Yesterday, Mr. Tom Armstrong wrote a provocative piece for AT titled “A British view of the Fourth of July.” What really got my goat was his insistence that Britain “invented cricket, a sport made so complicated that Americans wouldn’t be able to steal it. Instead, they turned into [sic] baseball, a game for the simple man.”
Mr. Armstrong is flailing in a sticky wicket. It is not so much complicated as it is absolutely loony, albeit in an endearing way. For instance, as the white-clad players and umpires genteelly descend from the clubhouse and fan out across the pristine pitch, it resembles a breakout from a sanatorium. Still, don’t let the peculiar names for fielding positions become overly complicated. Sure, there’s silly point, short leg, silly mid-off/on, square leg, fine leg, and fly slip, but they are just fielding positions relative to the batter and bowler. Not complicated, just loony.
Cricket also sports more names for the bowling deliveries than baseball does for different types of pitches. Some are easy for spectators to identify, such as a bouncer or a yorker, but I bet the average onlooker can’t tell the difference between a googly and a leg spinner — especially since they’ve probably been lulled to morose sleep by the inaction.
A batsman (who wears mini-mattresses on each leg, lest the ball hit his shin) can be dismissed by being bowled, caught, run out, or stumped, and a few rarer events. None of that is complicated, but there is one dismissal that can be subjective: leg before wicket. It’s just more complex lunacy, but not complicated, which is a distinction with a difference.
Cricket comes in many formats, with the epitome being known as Test matches than can literally take five days to complete. Or not complete — though dwindling, historically, the percentage of Test matches that end in a draw is around 32%. Five days to draw?!
To an aficionado, the ebb and flow of traditional Test cricket is compelling. However, there’s often more ebb than flow. In fact, the players are often interrupted for drinks, lunch, and tea. For the latter two, they quite literally retreat to the asylum confines for nutritional replenishment. For drinks breaks (after approximately every hour of play), attendants from the clubhouse sanatorium stroll onto the pitch with pitchers of electrolyte-laden beverages for the disoriented silly mod-offs, silly points, square legs, and whatnot.
During such breaks, cheerleaders would be a welcome enticement to combat drowsiness. When they aren’t available, the fans who are still conscious try to amuse themselves by singing and batting around giant beach balloons in the peanut gallery. That’s usually more entertaining than what’s occurring on the pitch (known as a cricket “ground”).
To sum up: Mr. Armstrong is out in left field when disparaging the mental facilities of American sports fans. Asserting that cricket is a sport too complicated for Americans to steal be fighting words. Consider that Walter Camp, regarded as a “Father of American Football,” facilitated the transition from rugby-style play to the game we love today. Indubitably, the intricacies of American football (including various patterns and formations that can flummox, time management, play-calling, player interchanges, field goals and extra point decisions, etc.) require much more fluid neuronal connectivity than simple English-style rugby. Camp, and others, took a simple sport and made it too complicated for the Brits to appreciate.
To wit: I once knew a fair English lass who described American football as “rugby with pads on.” Now that’s one “silly point.”
Image via Raw Pixel.