The Appeal Of Cricket
Cricket is, at first glance, a very boring game to watch. Like baseball, except longer and with less action – two shortcomings baseball already has in spades. However, it also exceeds baseball in the statistical and strategical aspect of play, and this makes for a deep experience beyond the first glance. The glory days of baseball were the days of radio and playing cards, where kids followed the box scores and filled in a wealth of excitement from numbers and crackly voices. Cricket is, to me, a similar experience, but in a modern multi-media sense. I’ve watched whole games, but it’s hard to stay up till 3 am on a work day. However, the game courses through multiple mediums – the web (CricInfo), the security guard’s radio, casual phone conversations with friends, and the cheers of the people next door. I was replacing my car battery last night and you could reliably tell the score from the noise the neighbors were making. And that is the appeal of cricket, to me, that it is a profoundly social sport, and a modern sport in terms of media.
The Long
Cricket is the one thing me and the security guards at my apartment can have a reliable conversation about. It branches off into other stuff, but asking the score every 10 minutes is a pretty stable ice breaker. I’m in the parking lot trying to get my car to start and he’s trying not to doze off during the tail end of a boring shift, but the cricket is there throughout whatever we’re doing. In that context, the length is ideal. I remember being stuck in a warehouse trying to clear some goods for hours, and the match is on. Everyone sitting in that interminable wait was watching the match, and thank God that it lasted through the whole business.
The Sri Lankan (and Indian) economies generally entail a lot of people sitting around. If you’re getting something fixed in the house they’ll invariably send over 8 people, half of which are visibly unoccupied. In any government agency there’ll be desks crammed so as you can’t move, but only one person that can actually do anything for you. At the police checkpoints I’ve seen literally 15 cops, waiting for I don’t know what. Security guards are another case in point. My apartment building has someone at the door all the time, staring at the paper in front of them and listening to the radio. Not to mention drivers, domestics, etc. There are millions of people (including the Middle East) spending a lot of the day waiting without much distraction besides a paper and a radio. These people need more than one or two hours of entertainment, or even 6 hours in front of a big screen. They need at least a day of distraction, and that is what cricket provides.
The Strategy
Besides length, cricket also has a depth of meaning and a wealth of meaningful numbers. There is the score for one, but that is rendered fluid by wickets taken and run rate. In baseball you either get out or you score, but in cricket there is a balance, resources to spend and numbers to gain. In the England game, for example, Sri Lanka only had two wickets (out) after 20 plus overs, but only about 100 runs. Cricket is also a guessing game in that you put a score out there and the other team has to match. As a spectator, you can bring other experiences into that guessing, and it makes for fruitful debate.
I only get the bare surface of the strategy, but you can see in conversations that it is there, and that it is fun.
So, while I was always a fan of playing cricket, I think I’m also becoming more and more a fan – not necessarily of watching – but of experiencing the national sport.
Slowly and steadyly, I can you are becoming a “cricket fan” :-) Welcome to “Real” Sri Lanka!
“I can see” (Correction)
Very nice, refreshing, description. You have captured the essense of the game without all the hoopla.
Baseball is a real dumbass sport man… You have a thug at one who end who can swing a bat and another thug at the other who can throw a ball. It requires little or no intelligence, hardly any technique and probably not that much athleticism either…
That’s a bit ignorant and bigoted towards a sport lots of people love.
I don’t think there’s any metric to call one sport ‘better’ than another. People really enjoy baseball, and I have enjoyed baseball myself. The World Series especially is very fun to watch. There is certainly a lot of intelligence and athleticism involved, both in playing and watching. There’s a great depth in terms of how you hit, how you pitch, when to steal or play safe, what kind of pitcher to put in, etc. Baseball fans are also obsessive about statistics. Sports are sports and they’re all pretty fun.
Cricket is like baseball with less action? Get real boy…
I don’t agree with dark_horse. I like baseball and depending on who is playing the game can draw lot of excitement and interest. But I love Cricket especially whenever Sri Lanka plays. I was little disturbed at first when whatever that ‘Play by the rules’ campaign AI was doing during the World cup and it’s affect on the Sri Lankan cricket team. Given all that Sri Lankan players are real entertainers, they performed well at the England match and all cricket fans must be happy over their performances.
[...] Indi.ca on the appeal of cricket. “I’ve watched whole games, but it’s hard to stay up till 3 am on a work day. However, the game courses through multiple mediums – the web (CricInfo), the security guard’s radio, casual phone conversations with friends, and the cheers of the people next door. I was replacing my car battery last night and you could reliably tell the score from the noise the neighbors were making. And that is the appeal of cricket, to me, that it is a profoundly social sport, and a modern sport in terms of media.” Neha Viswanathan [...]
But what’s with calling that baseball tournament the “World Series”? Don’t only three countries play?
David,
A lot more than 3 countries play baseball. Australia, Cuba, U.S., Japan, Dominican Republic etc all play and, if i\I’m not getting my facts mixed up, Cuba beat the U.S. in the last world championships.
The World Series is played each year between the winner of the National and American Leagues. I think the basic difference between the two is that one league allows a substitute batter for the pitcher. I think this also how the term ‘pinch hitter’ came into being.
The common explanation for the name World Series is that it was initiated by a newspaper called the World (or maybe the The News of the World) but I recently read somewhere that this is a myth.
Anyone care to clarify?
Ok, sorry. I didn’t know that. Thanks.
The biggest cultural hurdle between cricket and baseball is the perception of time. Try telling an American Cardinals fan in the midwest that a “short” version of the game (50 overs) only lasts about a day. As opposed to a 3 day game which can end without a winner.
To keep it short best to simply clearly state that it is an outdoor game. Or to if you want to keep things interesting AND short say it involves impaling a live chicken on the horns of a charging bull.
I am a vegetarian btw.
Ya Indi I guess you’ve got a point that there is some level of technique but it is nowhere near cricket. For example a batsman like Virendar Sehwag who has a really bad technique will be a great base ball player because he has a good eye and can hit the ball miles. Any player with a good arm can be a good pitcher.
Not so in cricket. The level of skill required is much greater. Yes, baseball’s fun to watch too….but its far less intriguing…