This past weekend I had my first experience with cricket and actually I was pleasantly surprised. Since Dominica used to be occupied by the British at one point, it's no surprise that cricket is one of the two main sports here (obviously futbol, aka soccer, is the other). Now, I previously lived in Australia for about 6 months, at which time I went without being drawn into the cricket thing. I got exposed to "footy" (which I think EVERYONE needs to get into because that has to be the toughest, manliest sport in the world!), but always steered clear of cricket. This partly because cricket seems to get a bad rep for being extremely boring, but once you get it explained to you it isn't that bad (it's definitely better than baseball). The game or "test" I went to was a ODI (one day international) test between the West Indies (Windies) and South Africa. This is only the second time they've played in Dominica (I think our stadium has only been built for 2 years). There was a game on Friday that I didn't go to, and then one on Sunday (obviously I attended that one). Cricket is an all day thing (on the 5 day tests, they actually stop for tea!), so the test started at 9:30am and didn't finish until 6pm (there was a 45 min. break in there for lunch). The thing with cricket is that one entire team goes "up to bat" first to try to score as many runs as possible, then the other team will bat and see if they can beat that number of runs (as opposed to baseball where they keep trading off). Since it was a one day match, there were only 50 "overs" allowed per team (an over is 6 balls or pitches, aka bowls), so for the baseball inclined a team has 300 pitches to get as many runs as possible. Now I'll go ahead and tell you the final score for each team was over 300. So, I know you're scratching your head and saying, "How exactly does that work?" Well, if the batter hits the ball, he can get anywhere from 0 runs to 6 runs. Obviously if he hits the ball and doesn't run it's a 0, otherwise if he hits the ball he and his partner run to the opposite of the pitch to score a run~ as many times as possible before the other team gets the ball back to the wickets (that I'll explain later). There is also a large rope around the field. If the ball passes this rope (after it has touched the ground) it's an automatic 4 runs, while if the batter hits the ball over the rope before it touches the ground it counts as 6 runs (think of a grand slam in baseball). This way it's possible for a guy to score more than one run everyone he hits the ball. So I enjoyed and cheered the whole morning while the Windies were at bat~ we scored 303 runs!! In the afternoon when South Africa was batting I actually took a nap for quite a while (hehe, it was crazy hot and I had a headache) but then cheered the last 20 overs. Talk about a close but exciting game. It literally came down to the last ball...the score was tied at 303...and unfortunately the guy fumbled on the last chance and South Africa pulled out a win 304/3-303/6 (as it is reported, SA won by 7 wickets~ think of a wicket as an out and there are 10 outs in cricket). Anyway, a lot was learned and I would definitely go again. I think losing to the #2 team in the world (for ODIs) by one measly run isn't too bad. I think next year we play India!!! Until next time...
