For those who follow my tweets you may have noticed a few cricket tweets, something like
100 for 2 from 20 overs RR 5.0 chasing 200 #engVsl
Makes perfect sense to me and other cricket fans but an American follower did ask me what on earth I was taking about!! Let me explain very simply the teams have 11 men who have to score the most points – runs. One team is hitting – batting, the other team are throwing – bowling and trying to stop them scoring runs – fielding. Once 10 men from one team are all out – an innings, then the teams swap similar to rounders or baseball. In test cricket, the matches last up to five days and both teams have two innings. In one day matches each team has either 50 or 20 overs to throw – bowl (six throw/bowls = one over) at the other team. There are ten ways to be out, but that is another story!
I love cricket, prefer test matches but one day matches and Twenty20 matches are still good to watch. I watch cricket on TV the way I used to with my dad, TV volume turned down, TMS on the radio. It is made more difficult with the satellite TV being slightly out of sync with the radio.
Some people say cricket is boring, and it can be at times, but to me it is a fascinating sport. The England cricket team have not always been very good, for years they lost series after series, were bottom of the ranking tables. It was never easy being an English cricket fan, the Australian media even called the English travelling fans Barmy.
Then slowly they started to win matches and even win series in 2005 they won the Ashes – beat Australia - in England but when they went to Australia in 2007/08 they lost 5-0, making it once again very difficult to be a England cricket fan, especially as the matches were on in the middle of the night. I was either staying up or sleeping with the radio on. They lost the 2008 series against South Africa so it looked like England was returning to losing again!
In 2009 they beat the Australians at home, then last winter 2010/11 they won in Australia helping to erase the nightmare of four years earlier, at the time I tweeted that I’d rather win an Ashes Series than a football world cup – not me personally you understand but the England team! The cricket world cup did not go so well for England, some absolutely brilliant nail bitingly close matches, but going out in the quarter finals.
However, this week England have become the ICC number one ranked test team, it is a fantastic feeling although I am really enjoying this feeling I keeping wondering how long it will last for, it makes a change for the glum faces in the grounds not to be English, but I am making the most of it for now.
It all helps me to CHILL
