| Current mood: | calm |
| Current music: | Placebo - Swallow |
"Ice-cream boy, bowl for me"
Never liking to do something just because everyone else is doing it, I'm pained to admit that I, like so many up and down the country, have been converted to the civilised joys of cricket. It might be just because we appear to be winning for once, or maybe because it's everywhere you go at the moment - all of which cheapens this change of heart terribly - but I have gone from not caring at all for the game to loving it in the course of a few weeks.
(Sadly, although I can (and will) talk on my discovery, either you'll appreciate cricket already and this will all be old news to you, or you won't give a monkey's about the sport and nothing I say could probably sway you. Never mind.)
A few aspects in particular have peaked my interest. Firstly, there's a lot to be said for a sport in which a player feels the need to issue a press statement apologising for looking outwardly peeved after he was dimissed. That's one of the things that won me over: how bally civilised everything is. This aspect of true sportsmanship sets the tone for pretty much everything else that I've discovered about the game.
Another point of interest is the the characters of the players come into play a great deal. The way that the game's played means that a lot depends on how these personalities play off against each other. What's more, you really feel that, as the match developes, a story is developing with it. It's late, so I'm probably not expressing this as well as I'd like, but you get where I'm coming from.
Also, there's a break in the afternoon for tea, and ocaisionally crumpets are brought onto the field for between-over snacks.
I stand by some of the things that I've always maintained about the sport: It's rules are opaque, and five days is a very long time for a match of any sport to last for. I can now, however, see the counter arguments for these - the rules, although less than elegantly constructed, are all there for reasons that become clear; and the match length allows for fantastic, well, character development.
In these days of Yob Culture, with football as it's undoubted sporting face, I think it's high time cricket climbed to the fore as our nation's game. It presents to the world a vision of English activity very far removed from the yobbishness and thuggery that people in other countries increasingly think of whenever someone mentions the English.
Tea and crumpets, anyone?
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