us this shift saying he almost didn’t come in because Canada almost beat Britain (England?) in Cricket. All us Canadians looked at each other, “We have a Cricket team?”. Even if we had won it would be unlikely that we’d have known about it unless someone from another country had told us about it.
Yes, England. We have had a smattering of Welsh and Scottish players over the years, but the only non-English first-class county is Glamorgan, and while we talk about the England and Wales Cricket Board, the national side is England. (Formerly MCC when it was on tour, but not any more.)
And yet Canada and the USA contested the world’s first international…!
There was an op-ed column in the N.Y. Times a couple weeks ago by an Indian writer and U.N. functionary, Shashi Tharoor, who got his knickers in a twist because Americans aren’t agog over cricket (Indian fans appreciate “capriciousness” more than the McHomogenized Americans).
Let me say, as an American who’s attended Cricket matches in Australia and the UK, that if you are a baseball fan (or at least a fan of the atmosphere of a crowded ballgame) and you have six hours to kill, an ODI Cricket match is a wonderful way to soak up some local color and enjoy a few drinks on a warm summer’s day.
My last visit to Australia included a day at the Sydney oval for a match. I went with a few friends, but once neighbors in the crowd hear my American accent, there were plenty of folks to talk to and (if you really cared) explain the intricacies of the game. Plus plenty of fun-but-harmless crazies (body painting was especially popular, as I saw a few kids who painted their chests and legs in the green 7 gold colors of the Aussie uniforms). And in Australia at least, they really know how to run the concessions: No vendors in the stands, but they have the beer-only line down to a science, and they sell these fantastic creamed beef-pies hot from the wrapper (probably about as healthy as a hot dog, but what the hell).
Not a lot goes on at the match, mainly because it’s fairly difficult to get a batter out. Unlike baseball, the batter doesn’t have to run if he hits the ball, and a ball is fair in all directions. The bowler is trying to hit the wicket the batter is defending, so many of the batter’s “hits” are defensive and don’t go far enough to run safely. So it’s a test of wills; can the bowler wear the batter down enough that he lets the ball hit the wicket, inadvertently pops one up (a ball caught on the fly puts the batter out), or run when he really shouldn’t. The batter likewise knocks away balls he doesn’t like until he finds a ball he can do something with and drives the snot out of it (balls the reach the boundary score a quick 4 runs, 6 if they go out on a fly).
The ODI–One Day International–isn’t traditional Cricket in which a match lasts 5 days. The ODI deliberately limits the number of pitches each side gets to insure the match ends in a single day (instead of waiting for one team to have all its batters put out before switching sides).
You may have heard Cricket is boring, but Cricket matches (at least the ones I’ve been to) are as fun people-wise as any ballgame I’ve been to in the US. A definite high-recommendation from this former skeptic.
Want to get more out of the match? Learn how to score it. I’m hoping to get certified (hold the jokes, please). There really is a lot going on in a match. The same can be said for baseball: learn how to score each play and, IMHO, you’ll get a lot more out of the game.
Oh, CJJ*; I believe there was one ODI match that did last two days.
Y’all do know I’m American, right? Oh, I just remembered a couple of other things about the 2 day ODI: it was in England and, of course, it went into another day because of the weather.
If we’re going strictly by popularity, then you might as well reserve a spot for pool (or any of its variations, i.e. billiards, snookers). Bet you can travel just about anywhere in the world and find a bar/poolhall to play in.
Serious answer? Footy and basketball, both in terms of popularity and participation, are more than likely the two most “universal” sports.
FWIW, in the 1914 novel Psmith, Journalist, which is set in NYC, Wodehouse mentions a “cricket playing section” of the U.S. Monty, did your book discuss whether cricket was more popular in the Eastern U.S., at least in 1914, than it is today?
…run…where? Or is it just “run”? Like Forrest Gump?
And as long as we’re changing sports, I think baseball could be made a hell of a lot more interesting if they instituted Mad Magazine’s BaseBrawl rules, namely:
All fielders remain on the field, merely switching roles. The defensive fielders, as in the old game, try to catch and maneuver the ball so as to get the batter out. The offensive fielders, meanwhile, get to use tackles and other football-style methods to prevent the defensive players from fulfilling their aims.
The batter keeps the bat after hitting, to use to “discourage” defensive basemen on his way around the diamond. The batter can also recruit teammates to act as “blockers”.
or we could institute some of the ideas that George Carlin suggested about 20 years ago, such as randomly-placed land mines in the outfield.
):