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 November 23 2000 'Cricket's Strange Rules' or 'How I Learned to Love the Game' A friend asked me how the cricket was going. Not the Test, or the series, just 'the cricket'. He did not ask the score, or any other details. He was aware of my passion for the game, but before knowing me had never taken much of an interest. This was mainly due to the smokescreen of rules and laws that confound and bewilder many that have neither the time nor patience to get with cricket's programme. Then there is my girlfriend who has learnt about the mysterious game played on the big field. "But why do they wear white?" She inquired recently. "It is traditional." I replied, before remembering that back in the earliest days of the game, players, or should I say gentlemen, wore shirts of many colours, striped, spotted an array of designs, but white was definitely involved. This is part of the trouble with cricket, and explaining the game to anyone. The depth of the rules, regulations and laws together with playing conditions and length of match played: One, two, three, four or five-day Test match, and then there are timeless Tests, day/night games under floodlights, more recently New Zealander Martin Crowe's CricketMax one-day two-innings format... It is a game of two halves, well four, but possibly only three if team A enforces the follow-on. Like football, a team can play out for a draw, the aim of the game is then not always to win, but damage limitation. This game plan comes about due in part to differing point systems of countries internal leagues. Every one has a variety of bonus points, and innings lead varieties. This is a contentious point, forcing weaker teams to look at the best way to get something out of a game, the losing-draw is worth more than a defeat etc. A small slice of the cake is favourable to not even getting a crumb. Chaos Next up is the rain rule. Well, when it rains, the team batting second has to score less runs to win. Eh? That depends upon the ratio of maiden overs batted out by the first team, or something lie that. Does anyone who is not Mr Duckworth or Mr Lewis fully comprehend their 'Duckworth/Lewis method'? The weather is a chaotic thing, and thus a chaotic system is used to overcome it. A touchy subject for the 1992 South Africans who suffered an almost certain spot in their first World Cup final, at the first attempt. As rain intervened during a day/night game, the South Africans required 22 runs from 13 deliveries (2 overs and one ball), then when the rain stopped, and the calculations were done, they needed...21 runs....from 1 ball! Hang on, that cannot be right, in a World cup final? That is the way cricket is, subsequently England got beat by Pakistan in the final anyway, so at least the South Africans do not resent us too much. 'The law is an ass.' That is not to say I lost my love for the game, who knows what effects that had on the South Africans, Hansie Cronje and all. Cricket Explained Cover, cover-point, short-cover, extra-cover, deep extra-cover...hang on my head hurts. Well imagine being a captain, knowing where you want your fielders, and having to pick the right name, and then moving them left a bit, forward a bit. It can be quite funny unless of course you are the hapless fielder who does not quite understand your increasingly irate skipper's directions. Getting back to my friend's initial question, well at this present time, England are doing all right. Is the simple answer, of course considering the conditions and the ability of the Pakistan spinne... Try to keep it simple, that is the key. I have to bite my tongue when explaining events to my girlfriend, "Why is that four, and that a six? Shouldn't there be an eight..?" My friend asked me to write a simple list of rules on the site. I did try honest, I just got to confused and lost inside it all, lost in all the myriad of variables that makes cricket so appealing. I love cricket, playing, watching, listening to, reading and writing about too since the start of this article. As for my friend's request, I will keep working on those rules, but I am not promising! Richard Kendall |
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