Cricket

Sometimes when I need a laugh I get a newspaper and read an account of a recent cricket match. It’s an amazing experience, for although it’s written in my native tongue, I can read paragraph after paragraph without understanding a blessed thing. Just to give you a sample, from a recent account in the Times of London:

Praising a player named Bopara: “His straight-driving and leg-side play in general was a delight and despite one instance of a loss of concentration when, half-forward to Sulieman Ben over 40, he ought to have been given left-before out, yet he was utterly untroubled until the final session. Then, perhaps aware of the approaching landmark, and running out of partners, after Broad cut airily, he began to infuse his calculating approach with greater risk.”

Got that? Maybe this guy is a banker?

Also, you may wish to know about someone named Edwards: “Finding his best rhythm after lunch from the Nursery end, no batsman looked at ease against his slingy thunderbolts and he pegged back England each time they threatened to get away. He finished with four wickets but deserved better.”

OK, then. I’m sure he did deserve better. Meanwhile, I’d love to know how to peg someone back with a slingy thunderbolt. Kind of reminds of me Jabberwockey: “’Twas brillig, and the slithey toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe.” I wonder what would happen if someone just substituted Jabberwockey for the cricket column—would anyone even notice?

In any case, Edwards kept at it, transforming himself, meanwhile, from Jove into a schoolmaster, or possibly a doctor: “In a magical six-over spell from the nursery end, the Boscobel Bullet sent back Cook, Pietersen, for a first-ball blonger, and Collingwood, each batsman undone by a combination of swinging balls and questionable technique that will add weight to the claims that they came into this match ill prepared for the kind of stern examination to which Edwards subjected them.”

Ouch. Clearly you don’t want to be a first-ball blonger. And as for being undone by swinging balls, well, I don’t really want to touch that one.

Finally, since this is England, we need to talk about the weather. The pitch (that is, the field) began “green about the gills and damp to the touch.” (I assume that means it was raining.) But things improved later: “Nash opened the bowling after the break with his filthy left-armers, with two England batsmen set, the sun shining and the pitch now docile.”

Amidst swinging balls, filthy left-armers, first-ball blongers, and Broad cutting airily, we have, at last, a docile pitch. Thank goodness for that.

Paris in the Spring