Lane's Ramblings

On Friday 8 of us went to the MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground) on the Yarra River to watch Australia take on England in an ODI (one day international). Now, the English team has been in Australia playing The Ashes series, which is a tournament between England and Australia that takes place in alternating countries every year and a half (to coincide with the summer of the host country). This year they were playing in Australia, starting in Brisbane on November 23 and then they went to Adelaide, Perth, Melbourne, and finsihed off in Sydney earlier this month.

Now, The Ashes is a series of 5-day test matches, meaning at each location they'll play for 5 days or the end of the test, whichever comes first and even though it is a best of 3 they still play all 5 tests. In test cricket, Australia is #1 in the world and England is #2 but England just got spanked by Australia; it was no contest. They won all 5 tests, some of them wrapped up days early.

So after being disgraced by Australia, does England get to go home and cry for a bit before they rebuild? No, they have to play a Twenty20 against Australia in Sydney and then start a series of ODIs against Australia and New Zealand and I was able to go to the first match; Australia v England at the MCG.

A quick lesson in cricket. Cricket has been around forever but it's current form is an English creation and they spread it throughout the world. Most countries play or played cricket (the first international match was between the US and Canada in 1844) but now seems to be played mostly in countries that were once part of the British Empire. It was even big in the US until baseball took its place in the 1800s and baseball is based off of Rounders, which is based on cricket. So, if you watch a lot of baseball then cricket makes sense and once you learn the rules and the intricacies of the game then it can be fun to watch.

Basic idea - defend your wicket with a bat as someone bowls a ball at it. And if you hit the ball away then you and your partner can run between the wickets and score runs.

Number of players on the field - 11

Innings - each player on each team bats until they are out (caught ball, bowler hits the wicket, batter blocked ball with body and it would have hit the wicket, wicket is knocked over before runner reaches line, etc)

Number of outs per innings - 10 (there are 11 batters but since you need a partner there are only 10 outs)

Oval - the field that they play onPitch - the bowling surface

Score Notation - Outs/Runs (e.g. 2/203 means there are 2 outs and they have 203 runs and is read 2 for 203)

Bowl - thowing the ball off of the ground at the batter's wicket

Over - 6 bowls

Types of cricket:

Test cricket - 5 days, 2 innings

ODI - they play 100 overs, each team bats for 50 overs, not everyone has to bat

Twenty20 - a new type of cricket to make it more exciting, each team bats for 20 overs

Finally, onto my first cricket match.. I've been watching The Ashes so I'm starting to understand the game and the guy that got the tickets, Pete, knows everything about cricket so I'm doing ok. We went to an ODI - 100 overs, much shorter than a test match but we were still there for 7 1/2 hours. And what do you do at a cricket match? Just like baseball - you drink - for 7 1/2 hours. The match was fun to watch, although I'm told that it wasn't very good since Australia killed them.

What I thought about the experience - it was fun, I had no problems sitting through the match for that long. There was a lot of beer and everyone was drinking, towards the end it was getting a little rowdy - we saw 2 fights, 2 guys run out on the field, a lot of chanting and yelling, some impressive waves, and just a lot of people having a lot of fun. I was impressed, the MCG is the largest cricket ground in the world and holds 100k people, last night there were 78k people and everyone stayed for the entire match - for 7 1/2 hours.

The Oval

Some dude ran on the field and was tackled by security