Cricket and baseball has at least one thing in common, both of them are a very boring game to watch. But baseball has one advantage over cricket, they sell beer in the stadium.
Tag Archives: cricket
Stupid Cricket Sales
I went to an interesting restaurant to have dinner tonight. The restaurant is owned by cricket player of the Indian Cricket team. Attached to the restaurant, there is a small cricket hall of fame with some collectible in display. Next to the show room is a small shop selling cricket equipments and souvenirs.
I arrived at the restaurant a lit early, so I take a look at the show room and the souvenir shop. I am kinda interested in the cricket bet, so I ask the sales to show me what they got. The sales bring forth some of their finest cricket bet that is used by the professional. The bet is made of imported English willow wood and beautifully handcraft in India. The bet is really expensive. It costs Rs8000, which is almost US$200. The sales seems very determine to sell me the bet. I reject politely him by saying the bet is too heavy for my luggage. He keep saying I can ship it with special luggage arrangement via airline or hand carry it on board. Duh! Didn’t he got my hint that I don’t want to buy the bet at all.
Does he have any common sense? No one with a right mind will buy an expensive professional cricket bet for souvenir. Maybe he mistaken me as one of those rich Japanese tourists who like to buy expensive and useless stuff. In the end, I bought a jersey of Indian cricket team. I think I got ripped off on the jersey, it’s not a real Nike jersey but a cheap knock off. Yet I still paid Rs300 for it!
Watching Cricket
Cricket to Indians is like hockey to Canadian. The Australian team is playing the Indian team in Bangalore this week. A cricket match last 4-5 days, and 8 hours per day. The game will start in the morning, then players will have a lunch break, and the game continue until the evening. Since it would be fun to watch a live cricket game, we decided to try out luck at the stadium after lunch yesterday.
When we arrived at the stadium, the ticket is already sold out. We were a bit disappointed, so the driver offered to help us get some tickets from the scalper. He left the car disappeared into the crowd for a few minutes, then come back with the scalper with him. The scalper is selling us three tickets for 3000 Rupee. We thought its a bit too expensive, so he lower it down to 2000 Rupee. We still think it’s too much and we counter offer him 1500 Rupee. Which is what we original budget for the game. CAD$10 for a few hours of game. Not bad. So we got our tickets, sent our driver away and ready to have some fun.
When we arrive at the gate, we found out the tickets turn out to be used. It’s OK, because the ticket come with the return pass allowing ticket holder go out and get back into the stadium. However we only got two return pass, one return pass is missing. We played dumb with the door man, pulled our innocent tourist card and eventually he let us go inside. When we arrive at the seats, it turns out 2 tickets belong to one section and another ticket belong to another section. Again, we play dumb and pulled our innocent tourist card, all three of us get into the seats. The seats are very good, we were sitting on the 3rd row right behind the camera men. We watched the game until the end of the day, get almost 2 hours of good cricket action. The pace of the game is quite slow, probably it is as exciting as base ball. It really test my patient spending two hours watching the Indian team getting 100 points, trying to catch up with the 450 points Australian team got in the 1st inning.
At the end of the day, every one is happy. The scalper is happy for turning an handsome profit on some garbage paper. The driver is happy for getting a cut from the scalper. We are happy for watching an international cricket game at prime location seats. We get to experienced two India trademark experience first handed in a single cricket game. We got ripped off big time by the scalper and we got bored by watching the endless bowl and bat in a cricket game. One stone shooting down two birds.
Cricket
Cricket to Indian is like Hockey to Canadian. Cricket is probably the national sport in India and every one seems crazy about it. I haven’t a live game, but I see lots of cricket on TV as the world champion is playing in Australia this week. The India team is playing against the Australians and too bad they lost the game. At first I have no clue what is going on in the game. The good thing is that everyone is happy to explain the rule to me. It took me a while to get a sense of what is going on in the field.
Cricket is kinda like baseball, with pitcher, batter and catcher. Instead of running in diamond, the batter runs back and forth in the dirt stripe in the middle of the field. The rule is similar to baseball. The pitcher throw the ball to the batter, then the batter strike the ball. If the ball is caught in the air, the batter is out. Otherwise, the batter can keep running to score more points until the ball is threw back to the stripe. If the ball go outside of the field, it kinda like home run, the batter automatically score 4 points or 6 points depending on whether the ball is in the air. Of course, the team score more points win the game. The rule kinda make sense up to this point, just like baseball.
The flow of game is weird. Instead of having innings with teams playing offense and defense alternatively, the game is played in two sessions. One team will finish all his batting in first session, then the other team will do the batting in second session. A session ends when all the batter are strike out or 500 balls is threw. It’s kinda like a team score several hundred points first, then let the another team to catch up. The game flow makes the game not very exciting. The first few hundred points is kinda boring, since it won’t make much difference to the game. Only when the second team come close to catch up and almost run of batters or balls, then the game becomes interesting. It is more fun to see the score from both teams leap frogging each other every inning.