So, the 2011 Cricket World Cup just started, but….
…what’s a googly? And what is this game, anyway?
In America, we have baseball, which is cricket’s long-lost cousin (literally, it turns out). But we don’t have a world cup. (We have the World Series, but we don’t invite the rest of the world to play in it, for some reason. Not sure why.)
Meanwhile, baseball’s kissing cousin is so popular that people are hooking into IVR systems so they can follow the big dance. Seriously—match alerts, live scores, wicket (later) video alerts, SMS portals, live IVR commentary, SMS ball-by-ball updates (there’s a ball in cricket) and even trivia.
But batters, bowlers, wickets, deliveries, balls, runs, outs, overs…what is it?
Well…
Like baseball, cricket probably comes from earlier bat-and-ball games played in Europe as far back as the Middle Ages. Some say it originated in Flanders, others say it derives from early English games.
In any case, it’s been the national sport of England for the last couple hundred years (although some say England’s real national sport is football—sorry, soccer). It’s also extremely popular in former colonies of the British Empire including India, Pakistan, the West Indies, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Australia and New Zealand.
Like baseball, cricket is basically throwing, hitting and catching a ball—it’s just done a little differently (and for longer periods, evidently).
In cricket, two teams of eleven players face off with a ball a little smaller than a baseball, a bat that’s more like a paddle and a wicket—a 28.5-inch tower of three sticks (stumps) with two sticks (bails) lying loosely across the top like a high-jump bar (kinda). The field is a roughly oval-shaped area of flat grass.
Okay, a little different from baseball.
A bowler (pitcher) throws the ball (usually with a bounce) to a batter who protects the wicket by hitting the ball if he needs to (so the ball doesn’t knock the bails off). If he hits the ball and it goes far enough, the batter can score runs.
Right. Easy enough.
In cricket, there are two wickets facing each other 20 meters apart in the pitch (a long rectangle in the center of the field), and there are two batters, a bowler and a wicket-keeper (the catcher, who squats behind the wicket). The batters (one is the striker, the other the non-striker) stand near the wickets behind the popping creases (like a batter’s box) and score by running back and forth between the wickets.
Okay, so there are some moving parts.
A bowler from the fielding team begins the bowling of balls (that’s what it’s called) with the throw, and the ball ends when the wicket-keeper catches it (if the batter—the striker, not the non-striker—lets it go or whiffs) or the batter hits the ball and gets out (in one of the ten ways to get out) or one of a bunch of other things happen, including breaking the wicket (knocking the bails off or completely dislodging a stump; off stump, middle stump or leg stump)—
Wait. What?
—Six balls constitute an over (new bowler time) and ten outs make an innings (innings, not inning, for who knows why) and the teams switch batting and fielding—
Uh…
—The fielding positions are first slip, second slip, third slip, gully, point, cover, extra cover, mid-off, mid-on and some equally quaint others. The ten ways to get out include getting caught, bowled, stumped, run out, timed out and leg before wicket-ed out—
…
Okay. Cricket is a complicated game. Note to selves.
So anyway, this is the 10th Cricket World Cup, which runs every four years. And while it may seem overkill to have IVR updates during matches, it’s really not because of the length of the games. (You should have seen this coming.) While cricket is usually a Sunday afternoon affair, competitive matches can go on for days.
Of course they can.
According to FunTrivia.com, the longest cricket match ever was nine days long (of actual playing days). It began on March 3, 1939, between England and South Africa and went until March 14 (12 days because they had a couple of rain days). It only ended when the English were going to miss their boat home (they didn’t even finish the game).
Believe it or not (you’ll believe it), the average cricket fan doesn’t tune in for entire matches. So an IVR is actually a pretty good idea for this. Anyway…
“That was a wicked googly.”
By the way, a googly is a delivery from a right-arm leg-spin bowler—
…
—nevermind.
