9/12/2005 07:06:00 PM|||James O'Malley|||

All day I've been trying to take an interest in the cricket. I say trying because it is so insanely boring. I've tried watching it for a few minutes at a time, only to realise that I don't have a clue what is going on. In the end, I gave up and switched to my usual diet of News 24, Sky News and CNN. After initially feeling disappointment at CNN not simultcasting the domestic (US) feed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, it dawned on me... even the news channels were talking about cricket.

Why yes, this update is written purely to get some search engine hits off the back of people searching for "cricket" and "Katrina".

Quite why the news channels decided to send their best people to just outside the oval (as Channel 4 are the only people with the rights to broadcast from inside the stadium), to do two-ways every 15 minutes, giving an update on the scores is beyond me- if you can recieve the new fangled digital channels, then of course you can recieve Channel 4!

So, anyway, I tried to watch the cricket. If you're a new reader, I'm not unemployed, I'm just nearing the end of a long summer holiday before university, and I do have a (part time) job- but since they all found out about this blog, I don't know for how long!

After watching England's unimpressive victory against whoever they were playing, I thought it was very noticable just how rubbish the crowds were. If it were a football match, they'd be going fucking mental, invading the pitch, shouting at the tops of their voices, and violently harassing supporters of the opposing team. Instead, you'd have gotten more energy and excitement from a dead battery. Yes, there was a few applause and cheers, but nothing dramatic. Maybe the crowd was badly mic'd, or maybe they'd grown tired of the world's most boring and needlessly complex sport ever, too.

One of my many friends, who has become somewhat obsessed with cricket over the last few weeks, in a similar way to what everyone else does for the two weeks of Wimbledon every year, tried to explain some of the finer points to me. Turns out that "we" won because of the weather- not because our skillz and talent at hitting a really hard ball, really far are superior to that of our criminal cousins... but because of the weather.

The Australians would have won if it was purely on skill- they'd have the best bats and equipment, because they'd have caught them when they fell off the back of a lorry, or something.

This reminds me of something I thought about during last year's olympics in Greece. Just what is a sport? I think it's valid of me to answer this, given that I play and watch a great number of sports. Cough.

To my mind, a sport is a competitive game in which a winner is decided through a measurable quantity. For example, a number of points, or a time. Football is a sport- because it is the team who have the most number of points (goals) after a fixed period of time. Marathon running is a sport, as it is the person who runs a fixed distance in the shortest amount of time. It's things that involve judges that are not a sport. Diving is NOT A SPORT. Figure skating is NOT A SPORT. Horse dancing is NOT A SPORT.

Where does cricket come into this? Allowing an external factor to determine the outcome- ie: the weather, the number of days you've been playing for, in an unfair way, isn't right- it just ain't cricket.

Surely, it should be something fixed like "each team gets 6 hours to bat", or something? Something that will make it entirely fair- England has just won on a fluke.

Is saying "We're better than criminals", really that spectacular?

|||112654931475525115|||What is sport?