Cricket: An American Perspective

The first international game of cricket was played between the United States and Canada in 1844 in New York. I don’t think much cricket has been played in either country since that time. In all my years living in the United States, I never knew of a cricket game being played locally. That indicates the American appetite for cricket.

Cricket does have drawbacks from a North American perspective. One of the biggest issues today in American baseball, arguably America’s ‘national pastime,’ is slowness of play. Major league baseball is trying to ensure 9 inning games are played in less than 3 hours. The same is true in the Japanese leagues.

In cricket, they try to complete 2 innings in 5 days for Test matches. If they fail to conclude 2 innings in 5 days, a draw (tie) is proclaimed. That’s right; play for 5 days and no one wins. This is hard to accept for Americans who are often so focused on winning.

I am pretty sure cricket in Australia was invented by one of the local beer distributors for a couple reasons. First, beer is very popular in Australia. In our corporate office, we have three refrigerators for the employees; and the biggest one is for beer only. Woe to anyone who tries to sneak a lunch in the beer frige.

Secondly, consider how much more beer can be consumed in a five day test match compared to a nine inning baseball game, especially when played on hot summer days. I suspect cricket started out as a three hour contest until the beer distributors re-invented it.

The owners of the early cricket teams were almost certainly cheapskates. The facts are compelling:
The ball is not even round or smooth sided. Clearly the cricket teams were saving money by using factory seconds for balls and then subsequently created some law requiring uneven balls.
They also created a law requiring the use of one ball for the entire match; imagine using one baseball for five baseball games! And the consequences for losing a ball in a match are particularly onerous.
Only the keeper is allowed to wear gloves even though the ball is very hard.
There are no groundskeepers to smooth out the pitch between at bats; they just let it go unattended

Can there be any doubt the guys who owned cricket teams implemented rules to keep costs low and then called them ‘laws’ to prevent future and more expensive innovations? And then they sold beer at the games so the fans would not realize the balls were warped or the grounds uneven. Over time fans came to believe oddly shaped balls and cracked, uneven dirt were essential and strategic parts of the game. This is really brilliant marketing.

In baseball a single run often determines the winner of a game: in soccer a single goal often makes the difference between victory and defeat. In cricket, if you don’t realize 350 runs in the first at bat, your team is probably in trouble of losing. Miss a few runs going to the bathroom, its okay; you can watch a few hundred more when you return.

Americans like to keep score, and at a baseball game many of the spectators will have score cards duly recording what happens with each batter. I do not advise trying to keep a score card in cricket. Meticulously recording 600 or 700 runs on a scorecard seems like a futile exercise.

As an American visitor in Australia, let me share some insights and instructions to those visitors less familiar with cricket, using more familiar baseball terminology.

A ‘bowler’ throws a ball somewhat like a baseball pitcher but with a few differences. First, the bowler does not bowl; he bounces the ball toward the batter. For ease of description, we could call him more appropriately the ‘bouncer.’ We can’t call him a pitcher because the ground is also called the ‘pitch’ when it is not being called a ‘wicket’ (more on wickets later). He starts from somewhere in the outfield, runs like a wild man toward the batsman (i.e. the batter), stops suddenly and bounces the ball using an unusual arm motion.

There are actually two bowlers in the game at the same time. One bowler faces batters at one end (say to the west) while the other bowler faces batters to the east (there are actually two home plates but only one is used at a time). The bowlers (i.e. bouncers) take turns, switching after 6 pitches which represent an over even if the bounces were not over the proper batting area, in which case the referee could declare the over is not over. .

In cricket, everything is called a wicket. If you don’t know what to say, just complain about the wicket or talk about a challenging wicket, or whatever. Aussies have a habit of truncating words; in cricket they just use the same word for almost everything; it must save effort.

A wicket is an out. It is also the thing (a piece of flat wood on top of a three pronged stand) behind the batter. It is also the ground that the bouncer bounces his ball. It may be a few other things too. It would be like baseball calling everything a ‘base’ including outs, the infield, the bases, and the pitching mound.

So the bowler runs in from another postal code, bounces the ball on the wicket, the batter swings and hits the ball, which is caught on the fly for a wicket unless the batter misses the ball and it hits the wicket behind the batter, which is then declared a wicket. Okay so far?

To obtain a wicket, the fielder must catch the ball on the fly. So the bowler bounces the ball and the batter tries to bounce it back so it cannot be caught on the fly or it would become a wicket. If you’re a batter, wickets are really bad.

If the bowler bounces the ball and the batter bounces the ball, the batter and his partner (another batter who is not a batter because only one batter can bat even though two play at the same time) can run back and forth passing each other from base to base. Instead of four bases there are only 2 in cricket, so there is a lot of back and forth but it does seem rather efficient.

A grand slam home run in baseball is equal to 4 runs and is achieved when the ball goes over the outfield fence on the fly with the bases full. In cricket, you get 4 runs also, but you just need for the ball to reach the fence line while bouncing or rolling. Cricket has another advantage; you can hit a foul ball that rolls to the fence line and is still worth 4 runs. You can even miss the ball and get a home run if it rolls far enough. Baseball has one catcher; cricket often has several for this reason.

In cricket, if you hit the ball over the fence on the fly, you receive 6 runs; but bouncing the ball is usually safer.

There are also some very weird rules in cricket. They probably all had some obscure origin -- such as Lord So-And-So did something in 1624 that had an unacceptable result. For example, if the catcher (alias the keeper) takes off his hat and puts in on the ground and the batter hits the ball which hits the hat, the batter is awarded 5 runs. It is unclear if the 5 runs is a penalty for the sloppy keeper or a reward to the batter for making a trick shot. If you enjoy reading the Rules of Golf, I suspect you will find nirvana reading the Laws of Cricket. The Law on not running far enough to reach the base line after hitting a ball should be fairly simple (as in no run scored). The Laws of Cricket devote several paragraphs to definitions, and multiple consequences under various conditions depending on whether the failure to score was viewed as deliberate or unintentional. Cricket fans definitely like rules (which they call laws, suggesting criminal penalties for transgressors).

So for baseball fans, calling a cricket match using baseball lingo would go something like this.

The bowler bouncer (as opposed to the non-bouncer who is between overs) runs a 440 dash, bounces the ball off the wicket which careens toward the batter batter (as opposed to the batter non batter). The batter batter swings his bat as the ball bounces off the wicket, assuming the potential over is over, trying to avoid having the ball hit the wicket behind the wicket or hitting it on the fly to a fielder who would earn a wicket. The batter batter only nicks the ball, which goes between catcher 1 and catcher 2 (which could be the bowler non bouncer) and into the field behind the wicket behind the wicket but fails to hit the keeper’s hat. The batter batter and the batter non-batter run back and forth slowly and earn a run each time they cross the line by the wicket that is behind the wicket unless the fielder hits the wicket behind the wicket with the ball while the batter batter or batter non batter are not yet over the line with their bat.

If a batter makes a wicket, he is retired and the next batter comes up. A side is retired when everyone but the last batter non batter has made a wicket. Then the other team bats, unless it is tea time or too late.

There is an element of dodge ball in cricket which adds another aspect of interest. Unlike baseball, if a bowler hits a batter with a ball, it is the batter’s fault. If a batter dives to avoid being circumcised, the ball may hit the wicket, causing a wicket. And if the batter stands steady and bravely takes the hit, he will still get a wicket if the referee determines the ball would have caused a wicket had it proceeded through the batter’s body and come out the other side. I think this rule must have been sponsored by the National Rifle Association (Aus branch) a few years ago.

The condition of the pitch or wicket plays a big role in cricket. In baseball, the infield is carefully manicured to ensure consistency in the bounce or roll of hit balls. In cricket the pitch is hard dirt (I was told it is grass but I did not see much green so unless Aussie grass grows brown, the pitch is compacted dirt). The surface develops cracks and ridges contributing to dramatic uncertainties and inconsistencies on the path of the bouncing ball. This works to the advantage of the bowler, because the batter must remain a bit tentative or risk being decapitated.
There are lots of subtleties to the game of cricket, none of which I fully understand. It does seem like the perfect sport to share conversation and a beer, unafraid of missing too much of the action but enjoying the skills of the players and late game suspense. Like so much in Australia, it is a game to be savored and not rushed to conclusion. And the relatively few breaks mean fewer TV commercials and TV timeouts, which would otherwise slow the game down and probably add a few more days to the Test. And when in doubt, you can always remark about the wickets and order another beer.