It's just not cricket.

Summer in NZ is cricket season, and we thought we'd try to learn a bit about it when we arrived. We tried to follow the game in the newpapers, but..."trapped leg before wicket for a duck"?

"Ryan Sidebottom, who earlier suffered the indignity of having McCullum dropped before he smacked consecutive sixes in the same over, struck back in his final over – trapping debutant Daniel Flynn leg before wicket for a duck before skittling Jacob Oram's stumps to set up a hattrick."

It's a strange game. The Test Matches can last up to 5 DAYS, allowing time for afternoon tea of course. The more popular forms, One Day International (ODI) and Twenty20, are usually finished in a single day.

The news report above is about the National Team, the BlackCaps. They wear black (surprise!) and while not nearly as popular as the All Blacks (rugby), they are quite well-recognized.



AND we got to see some of them play Abby's school team, the Ilam Primary School first eleven! (all cricket teams have a first eleven, that's how many are on the starting team). It's sort of like having the National League champions come to your elementary school to play baseball with the kids. Pretty exciting. It even made the national news in NZ (all the TV news is national news, there are only national stations). The clip is here. Abby says if you look really close, you can see her chin, about halfway through the video. Or maybe you can find her in the Press photos, we couldn't.

It did force me to spend a little more time trying to understand the game. I still think it's a strange game.

There are only 10 teams in the world authorized to play Test cricket and permanently authorized to play One Day International matches (Australia, England, NZ, Pakistan, West Indies, India,Sri Lanks, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh and South Africa). Other countries are granted temporary status as ODI teams (Kenya, Bermuda, Canada, Ireland, Netherlands and Scotland from 2006 to 2009). The US was authorized to play ODI when it hosted a tournament in the States for FOUR DAYS in September 2004 , otherwise, as we all know, hardly anybody in the States plays, watches or cares about cricket.

Cricket has innings. An innings (this is not a typo) is like half an inning in baseball. Whenever a team is up, it is an innings. (This is like Maths--we wonder where that 's' came from.) And it has overs. An over is over after a bowler has bowled 6 consecutive balls, not counting 'no balls' or 'wides'. There is a rectangular area, a pitch, in the middle of an oval, and a wicket, composed of stumps (sticks) with a wooden block called a bail balanced on top, is placed at each end of the pitch. One batter stands at one end, one at the other. The pitcher or bowler throws the ball at the wicket, and the batter or striker protects the wicket by striking the ball.

The ball can hit the ground once (and usually does)before it is hit. Once hit, if it's a fly ball, it can be caught and the player is out. If it is hit beyond the boundary, it automatically qualifies for four or six runs (four if the ball rolls out, and six if it flies out). Once the ball is hit, the batters can run and they exchange places. If they exchange once, it is a single and one run is scored. While they are running, their wickets can be taken by throwing the ball at the wicket and then the closest runner is out. There is no tagging out in cricket.

One thing that slows the game down, however, is that the batters DO NOT HAVE TO RUN after they have hit the ball; they have successfully protected their wicket and are awaiting the next bowl. The pitcher stays in the same location for his 6 consecutive balls (the over), and pitches to whoever is at the end he is pitching toward. After 6 balls, the over is over, and a new bowler is brought in to bowl from the other end. This goes on until TEN players are out. It can take hours. Then the other team gets a chance to bat. That, too, will take hours.

Runs are scored when they get fours and sixes, and when there are noballs or wides (the team gets one run for these, but not the players) and whenever the batters run from end to end. If a player scores more than one hundred, he has a 'century', quite an achievement. Team scores are usually in the hundreds, as in the recent NZ v England ODI match held in Christchurch just after NZ played at Ilam:

"Originally set 243 for victory, New Zealand were 213 for six in the 37th over and at risk of running out of wickets as England sought to conjure up a second escape act three days after they stole a tie in Napier as New Zealand were in sight of 341." Both quotes here are from the NZ Press , the Christchurch newspaper.

Still strange.