Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Cricket for Dummies......and Americans

Starting point is 00:00:00 Cricket is the world's second most popular spectator sport behind association football or soccer. However, it's played almost nowhere outside of former British colonies. It's a game that can be confusing to those who are uninitiated and if it's played in its traditional manner can take an extremely long time to complete. Learn more about cricket, how the game developed and how it's played today on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? throughline is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed.

Starting point is 00:00:48 It effectively turned day into night and how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. I want to start this episode by saying I am confident that I know more about cricket than 99% of the population of the United States. And I want to follow that up by saying that is an absolutely. meaningless statement because nobody in the United States really knows anything about cricket. In the course of my travels, I've come to view the world as being divided into three parts. First, there are the countries that play baseball, which I will call the baseball sphere. This includes United States, Canada, Mexico, Panama, Venezuela, Colombia, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Puerto

Starting point is 00:01:34 Rico, Aruba, Curacao, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Then there are the countries that I'll call the cricket sphere. These are the UK, broken up into its four constituent countries, Ireland, all the former British colonies in the Caribbean lumped together as the West Indies, including Guyana, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand. The third group is everyone who plays neither baseball nor cricket. The amazing thing is that there is basically zero overlap between the cricket sphere and the baseball sphere. My first real exposure to cricket was in 2008. I spent a month in Melbourne and I was watching TV one day when there was a cricket match on.

Starting point is 00:02:13 I figured I'd watch it to try to learn something. They eventually cut away for the news, played a full episode of The Simpsons, and then went back to the match, which was still in progress. Over the years, I kept encountering cricket and gradually learned more about the game. In 2014, I rented a car and drove around South Africa.

Starting point is 00:02:30 In many of the more remote areas, I would listen to cricket matches on the radio and was familiar enough with the game at this point that I could follow along with what was happening. I still wouldn't call myself a hardcore fan, however. I was in a restaurant on the island of Antigua once having dinner when I noticed photos all over the wall of a cricket player. I casually asked who it was, and they looked at me as if I was from Mars. That cricket player was the greatest player from the West Indies and a native of Antigua, Viv Richards.

Starting point is 00:02:57 I don't normally give this much personal background in an episode, but I know that there are listeners from the Cricket Sphere countries who are going to be wondering, who am I as an American to be talking about cricket? This episode is mostly going to be for people in non-cricot-playing countries. For those of you who live in the cricket sphere, you will have the gift of being entertained by listening to an American talk about a sport which is not played in America. Cricket, in some form, goes back several centuries. It's much older than any other team sport which has played today. There were recorded cases of children playing stick-and-ball games in southwest England going back at least a thousand years.

Starting point is 00:03:34 The first documented use of someone referring to the game was in 15-10. 1997, when, during a land dispute in the town of Guilford, England, one man testified that he used to play cricket with his friends on the disputed land 50 years earlier. The origin of the word cricket probably comes from an old Dutch word for stick. It is likely to have come from Dutch traders who frequented England. Cricket was so popular in 17th century England that laws were passed limiting the amount that could be bet on matches. Just as with football, the early rules of the game were quite fluid and weren't fixed. This was rectified in 17th. when the laws of cricket were published, giving the game a fixed set of rules. Through the 17th and 18th centuries, the game was mostly played in the south of England. As the British Empire grew, cricket went along for the ride.

Starting point is 00:04:20 British soldiers, merchants, and civil servants took the game to Australia, the Caribbean, South Asia, and Africa. The game never really caught on in Canada and was only mildly popular in the American colonies. However, as you'll see in a bit, they did manage to field some teams in the 19th century. One of the biggest changes in the rules occurred in 1760, when the ball ceased being rolled on the ground underhanded. This is why the person who throws the ball in cricket is called a bowler. It's because they originally, literally, bowled the ball like in bowling. The change in bowling from a rolled ball to a thrown ball also changed the type of bat which was used.

Starting point is 00:04:56 Cricket bats used to look like field hockey sticks to better hit the ball in the ground. When the ball started being thrown through the air, it changed the bat to a straighter, flatter one. The 19th century saw more formal organized teams, usually representing clubs or communities. The very first international cricket match, believe it or not, was between the United States and Canada, in 1844 at the St. George's Cricket Club in New York City, located near the corner of 30th and Broadway. Canada won by 23 runs. It wasn't just the first international cricket match, but the first organized international match in any sport. In 1859, an English team toured North America, and in 1862, they went to Australia. The first recognized international test match occurred in 1877 between England and Australia.

Starting point is 00:05:44 Here I should explain what the term test match means, as the phrase isn't commonly used in the non-cricot sphere. Today, a test match is an international match between national cricket teams. The term test comes from the phrase timeless test, which was a cricket match that had no time limit and no ties. The term test match in many Commonwealth countries has been adopted for any international sporting match. In the U.S., such a match is often referred to as a friendly, which, to be honest, is a term I hate because it implies that the game has no meaning. Before I get into the modern game, I should explain exactly how it's played, because unless you grew up watching or playing cricket, it's probably a mystery to you. And I'll use some comparisons to baseball because I know that

Starting point is 00:06:29 most of you are actually listening in North America. The game consists of 11 players on each side. Like baseball, the object is to score runs and avoid outs. The game is played in what's known as an oval, which is roughly the shape of most fields. The exact dimensions of an oval can differ, just like the dimensions of a baseball outfield, and can differ from field to field.

Starting point is 00:06:51 In the middle of the oval is a pitch. The pitch is made of dirt like a baseball infield. The pitch is a long rectangle, and on either end is a way. wicket. The wickets are 15 yards away from each other. A wicket consists of three vertical posts called stumps that are 28 inches tall and two small wooden bales which rest on top of the stumps. More on the wicket in a bit. The wickets can be thought of as the object of the fielding team. The goal, as in baseball, is to score as many runs as possible before being called out.

Starting point is 00:07:22 The batting team always has two batters on the pitch at the same time. The fielding team will have a bowler who throws the ball at one of the batters. What the bowler is aiming for is the wicket. If the bowler can hit the wicket and knock off one of the bales, the batter is out. The batter then is really defending the wicket with his bat. Each inning is 10 outs, because there must be two batters on the field at any given time. Once the 10th out is recorded, the remaining batter would be alone. Most cricket matches are just two innings.

Starting point is 00:07:54 The first team to bat, which is usually determined by a coin flip, will bat until they record. toward 10 outs. However many runs they score, that is now the goal for the second team to beat. If they can score more runs, they win the game and the game ends. If they get 10 outs before they can achieve that, they lose. Runs are different than in baseball. Because the pitch is in the middle of the oval, there are no foul balls. The batter can hit or deflect the ball in any direction. To score a run, the batter has to hit the ball and then run to align in front of the other wicked. Both batterers have to move switching places for a run to be scored. There is no limit to the number of runs that can be scored on a single hit ball. In the event that the ball rolls beyond the

Starting point is 00:08:37 boundary of the oval, it is an automatic four runs. This is the cricket equivalent of a ground rule double. If it goes over the boundary line on the fly, it's six runs. This is the cricket equivalent of a home run. One of the biggest differences between baseball and cricket is that batting in baseball is mostly an exercise in failure. A very good baseball player will record an out 70% of the time. In cricket, however, a batter will probably score dozens of runs before getting out. It is entirely possible for a single batter to score 100 runs or more in an inning, which is called a century. The size of the field makes it more difficult for fielders in cricket because they have to cover more ground. Also, cricket fielders do not have the large gloves that

Starting point is 00:09:21 baseball players wear. Everyone except the wicket keeper, which is the equivalent of the catcher, is bare-handed. There are several ways to record an out. The first, as I mentioned, is to hit the wicket. If a batter accidentally hits the wicket, he's still out. If a fielder throws the ball and hits a wicket before the batter gets there, he's out. This is the equivalent of a force out in baseball. Also, if a ball is caught in mid-air, the batter is out. In addition, if the batter interferes with the ball that would have hit the wicket, he is out and it's called a leg out. The bowler is the equivalent of the pitcher in baseball with some major differences. For starters, a bowler can bounce the ball off the ground. Most bowlers will do this as it gives the ball more movement. Also, bowling is not

Starting point is 00:10:06 throwing. A bowler cannot bend their elbow as you would throwing a ball. To compensate for this, the bowler is allowed to get a running start. The fastest cricket bowlers are just a hair behind the fastest baseball pitchers. The fastest cricket bowlers in history can barely hit 100 miles an hour, and the fastest baseball pitcher ever was 105 miles an hour. Whereas a baseball game is nine innings at almost every level of competition, there are several different types of cricket matches. The first and most prestigious are the international test matches. These are usually four innings, with each side batting twice. They last a maximum of five days, which gives cricket the reputation of taking a very long time. In reality,

Starting point is 00:10:47 In reality, it isn't much different than a five-game series in baseball. The difference is that they just roll it up into a single game rather than splitting it up into five different ones. In an effort to provide faster games, there's also something called a one-day international match. In a one-day international match, each side is limited to 50 overs. And an over consists of six legitimately bowl deliveries, not counting no balls or dead balls. So basically, each side gets to bowl 300 times. The approximate length of a one-day international match is about 8-8. hours, which is still much longer than most sporting events. And there's a relatively new form of

Starting point is 00:11:23 cricket called 2020 cricket. 2020 cricket limits the number of overs to just 20 to each side, which means that each side will bowl 120 times. To put that into perspective, the average major league baseball team throws 146 pitches per game. 2020 cricket matches are about three hours long. Cricket for decades was mostly the realm of national teams at the highest level of the sport. However, in 2007, the Indian Premier League was launched, which is a professional cricket league consisting of 10 teams in major Indian cities. This allowed the best players in the world to make significantly more money than they would have just playing on national teams. Earlier, I mentioned how cricket is the second most popular spectator sport in the world.

Starting point is 00:12:05 This is largely due to the popularity of the sport in India. Cricket is overwhelmingly the most popular sport in India. It is a very common sight to see kids playing cricket on the street with a makeshift wicket. There is a cricket World Cup held every four years. The matches are all one-day international format matches. The next World Cup will be in 2023 in India, and the reigning world champions are England. There's also a 2020 World Cup, which is actually taking place in Australia as I'm recording this episode. The longest rivalry in international test cricket is between England and Australia. Their test match is called the Ashes. It got

Starting point is 00:12:41 its name after Australia defeated England in 1882 in London. A satirical obituary. A satirical obiturial in a British newspaper reported that English cricket had died, and, quote, the body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia. The next year, the English team vowed to go to Australia and, quote, regain those ashes. After that match, a group of women in Melbourne presented an urn with burnt wicked ashes to the English team, and is now on display in London. Australia leads the all-time series with 34 wins versus 32 for England and six draws. The Ashes is a series of five test matches, which means the entire thing can last an entire month. Even if you have no desire to become a rabid cricket fan, I'd suggest at least watching some cricket highlights on YouTube to get a better feel for the game. I'm not a huge fan, but I've personally sort of adopted the West Indies team as my own, as they're kind of in the neighborhood.

Starting point is 00:13:35 Cricket is a sport with a rich history and a passionate international following. Once you take some time to understand the rules, it makes it much easier to follow as well as to watch. Everything Everywhere Daily is an Airwave Media podcast. The executive producer is Darcy Adams. The associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett. I just wanted to extend a big thank you to everyone who is supporting the show over at patreon.com. I have show merchandise available there, including hoodies, t-shirts, and stickers. Plus, it really just helps me get this show out every single day, including, of course, weekends and holidays. Remember, if you're you leave a review or send me a boostagram, you two can have it read on the show.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Cricket for Dummies......and Americans

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.