Cricket - the Real Deal
2009-10-15

Remember that blog entry where I said I had done a few cricket nets sessions, and was lauded for my amazing cricketing skills by "Nets session boss guy"? Erm, it is safe to say he was just being nice.

North American cricket myth #1: "Batting in baseball is more difficult than cricket."
North American cricket myth #2: "Pitching in baseball is more difficult than bowling in cricket."
North American cricket myth #3: "I have played baseball, therefore I will be awesome at cricket."

Wrong. Wrong and also wrong. I should preface this with the fact that I am not a great sportsman at the best of times. I have indeed played my fair amount of beer league baseball and softball (and my grandfather was a whisker away from playing in the big leagues so I’ve got baseball genes), but I am by no means Willie Mays… Willie Nelson, more like. In fact, if I were to rate my softball skills, I would rate them as "almost competent". After my first cricket match, I would rate my cricketing skills as "borderline retarded".

I was very excited about my cricketing debut. I (stupidly) told everyone the positive comments Nets Session Boss gave me. "Do I want to practice my hitting, you ask? No thanks, I’ve been doing nets sessions for the past month. Apparently, I make it look easy."

We were first up to bat and were immediately off to the races. The first guy up was out for a 3, but the next two (let’s call them "Ike" and "Owen"... erm, because those are their names) had started a decent partnership and were knocking balls all over the place.

Ike and Owen were up there for bloody AGES. This was only a 40 over match, and I was half way down the order … maybe I won’t get the chance to bat at all!! Forget this, drastic action is in order. So I asked one of the other guys to swap with me to put me higher up. Yeah, that’s right.

Ike and Owen kept going on and on and gave us a fairly sizeable lead, but I didn’t care about that, I wanted to show these limey sissies how it’s REALLY done. Our captain, Tom, started to feel sorry for the other team so he invoked a scoring limit of 30 runs to a) have mercy on the other side and b) give other people a chance to bat. As relieved as I was that I would definitely be hitting now, I was a bit pissed off that I wouldn’t be able to stay up for more than 30 runs. Surely, I would get a century off these clowns, they’d never even HEARD of Barry Bonds. After Ike and Owen departed, the wickets started falling thick and fast. In fact, the guy before me was out so quickly, that I hadn’t had time to put the pads on. Don’t worry fellas, I’ll bring it back, I’ve being doing nets sessions!

I walked up to the wicket and promptly watched the first ball go whistling by. Shit, that thing moves sideways when it bounces, what is up with that?! A couple more swings and misses and I was really starting to think I was in trouble. Ball four came in and WHACK! I made contact! Baseball instinct kicked in and I (like Forest Gump) immediately start-ED-RUN-NANG!. However, I neglected to notice that I hit it straight toward a fielder. By the time I did notice, I was half way down the wicket and so was my partner. I didn’t know what to do so I stopped, changed my mind, changed my mind again and before I knew it, I had run my partner out. Hmmm, they didn’t say anything about that during nets. My partner was not impressed.

The next batter came up and said "If you do that to me, I’ll kill ya", which to be honest didn’t exactly help matters. He then said "Just hit singles to keep me on strike" which, while probably warranted, was a fairly assholish thing to say. I’d lie to you if I said I didn’t have a little chuckle when he was bowled out for a duck by one of their shittiest bowlers. In the end, I got a 9 (including probably the slowest boundary hit in the history of cricket) which, let’s be honest, is shit. But at least I didn’t go out for a zero and I got more runs than quite a few of the other guys. Of course, none of them ran out their hitting partner, but whatev.

Our team hit a very respectable number so we were in a fairly comfortable position by the time it was our turn to field. Unfortunately, my fielding was also shit as I dropped a ball hit straight at me and landed on my ass, but even that wasn’t the worst thing that happened to me that day. After the other guys took turns bowling, knocking their hitters out on a rate of almost one an over, Tom came up to me and said "You’re up next to bowl".

Me: "Um, wha?! Hey, no one said anything about bowling"
Captain Tom: "Yeah, all their players had a turn bowling, so you have to too."
Me: "Errr... holy FUCK."

To say I had an unorthodox bowling style would be a slight understatement. It would be like saying Dawn French sorta has a dimpled ass. It would be closer to the mark to say my bowling resembled a three-toed sloth in the midst of a particularly painful bout of electroshock. Slow step, slow step, quick step, forget which foot was supposed to be forward, STUDDER STEP, STUDDER STEP, step too far forward, around the wrong side of the wicket, PANIC, bend arm to 90 degrees, THROW!!

Straight. Into. The. Fucking. Ground. It was not pretty.

Luckily, it was amusing. To everyone else. Out of my twelve balls, I got three that were actually down the line (all of which were hit for fours or sixes) and the rest were wides or "no balls". "No balls" couldn’t have been a more apt description for that display.

Yeah, so um, some more nets sessions are in order. Nets Session Boss is in for such a ball-kicking for being so nice to me.