The Cricket Match

Life in Auckland was THAT boring. It was a crappy few days with nothing to do but hang out with the hostel crowd and catch up on magazines in the library. It got to the point where a Boxing day match 20/Twenty Cricket match seemed like a good idea. Now, I have mentioned my thoughts on Cricket before here but I had heard from multiple sources that apparently 20/Twenty is the interesting version of the game. So Carey and I set out to get to Mt. Eden park where the game was being played. First things first, the stadium is about a 20 minute drive out of the city center. Luckily the downtown train station has trains that go right there, however, since it was Boxing day the train wasn't running so we went to take the bus. Of course since it was Boxing day there was only 1 bus an hour. So after sharing a cab with some high school students we finally arrived at Eden Park. We logically sit in the cheap seats (The Terrace) for an exciting afternoon of Cricket. It is tough not to notice that half of the stadium is missing since it is under construction. Since we were in a country that bows to the British specter of health and safety the construction company had to have a worker on Boxing day to stand in the site to retrieve the ball when it got hit there, which was often.




The rules of 20 Twenty are simple, each team tries to score as many runs as possible in 20 overs (6 bowls or pitches make up an over.) If however the other team gets 10 wickets first then your time is up. Basically one team bats for an hour and a half and then it switches to the other team. Since the players fielding have to stand around for so long doing nothing there exists a man who has the greatest position in all of professional sports: The Twelfth Man. This is a full player of the team whose job it is during the game to walk around the outfield with a cooler and give the players a drink if they are thirsty.




About half the time the players are just dicking about and not doing anything on the field so the crowd has learned to take things into their own hands. It seems that the true point of the game is not to watch it being played but to have an excuse to sit in the sun for a few ours, get smashed, yell curses, and throw bottles. Even though the chants were nothing compared to the vile smut that I would hear at the football game they were still enough to make the professional sports fans in America seem like a bunch of toddlers afraid of getting soap in their mouths.




In the end NZ lost but nobody really seemed to care. It was well worth it because now I am convinced and justified that Cricket is a completely retarded, pointless, and amusing game.

P.S. How awesome is this shirt?