Posted on 01/24/2010 5:42:27 AM PST by the scotsman
'The Indian Premier League has announced plans to take cricket to the US. But could the home of baseball ever take cricket to its heart?
There are plenty of English people who find it hard to understand the joy of cricket. But could the United States, the home of brash, all-action sports like American football and basketball, ever embrace a sport steeped in etiquette and played by gentlemen in white trousers?
The Indian Premier League, the new powerhouse in world cricket, certainly hopes so. This week it promised to take its competition Stateside. Regional Indian sides could be competing in the Twenty20 competition by next year, according to Lalit Modi, the vice-president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India.
So could cricket take hold in the American imagination?'
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...
I would rather watch an all woman NASCAR race.
(rolls eyes)
From Douglas Adams...
Brockian Ultra-Cricket
Although it has been said that on Earth alone in our Galaxy is Krikkit (or cricket) treated as fit subject for a game, and that for this reason the Earth has been shunned, this does only apply to our Galaxy, and more specifically to our dimension. In some of the higher dimensions they feel they can more or less please themselves, and have been playing a peculiar game called Brockian Ultra-Cricket for whatever their transdimensional equivalent of billions of years is.
Lets be blunt, it’s a nasty game, but anyone who has been to the higher dimensions will know that they’re a pretty nasty heathen lot up there who should just be smashed and done in, and would be, too, if anyone could work out a way of firing missiles at right-angles to reality.
The rules to the game of Brockian Ultra-cricket, as played in the higher dimensions are strange and inexplicable. A full set of the rules is so massively complicated that the only time they were all bound together to form a single volume, they underwent gravitational collapse and became a black hole.
A brief summary, however, is as follows:
Rule One:
Grow at least three extra legs. You won’t need them, but it keeps the crowds amused.
Rule Two:
Find one good Brockian Ultra-Cricket player and clone him off a few times. This saves an enormous amount of tedious selection and training.
Rule Three:
Put your team and the opposing team in a large field and build a high wall round them.
The reason for this is that, though the game is a major spectator sport, the frustration experienced by the audience at not actually being able to see what’s going on leads them to imagine that it’s a lot more exciting than it actually is. A crowd that has just watched a rather humdrum game experiences far less life-affirmation than a crowd that believes it has just missed the most dramatic event in sporting history.
Rule Four:
Throw lots of assorted items of sporting equipment over the walls for the players. Anything will do - cricket bats, basecube bats, tennis guns, skis, anything you can get a good swing with.
Rule five:
The players should now lay about themselves for all they are worth with whatever they find to hand. Whenever a player scores a ‘hit’ on another player, he should immediately run away and apologize from a safe distance.
Apologies should be concise, sincere and, for maximum clarity and points, delivered through a megaphone.
Rule Six:
The winning team shall be the first team that wins.
Curiously enough, the more the obsession with the game grows in the higher dimensions, the less it is actually played, since most of the competing teams are now in a state of permanent warfare with each other over the interpretation of these rules. This is all for the best, because in the long run a good solid war is less psychologically damaging than protacted game of Brockian Ultra-Cricket
We already have football.
We hate soccer.
Why would we take to cricket?
It might be a pussy game, but it’s played in stadiums that actually serve alcohol.
American football and baseball are the only two vital aspects of U.S. culture that are not, for the most part, popular elsewhere. I wonder why?
“It might be a pussy game, but it’s played in stadiums that actually serve alcohol”.
...it better be free alcohol because that’s the only way they’ll get Americans to enjoy it.
Great, just what we need, another sport riddled with steroid abuse...........
There are already leagues in the U.S. I wanted to go to see them play in New York City, since I follow baseball and I always wanted to see what it has in common with Cricket.
Actually I think Americans would love rugby. I have never understood why there hasnt been an attempt to launch it in the States.
Free alcohol is always good, over-generalizing is not.
Lets see, no cricket, no baseball, no basketball, no football....Let me guess, you're all pro wrestling fans and you're pushing Hulk Hogan to run for political office.
Don’t blame me...I voted for Rowdy Roddy
Doesn't need to stop. Every six balls the bowling end changes, which means all the fielders have to reposition.
LOL for many, many years I have had the game of cricket explained to my by my Brit friends.
Until the new Pooh Bear reader (first one in 80 years) I never understood the game. However, in one chapter Christoper Robin and his buddies in the 100 Acre Wood play cricket and finally I understand how the game is played!
You misread, we have cricket, and football without protective clothing. Also basketball, but that's a girls game.
Cricket? Yea...just like Americans have taken to soccer.
Maybe in Australia but here in the US our players carry guns and the longer the criminal record, the higher the salaries.........so there!
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