I love it.
And by cricket, I mean test cricket: matches that last for days, scores that run into the hundreds, game officials dressed like scientists. They stop the game for lunch, and then later for tea time, before resuming until the light fades. It is all very unfamiliar and, frankly, weird.
And by loving it, I don’t mean that I like watching it. No, the pace of the game is so slow that no-one in their right mind would sit down and focus on it. Here in the USA I’m not even sure you can watch it live without subscribing to some obscure cable channel. But I’ve discovered that UK newspapers, and even Google, provide near-real-time news feeds, which are perfectly wonderful. Where else could you get to read this1:
Or this..
In fact, I’m not even sure what is actually happening here. Every part of the field, every type of throw, every motion of the bat has a name that seeems to have come from a P.G. Wodehouse novel (“Jeeves, could you dig out a yorker for me, and I’ll slap it into the leg side”).
As each match unfolds over 4 or 5 days, I just check the newsfeeds from time to time. It’s like a slow motion version of listening to baseball on the radio. You get a feel for the action, but have to use your imagination to “see” what’s happening. It can be remarkably thrilling.
Just so you know where this ranks in my hierarchy of pro sports enthusiasms: It is pretty much the only one. I am not into golf, or tennis, or hockey, or baseball or basketball, or Premier league football or anything really, except for the World Cup and the Euro Cup. Even those have been fading since we moved to the USA where these great tournaments come and go and no-one seems to notice. So this is a novel situation for me. I know the names of more English cricketers than any other sports team.
So when people ask me what I’m going to do in retirement, part of the answer will be checking my phone for test cricket updates.
- From guardian.co.uk/cricket coverage of the 1st Test Match of the 2023 Ashes (England vs Australia). Australia won by 2 wickets, after scoring 281 runs in their 2nd innings.
