Friday, February 17, 2006

something seriously different about shoaib's action

I love reading stories about cricket. I don't understand anything about cricket, except that it's kind of like baseball except there are only two bases, a few orders of magnitude more runs, and you can have games that last for days if you want. What I like about reading about cricket is precisely that the stories never cause cricket to make any more sense, but instead always just make it ever more exotic and mysterious. For example, here are actual sentences from a current story about a match between India and Pakistan:
"Since the second Test at Faisalabad, where Shoaib put in fiercely quick spells on the third afternoon and fourth morning, there have been whispers about ICC's concern with Shoaib's action. Cricinfo has learnt from sources close to the team that one of the on-field umpires during the Test had privately expressed his concern over some deliveries Shoaib bowled to the Pakistan management but did not report it officially.

The fires were fuelled further by Greg Chappell's comments during the subsequent Test at Karachi, in which he is alleged to have said there was 'something seriously different' about Shoaib's action."

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't think I've ever read a cricket story,* but you're right about how it sounds. The narrative voice from the film, "Amelie," is the voice my head used to read the excerpt. Full of factual material and mystery at the same time!

* I do vaguely remember reading an essay about another person who enjoyed reading about cricket.

Anonymous said...

Well, I got caught up in a game of cricket once. Keep in mind that bowling is very much involved. Knocking down those wickets = nothing in baseball. And that's where the fun comes in.

Lucy said...

You should listen to some live commentary sometime. On top of sentences like that, you get factoids about the pigeons on the ground, Sri Lankan pronunciation and the history of the countries' flags etc to fill in the long periods where nothing really happens.

Anonymous said...

Another great thing about cricket is that it is the only sport I know of where the break for tea is part of the strategy, as in, "If the English batsmen can hold off the Pakistani assault until tea, they will be well placed for a draw in this test"