My boyfriend is trying to explain cricket to me again. “He’s only got two balls to make 48 runs”, he says. The camera focuses on a man. Underneath him it says LEFT ARM FAST MEDIUM. A ball flies into the stands and presumably fractures someone’s skull. “There’s a free six”, my boyfriend says. 348 SIXES says the screen. A child in the audience waves a sign referencing Weet-Bix
The first time he showed me this I assumed he was pranking me
if people haven’t been exposed to cricket before, here is the experience. The person who likes cricket turns on a radio with an air of happy expectation. “We’ll just catch up with the cricket,” they say.
An elderly British man with an accent - you can picture exactly what he looks like and what he is wearing, somehow, and you know that he will explain the important concept of Yorkshire to you at length if you make eye contact - is saying “And w’ four snickets t’ wicket, Umbleby dives under the covers and romps home for a sticky bicket.”
There is a deep and satisfied silence. Weather happens over the radio. This lasts for three minutes.
A gentle young gentleman with an Indian accent, whose perfect and beautiful clear voice makes him sound like a poet sipping from a cup of honeyed drink always, says mildly “Of course we cannot forget that when Pakistan last had the biscuit under the covers, they were thrown out of bed. In 1957, I believe.”
You mouth “what the fucking fuck.”
A morally ambiguous villain from a superhero movie says off-microphone, “Crumbs everywhere.”
Apparently continuing a previous conversation, the villain asks, “Do seagulls eat tacos?”
“I’m sure someone will tell us eventually,” the poet says. His voice is so beautiful that it should be familiar; he should be the only announcer on the radio, the only reader of audiobooks.
The villain says with sudden interest, “Oh, a leg over straight and under the covers, Peterson and Singh are rumping along with a straight fine leg and good pumping action. Thanks to his powerful thighs, Peterson is an excellent legspinner, apart from being rude on Twitter.”
The man from Yorkshire roars potently, like a bull seeing another bull. There might be words in his roar, but otherwise it is primal and sizzling.
“That isn’t straight,” the poet says. “It’s silly.”
“What the fucking fuck,” you say out loud at this point.
“Shh,” says the person who likes cricket. They listen, tensely. Something in the distance makes a very small “thwack,” like a baby dropping an egg.
“Was that a doosra or a googly?” the villain asks.
“IT’S A WRONG ‘UN,” roars the Yorkshireman in his wrath. A powerful insult has been offered. They begin to scuffle.
“With that double doozy, Crumpet is baffled for three turns, Agarwal is deep in the biscuit tin and Padgett has gone to the shops undercover,” the poet says quickly, to cover the action while his companions are busy. The villain is being throttled, in a friendly companionable way.
An intern apparently brings a message scrawled on a scrap of paper like a courier sprinting across a battlefield. “Reddy has rolled a nat 20,” the poet says with barely contained excitement. “Australia is both a continent and an island. But we’re running out of time!”
“Is that true?” You ask suddenly.
“Shh!” Says the person who likes cricket. “It’s a test match.”
“About Australia.”
“We won’t know THAT until the third DAY.”
A distant “pock” noise. The sound of thirty people saying “tsk,” sorrowfully.
“And the baby’s dropped the egg. Four legs over or we’re done for, as long as it doesn’t rain.”
The villain might be dead? You begin to find yourself emotionally invested.
There are mild distant cheers. “Oh, and with twelve sticky wickets t’ over and t’ seagull’s exploded,” the man from the North says as if all of his dreams have come true. “What a beautiful day.” Your person who likes cricket relaxes. It is tea break.
The villain, apparently alive, describes the best hat in the audience as “like a funnel made of dove-colored net, but backwards, with flies trapped in it.”
This is every bit as good as that time in Australia in 1975, they all agree, drinking their tea and eating home-made cakes sent in by the fans. The poet comments favorably on the icing and sugar-preserved violets. The Yorkshire man discourses on the nature of sponge. The villain clatters his cup too hard on his saucer. To cover his embarrassment, the poet begins scrolling through Twitter on his phone, reading aloud the best memes in his enchanting milky voice. Then, with joy, he reads an @ from an ornithologist at the University of Reading: seagulls do eat tacos! A reference is cited; the poet reads it aloud. Everyone cheers.
You are honestly - against your will - kind of into it! but also: weirdly enraged.
“Was that … it?” you ask, deeming it safe to interrupt.
“No,” says the person who likes cricket, “This is second tea break on the first day. We won’t know where we really are until lunch tomorrow.”
And - because you cannot stop them - you have to accept this; if cricket teaches you anything, it is this gentle and radical acceptance.
Last night - and I hate that I know this - I need you to understand that I hate that I know this - there was a World Cup, in which England beat New Zealand, even though they really shouldn’t have. This was important because nobody has ever won the World Cup ever, or something, and it was also at The Spiritual Home Of Cricket (which is where souls go since the Pope abolished Limbo - it’s a kind of waiting room in London) and also because it was on free TV, and also, ALSO, Wimbledon was also happening, which was totally relevant somehow.
After spending a day fucking around, from what I absorbed grudgingly, New Zealand was winning, until a sort of slow-motion trainwreck of improbable miracles performed by England.
So the effect was of the usual gibberish for about 8 hours, and then, at the very end, suddenly, without explanation, the crowd began singing “We Will Rock You” in freaky menacing unison, which is what happens when England does???? something??????
And I was like: “but quoi the fuck? you guys have been LOSING all DAY” and the commentators began to just go “ASLKJASHJSALHDKJHF” at top speed, and Dr Glass goes, worshipfully, “I don’t even know what’s happening!”
During this, several people went on strike and hid in cow corner.
and then, a commentator said, without irony, in the tones of a man defying all the gods in the pantheon, clutching his belief to his heart like the armor of righteousness: “I defy anyone to tell me that cricket is boring after THIS.”
SIR.
SIR, I HAVE A DELIVERY OF DEFIANCE FOR YOU.
IT IS ACTUALLY JUST A GIANT EMPTY PVC TUBE THAT I DELIVER OVER YOUR HEAD.
YOU ARE TRAPPED, NOW, SIR.
STAY IN THE TUBE OF DEFIANCE.
YOU ARE DEFIED.
SIGN HERE.
So it was suddenly a tie, because somebody had thrown a ball at an England player, who was looking the other way at the time (because, like, obviously it would be ridiculous to be expecting somebody to throw a ball in your general direction at a ball game! especially when you are hiding in cow corner, that’s illegal)
and it bounced off his bat, which counts as him hitting it, and got on a bus bound for Cardiff, to join the Extinction Rebellion blockade, which scores 200 points obviously, plus an extra 17.5 points for demonstrating social responsibility! which meant that England was suddenly tied with New Zealand and the game was over. BUT YOU CAN’T HAVE A TIE FOR THE WORLD CUP, obviously, you can have it for all of the others but not THE WORLD CUP! so they played another game and had another tie, and when that happens, the oldest player on the field calls their dad and has him count up all the technicalities, and so England won on a technicality.
This decision-making process, on the radio, has all the gripping drama of a bunch of men standing around a burst water pipe - you know, how you have the one guy wearing a hard hat down in the hole, staring sadly at the burst water pipe and maybe patting it with a shovel, and five other men in various jazzy costumes all staring at him soberly and commenting on it, and another man to drive the truck? And they all discuss it, at about 0.25 of regular human speed, until 4:46 pm, when they eventually reach a consensus of maybe doing something about it, after they see what the Boss says. And meanwhile in this scenario there is a crowd standing respectfully on the sidelines, just absolutely roaring for blood and doing stomp-CLAP-stomp-stomp-CLAP, just completely fuckin’ ravenous about the methodology being deployed here. That was the process of winning the game.
And the reaction, which everyone must suffer through today, if they are trapped on these islands with these people, includes stuff like this BBC coverage:
You couldn’t write it, because it was a plotline too twisted to make dramatic sense, too confusing, too remote from what has gone before.
We’re OK with spaceships and child wizards because they have been imagined before. Plenty had dreamed of England winning the World Cup. That’s where logic waved farewell.
And - not to criticize the BBC for being unimaginative - this is where you gotta sit them gently down, and tell them - because nobody else will! - that logic waved farewell to you guys a long time ago.
GET INTO THE FUCKING PLASTIC TUBE.
