Cricket, sir, cricket!

 

Yesterday I went with Rachael’s parents and brother-in-law James to see a cricket match between Australia and Sri Lanka, which James and Rachael’s sister Jenny had arranged as a Christmas present for us. (Jasper, Rachael and her sister Jenny had their own outing for tea while we saw the cricket.) Before taking off, I dressed in green and yellow (the Australian team’s colours) and got a tattoo to make my loyalties clear:

The cricket match was great fun, in lots of surprising ways. Lots of people were wearing funny costumes and dancing and waving Australian and Sri Lankan flags, and all during the match cameramen were filming interesting people in the stadium and televising them on a big screen for everybody to see. Also, just before the cricket match began a few members of the audience were brought out into the stadium for a staring contest, which is evidently traditional.

Then the cricket got started. James explained the basic rules to me, and I think that I finally understand the game, which has a distant resemblance to baseball (“we used to call it rounders,” as they say in The Lady Vanishes), but with lots of important differences. Australia was batting first and scored about 220 runs in the first inning (!). Here’s a photo of some cricket action, followed by a photo of one of the two official drink breaks that the athletes took.

At one point I had a meat pie, which occupies about the same niche in the Australian diet as hot dogs in America. (There were also hot dogs at the cricket match, and I had one of those too, but the pie was better.)

 

After half time, the Sri Lankans started batting, but they only scored a few runs when it started to rain (really it was just a little mist), so the umpires suspended play and the groundskeepers pulled a big tarp over the central part of the field. Everyone in the Sydney Cricket Ground sat around in the rain for an hour or so waiting for it to stop, which sounds like it would be quite tedious, but in fact it was very sweet and jolly. People were bouncing beach balls back and forth (in spite of stern warnings on the big screen that the rules strictly forbade throwing things in the stadium). Rachael’s dad said that sort of disregard for the rules comes from Australia’s convict background.

 

Also, while everyone was waiting for play to resume, a bunch of spectators started putting together the plastic cups that they’d drunk beer from, making a big long plastic snake cup. You can see a little piece of it here:

 

The cup snake got longer and longer and ultimately stretched across about a third of the stadium. Everyone was very excited and cheered when the last two long segments of the cup snake were connected. The security people had to bend the rules to allow one of the two segments across to meet the other one. Their final conjunction was captured on camera and replayed on the big screen in slow motion. Then a message came up that said we had just broken the world record for the longest cup snake ever made, and the speakers started to play the Queen song “We Are the Champions.” Everyone was pleased and delighted, and sang along. It was very sweet and jolly.

 

Finally, after hours of waiting, the umpires decided that it was hopeless, and that it was not going to be possible to continue the cricket game, and that it had to be “abandoned!” Which was a bit disappointing, of course, but I didn’t mind because it had been such a fun event, really kind of a giant party with thousands of Australians and Sri Lankans being friendly and a little silly together. And, of course, it brought to mind the sad story of Charters and Caldicott in The Lady Vanishes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=al60grtUgHE

So that was my cricket adventure here in Australia. I hope that America’s preparations for the Super Bowl are going well.

-Throckmorton.