My boyfriend is trying to explain cricket to me again. “He’s only got two balls to make 48 runs”, he says. The camera focuses on a man. Underneath him it says LEFT ARM FAST MEDIUM. A ball flies into the stands and presumably fractures someone’s skull. “There’s a free six”, my boyfriend says. 348 SIXES says the screen. A child in the audience waves a sign referencing Weet-Bix
The first time he showed me this I assumed he was pranking me
if people haven’t been exposed to cricket before, here is the experience. The person who likes cricket turns on a radio with an air of happy expectation. “We’ll just catch up with the cricket,” they say.
An elderly British man with an accent - you can picture exactly what he looks like and what he is wearing, somehow, and you know that he will explain the important concept of Yorkshire to you at length if you make eye contact - is saying “And w’ four snickets t’ wicket, Umbleby dives under the covers and romps home for a sticky bicket.”
There is a deep and satisfied silence. Weather happens over the radio. This lasts for three minutes.
A gentle young gentleman with an Indian accent, whose perfect and beautiful clear voice makes him sound like a poet sipping from a cup of honeyed drink always, says mildly “Of course we cannot forget that when Pakistan last had the biscuit under the covers, they were thrown out of bed. In 1957, I believe.”
You mouth “what the fucking fuck.”
A morally ambiguous villain from a superhero movie says off-microphone, “Crumbs everywhere.”
Apparently continuing a previous conversation, the villain asks, “Do seagulls eat tacos?”
“I’m sure someone will tell us eventually,” the poet says. His voice is so beautiful that it should be familiar; he should be the only announcer on the radio, the only reader of audiobooks.
The villain says with sudden interest, “Oh, a leg over straight and under the covers, Peterson and Singh are rumping along with a straight fine leg and good pumping action. Thanks to his powerful thighs, Peterson is an excellent legspinner, apart from being rude on Twitter.”
The man from Yorkshire roars potently, like a bull seeing another bull. There might be words in his roar, but otherwise it is primal and sizzling.
“That isn’t straight,” the poet says. “It’s silly.”
“What the fucking fuck,” you say out loud at this point.
“Shh,” says the person who likes cricket. They listen, tensely. Something in the distance makes a very small “thwack,” like a baby dropping an egg.
“Was that a doosra or a googly?” the villain asks.
“IT’S A WRONG ‘UN,” roars the Yorkshireman in his wrath. A powerful insult has been offered. They begin to scuffle.
“With that double doozy, Crumpet is baffled for three turns, Agarwal is deep in the biscuit tin and Padgett has gone to the shops undercover,” the poet says quickly, to cover the action while his companions are busy. The villain is being throttled, in a friendly companionable way.
An intern apparently brings a message scrawled on a scrap of paper like a courier sprinting across a battlefield. “Reddy has rolled a nat 20,” the poet says with barely contained excitement. “Australia is both a continent and an island. But we’re running out of time!”
“Is that true?” You ask suddenly.
“Shh!” Says the person who likes cricket. “It’s a test match.”
“About Australia.”
“We won’t know THAT until the third DAY.”
A distant “pock” noise. The sound of thirty people saying “tsk,” sorrowfully.
“And the baby’s dropped the egg. Four legs over or we’re done for, as long as it doesn’t rain.”
The villain might be dead? You begin to find yourself emotionally invested.
There are mild distant cheers. “Oh, and with twelve sticky wickets t’ over and t’ seagull’s exploded,” the man from the North says as if all of his dreams have come true. “What a beautiful day.” Your person who likes cricket relaxes. It is tea break.
The villain, apparently alive, describes the best hat in the audience as “like a funnel made of dove-colored net, but backwards, with flies trapped in it.”
This is every bit as good as that time in Australia in 1975, they all agree, drinking their tea and eating home-made cakes sent in by the fans. The poet comments favorably on the icing and sugar-preserved violets. The Yorkshire man discourses on the nature of sponge. The villain clatters his cup too hard on his saucer. To cover his embarrassment, the poet begins scrolling through Twitter on his phone, reading aloud the best memes in his enchanting milky voice. Then, with joy, he reads an @ from an ornithologist at the University of Reading: seagulls do eat tacos! A reference is cited; the poet reads it aloud. Everyone cheers.
You are honestly - against your will - kind of into it! but also: weirdly enraged.
“Was that … it?” you ask, deeming it safe to interrupt.
“No,” says the person who likes cricket, “This is second tea break on the first day. We won’t know where we really are until lunch tomorrow.”
And - because you cannot stop them - you have to accept this; if cricket teaches you anything, it is this gentle and radical acceptance.
As someone who Occasionally Enjoys Cricket, I am low key enraged that this is simultaneously utter nonsense and THE MOST PERFECTLY ACCURATE DESCRIPTION OF CRICKET
@crayonmod I NEED YOU TO CONFIRM OR DENY THE ACCURACY
Cricket is the most BORING thing to learn in P.E, it’s the most DULL thing to watch on TV, and it’s the strangest thing to translate on the radio. This is completely accurate and what’s worse is I’m realising how utterly numb I’ve become to it
Between @crayonmod and @techmomma we can probably get a good portrait of the poet, villain, and Yorkshireman cricket radio announcers.
I AM DOWN IF SHE IS DOWN
Whenever I see this post, I feel the urge to quote Sir Terry Pratchett:
Vimes wasn’t keen on games because they led to crowds, and crowds led to work for coppers. But here in fact he wasn’t a copper, was he? It was a strange feeling, so he left the pub and became an innocent bystander. He couldn’t remember when he had been one before. It felt … vulnerable. He strolled over to the nearest man, who was hammering some stakes into the ground, and asked, ‘What’s going on here, then?’ Realizing that he had spoken in copper rather than in ordinary citizen, he added quickly, ‘If you don’t mind me asking?’ The man straightened up. He was one of the ones with the colourful caps. ‘Haven’t you ever seen a game of crockett, sir? It’s the game of games!’ Mr Civilian Vimes did his best to look like a man eager for more delicious information. Judging by his informant’s enthusiastic grin, he was about to learn the rules of crockett, whether he wanted to or not. Well, he thought, I did ask … ‘At first sight, sir, crockett might seem like just another ball game wherein two sides strive against one another by endeavouring to propel the ball by hand or bat or other device into the opponents’ goal of some sort. Crockett, however, was invented during a game of croquet at St Onan’s Theological College in Ham-on-Rye, when the novice priest Jackson Fieldfair, now the Bishop of Quirm, took his mallet in both hands, and instead of giving the ball a gentle tap …’ After that Vimes gave up, not only because the rules of the game were incomprehensible in their own right, but also because the extremely enthusiastic young man allowed his enthusiasm to overtake any consideration of the need to explain things in some sensible order, which meant that the flood of information was continually punctuated by apologetic comments on the lines of ‘I’m sorry, I should have explained earlier that a second cone is not allowed more than once per exchange, and in normal play there is only one tump, unless, of course, you’re talking about royal crockett …’ Vimes died … The sun dropped out of the sky, giant lizards took over the world, the stars exploded and went out and all hope vanished with a gurgle into the sink-trap of oblivion, and gas filled the firmament and combusted and behold there was a new heaven, one careful owner, and a new disc, and lo, and possibly verily, life crawled out of the sea, or possibly didn’t because it had been made by the gods – that was really up to the bystander – and lizards turned into less scaly lizards, or possibly did not, and lizards turned into birds, and worms turned into butterflies, and a species of apple turned into bananas, and possibly a kind of monkey fell out of a tree and realized that life was better when you didn’t have to spend your time hanging on to something, and, in only a few million years, evolved trousers and ornamental stripy hats and lastly the game of crockett and there, magically reincarnated, was Vimes, a little dizzy, standing on the village green looking into the smiling countenance of an enthusiast. He managed to say, ‘Well, that’s amazing, thank you so very much. I look forward to enjoying the game.’
…
Yep, that’s about it. :)
