Australia’s Newest Cricket Phenom Discovered!

That’s right folks, a new cricket talent has been discovered Down Under, yes it’s me:

In all seriousness, I made my cricket debut this past week.  Obviously being an American I have never played cricket before so I was really looking forward to giving it a try.  I joined a team with guys from work and we play in a local league.  We have had a few practices and we had our first game this past week. Cricket has ended up being some what similar to baseball.  You use a bat to hit a ball thrown from a pitcher that is known as a bowler in cricket terms.  The bowler can take a running start to throw the ball and try to hit the three sticks in the ground behind the batter known as wickets.  A big difference from baseball is that the bowler can bounce the ball off the ground to hit the wickets.  If the ball hits the wicket the batter is out.  They call this a wicket, which is the equivalent of a strike out.  So the batter has to protect the wickets from the ball.  If the batter hits the ball he has the choice to run to the next wicket to score a run. 

Another major difference from baseball is that the fielders wear no gloves.  You catch the ball with you bare hands. For more on cricket rules click here. I actually did pretty good in my first cricket game either.  I made a few plays in the outfield and got to bowl 12 pitches and even got wicket.  Then when batting I got a few hits and score some runs.  Something to remember though when batting is that in cricket you run with your bat.  I kept dropping the thing and then running; so I would have to run back and grab my bat.  Everyone seemed to get a good laugh at watching the Yank play cricket.  We lost the game but everyone said I did really well bowling and were impressed. Overall, cricket is a lot funner than I expected, but if you don’t like watching baseball you wouldn’t like cricket because baseball games can go on for 4-6 hours, cricket games have been known to go on for 3-5 days.  Yes days!

The current big cricket event that has Australians glued to their TV’s is the Ashes.  The English and the Australians compete every year in a best of 5 cricket match to earn the right to own an urn of ashes.  It’s a long story but read here to learn about it. This series is so hotly contested between the two countries that controversy during one Ashes series nearly led to the cutting of diplomatic ties between the two countries. So needless to say they take their cricket here very seriouslessly.  I’m just happy to be having fun with it.