On the Bottom Half

Pain on a Cricket Pitch

Back in familiar digs, again! On Saturday, I left Hobart on a jet plane headed for Melbourne. I wistfully waited for my ride while staring out at the tarmac... A Royal Flying Doctor Service King Air-200 zipped past, a Virgin Blue 737-700 sat on a jack getting a blown tire replaced. That was some jack. JetStar flew in with the only Airbus - firmly outnumbered by Boeings.

The flight was only about an hour long and on the descent to MEL, we went through a cloud bank probably 7000' thick and came out in a rainstorm. Bruce and Helen kindly met me at the airport. In fact, Bruce met me almost at the gate when I came out! In several airports here, I found many people without boarding passes, but they are allowed past security to see their passengers off. They have to do the standard checks, but after that...

The next day, we went into the city to a 'Christmas Spectacular' in an entertainment complex. It was definitely geared towards the little ones, what with moving robots and some flashing lights. It was very packed - chockers as an Aussie would say! The show runs every 30 minutes betweeen 1000 and 0000 for 41 days from late Nov to 8 Jan... that's 1148 shows. I can imagine what the staff think about the 'Christmas Spectacular'. After that, we went to a Baptist Christmas Carol service. From an Anglican background, I can only describe Baptist services as 'unique'. Every one of them. I enjoyed it though.

Monday and Tuesday were sundry days in and around Sunbury and Melbourne, respoectively. I went in to see Andy on Tuesday at Monash to pick up my formal scholarship offers and got invited to an indoor cricket match. Well! That proved to be too enticing to pass up!

Last night, I made the trek back into the city and got introduced to the pounding and rapid game of cricket. I've been watching the test matches on TV quite a bit... I like it a lot more than baseball - it has the meditative qualities of baseball, but is without the fat, tobacco chewing, juiced batters. It's more complex, and crystalline in it's refinement. Elegant in fact. I'll bring back a cricket dictionary when I return to decipher this post for you. I played with Andy, my future supervisor, and three of his colleagues, who were gracious in their patience and understanding that being a Canadian, cricket is firmly without my experience. They got me bowling, the toughest part of which is to get the ball going strait down the pitch. Every time I bowled wide of the pitch, the opposing team got two points. They got me batting, which is a cross between golfing and batting baseball.

The basics: the game is played on a pitch, which is 66 feet long - one chain for you ol' surveyors in the reading crowd ;-). The pitch is about 6 feet or so wide. At both the ends of the pitch are identical wickets (or stumps), which are three posts standing parallel, and supporting little wooden 'sticks' between them. The net effect is that anytime anything even lightly caresses the wickets, the sticks pop out, indicating what's happened. A batsman stands in front of each set of wickets and tries to prevent the other team's bowlers from hitting the wickets with the ball. There are always two batsmen on field and one bowler facing each batsman. The rest of the fielding team is strewn about the pitch trying to snare any hits you make. Bare hands for all, except the batsmen who get big hockey-like gloves to protect their hands, and the catcher who gets funky webbed gloves. The ball is very hard and will easily crack hand bones or bruise anything else. As speed bowlers huck the ball at about 130 km/h, it can get a little hairy. When a batsman strikes the oncoming ball, if it goes far enough, the two batsman have to exchange positions by running between the sets of wickets. There's myriad rules and variations depending on the type of game being played, but the preceding are the basic ones to try to understand what follows.

In indoor cricket, each member of each team must bowl two overs (6 bowls per over for a total of 12 bowls (throws)), and each member of each team when batting much face 4 overs from the opposing teams bowlers. Got that? Furthermore, in indoor cricket, you are contained within a netted pitch, off which you can play the cricket ball. You get extra points for hitting certain areas on the netting, but to get those points, you still have to run between the wickets, exchanging position with your partner batsman at least once.

Anyway, when I got my first chance to bowl, somehow my festering nervousness (read performance anxiety) went to sleep a little and I actually got all except one of my bowls in my first over to go down the pitch! The batsmen didn't score too much and the rest of the team congratulated me, much to my pleasured surprise! I was just bowling this yellow round thing, hoping to do what they told me and not get clocked by it when the batsman fired it back at my head! That was to come a little later. I fielded for a bit, then my second over came up and I bowled okay again, but not as good as the first time... We started batting shortly after that.

I walked tentatively out on to the pitch and assumed the position behind the inactive set of wickets, staring ceaselessly at Andy, my partner batsman, waiting for his signal to run. His first bowl was delivered, THWACK!... Hey that's heading for me. Another THWACK!! Oh ... that ... was ... my ... groin ... uhh. Dang it... run! Andy's heading toward me!! So I ran and realised that the ball had only hit near my groin, saving my child-rearing future. In the course of the rest of the evening, I received cricket balls to my arms, right foot, left leg, chest, and hands. I'm hooked!! High velocity leather balls careening at my body... and it's my responsibility to ensure they don't connect with anything but my bat. I like this game!!

Seriously though, it was an extreme level of fun for the entire evening :-) I look forward to joining the indoor cricket team permanently when I've commenced the Ph.D you've all heard about by now... The comraderie of the team toward me and the novelty and enjoyment I had playing such a foreign game actually helped a little in solidifying my decision.

Anyway, that is completely unintelligible, but I hope you've enjoyed tonight's entertainment. Forgot to take pictures, but I'll get some next time I play.

Love you all and miss you all just as much as ever. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Picture requests? Let me know.

Update Complete!

posted by Kyle @ 15:10