The mysteries of cricket

At a previous job, where one of my responsibilities was duty editing sports pages, I was once admonished by an editor for not knowing enough about cricket. My protestations about being Scottish - and, thus, being genetically unable to understand the game - fell on deaf ears.

Since then I’ve grown to enjoy cricket, even managing a sunny, drunken one day international a few years ago at Bristol. Some of the writing around the game is really rather beautiful too, harking back to a more old-fashioned, elegant form of sports journalism that’s mostly absent in football writing now.

But I’ll still be damned if I can understand how the current Ashes test - which looks like an English victory to me with England at 551-6 dec and 97-1, and Australia 513 all out - can be “heading for a draw”.

Can anyone explain?

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COMMENTS / 4 COMMENTS

next time someone asks you that, ask them how much they know about shinty

Aaron thought this on Dec 04 06 at 11:52 am

Lack of time, basically. In order for England to win, they have to bat long enough to set a total that’s challenging, and then get ten australia wickets. All in the same day. Given that it took all day for england to get four wickets two days ago, and the fact that the pitch is flatter than a steamroller’s bedspread, and no-one is going to get enough wickets for a result. If the pitch were cracked and hard to bat on, a result might just be possible. But it ain’t, so it ain’t.

Andy thought this on Dec 04 06 at 1:47 pm

So I was happy to accept this… but then woke up this morning to find that, in fact, Australia are looking likely to win because England fell to bits on what - as Andy rightly pointed out - is a very batsman friendly wicket.

It seems that, just as the rules and attraction of football would be difficult to understand if you only followed Scotland, so cricket is all the more baffling through the English prism.

Neil Mc thought this on Dec 05 06 at 6:16 am