Caffeine Magazine article: Cricket

A Very English Pursuit

Some of you reading this may be new to the strange and baffling country that is England, with its somewhat peculiar set of values, customs and behaviour. You may wonder about the obsession with pleases and thank-yous,  be confused by the gentle compliance to the laws of queueing, and perhaps have been on the sharp end of some dirty looks or muttered insults when you have inadvertently broken one of these incomprehensible laws of English behaviour.

Being English, I adhere strictly (and lovingly) to just about all of these unwritten rules, though I may have no idea why, and yet I find them a joy to behold. In fact, English behaviour can probably be summed up in one word: Cricket.

Cricket, for the uninitiated, is a wonderful sport. Whoever invented it was a genius, I often wonder what his thought process might have been like. “We’ll have two sets of blokes take the day off and sit outside for a bit.  We’ll start around 11am, that way everyone can have a bit of a lie in. When we’ve stood around for, ohh, I don’t know, 3 hours or so, then we’ll go in for a spot of lunch. Give it a bit longer and then we can have a cup of tea and a cake. We’ll probably stop around 7ish because everyone will have had enough and will want a beer. Oh and we won’t play if it’s raining, obviously. Or if it’s a bit dim out. Or in the winter.”

My suspicion is that cricket started as 22 blokes drinking beer with the boys every Sunday, informing their wives they were “off to play cricket”, with not a bat or ball in sight. I can only imagine the girls decided to turn up one day and demanded to know the rules, and the tipsy lads had to think on their feet, because the rules and language are somewhat absurd. If you would like a brief overview of the rules of cricket, then I can think of no better than this anonymously sourced explanation from the 1970s:

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 a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in. There are two men called umpires who stay all out all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out. When both sides have been in and all the men have out, and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game.

See? Simple. The game gives itself away as hopelessly English by the way it is played – polite clapping at every boundary or wicket, the insistence on both sides wearing pristine cricket whites, the breaks in the game being called “lunch” and “tea” – though the pros of today typically have Gatorade and pasta rather than the tea and cakes of W.G. Grace’s day – and the lazy Sunday afternoon with which cricket is synonymous. Cricket has never suffered from the ignominy of any kind of brawl, be it with opposing players or supporters. In fact, cricket supporters typically mingle and share some light hearted banter, which is about as unpleasant as it gets on the pitch. You may have heard about the Pakistan betting scandal recently, but even then, it took an undercover reporter to dig the dirt; nobody else noticed because they were having such a lovely time.

When you’ve got a day or so to waste, consider cricket. It’s a very calming experience. Cricket might seem scary and alien at first, but give cricket a chance. It’s really rather nice.