sweasel.com

Dont knock cricket. You get to lay in those cute canvas lawn chairs and people bring you drinks. There is only polite clapping so nobody wakes you up when you doze off.

Swease, I have a tea towel which was given to me in the 80’s by my landlord when I asked just what the hell was actually happening on the cricket pitch. It simply and succinctly explains the game in terms a Yank could actually understand. I’d be very happy to send it your way. Because it’s just not cricket if you’re going to live there and not at least know what leg before wicket means. ‘owzat? Just email me the addy and it’s on the way.

One of my all-time favorite lines: from the movie Patriot Games. The Jack Ryan character is laid up in the hospital, injured after having saved the Princess of Wales from an attack by IRA renegades. Prince Charles comes into his Ryan’s hospital room to find him watching a cricket match on television. The Prince asks Ryan if he understands the rules, and Ryan says, “Rules!? Why spoil it with rules!?”

Oh, yeah that’s totally from billiards. When I was a lad we’d call really weird shots as having “Hebrew” instead of English on it.

Also, pool balls used to be made of celluloid, which would occasionally explode. That made for exiting games I’d imagine.

Whoa! Swease’s pool post brought back a long lost memory. I was 13 living in Williamsport, PA in 1971. My best friend’s father was a big billiards player. One Saturday the local pool hall was promoting an appearance of Jimmy Caras, a Pennsylvania pool legend and I got to tag along. My only memory was watching him make a shot that required him to slice the cue ball around two balls to hit the ball he wanted to complete the shot. He did it and proudly announced, in a bad English accent,”How’s my English?” I didn’t understand at the time but was thrilled to be in a pool hall on a Saturday night with a bunch of cool people.

I can’t rival that, Fritz, but I did have lunch with Minnesota Fats once. He lived out his last few years in Nashville and my parents had him over.

Jesus, he was a boring old coot.

That’s sweet of you, P2, but I think Uncle B is just as happy with me not knowing anything about cricket. Those matches go on for days and days and I don’t think he’d appreciate my commentary.

Krikkit! Krikkit! Krikkit!

Now use the Wikkit Gate to dissolve the slow time envelope and free the Krikkiters to complete their destruction of the universe, thus ending Cricket matches forever!

The other alternative is to put a “Somebody else’s problem field” around the cricket pitch so your brain won’t register there’s a game underway.

You’ll be amused to know Sweasy & Uncle B, here in North Texas (that’s right, TEXAS!!!!!), we have imported enough peoples of British influenced persuasion that we now have REAL local cricket pitches being built (not just re-purposed football fields – either real or American) and a league to play upon them.
https://cricclubs.com/NTCA/viewClub.do?clubId=343#

When I was a girl, I thought “putting some English” on something meant to hit it on the wrong side.

I always thought “putting English” on a ball meant striking the ball with the cue stick slightly off-center, causing a ball to “curve” rather than go straight.

It kind of does mean that, Cube, only that’s oddly specific.

That’s true…cricket does drag on. Now, snooker, there’s a game you get behind! Matches only go one for a couple hours and everybody wears fancy clothes. And one gets to use “english”!

About this time last year I headed out my door, past the park where the kids were playing soccer, basketball, and baseball, over a couple blocks (so I WAS heading to the liquor store, but on my bicycle, where there were more kids playing soccer (but they called it ‘futbol’), and another group playing cricket on the slab of a demolished strip center.
I dodged ’em all, but nearly ran into a group of folks doing Tai Chi in the parking lot outside the CrossFit place next door to the liquor store. They were not CrossFit people, those folks were doing other healthy stuff, and they were not the women’s fitness group across the street, (They use a different parking lot).
This was just too much for me. I got off my bike, went into the store and got a quart instead of a fifth and 2 packs of Marlboro.

@JC – You’re a man after my own heart, lungs, and liver!

For me, it’s Bulleit rye whiskey and Camels.