I suppose most of you hadn’t noticed, but the world cup cricket finals are on at the moment. For the first time ever, Ireland are participating. Cricket isn’t a major sport in Ireland, and even if it were would they have a chance against teams like India who have more fanatical supporters than America has people, probably twice over. So they’d just be making up the numbers, right?
Not quite. Last week Ireland tied with Zimbabwe who play cricket at the highest level. Because of the political turmoil in Zimbabwe surrounding the Mugabe regime, they can’t really field anything like their strongest team, but even still, this was a very strong result for Ireland.
It was only the first course. On St. Patrick’s day, Ireland beat Pakistan, effectively putting them out of the running. If this means nothing to you, it’s rather like Bosnia beating the US at baseball. It’s even more meritorious than I have suggested. Ireland’s best batsman, Ed Joyce, plays for … wait for it … cough … England. If you want to have a high profile professional career, you need to play Test cricket, ie, international cricket at the highest level. Ireland aren’t likely to get test status soon although, with the recent results, who knows?
There is a very sad ending to the story. Pakistan has the most fanatical and fickle cricket supporters in the world. The team and their English coach could not have been looking forward to the trip home. Bob Woolmer, the coach died suddenly the day after the match.
I used to share a flat with a friend who opened the batting for the Irish team in the early '80s. I wonder if he ever expected to see this day. I think I’ll write to find out.
I came across the result by accident as I was reading up on the Rugby at the time. I can’t even remember ever seeing a cricket pitch in Ireland let alone knowing somebody who played the game.
Still and all, a small country like ours takes our victories wherever we can get them so congratulations all round.
In rugby they have much bigger balls. Cricketers also have short legs and sometimes even silly legs but, unlike rugby players, they don’t need hookers.
Cricket and rugby terminologies rather lend themselves to double entendre. (In case you hadn’t noticed.) There is a great passage in Joyce (James, not Ed) where he seems to be describing a cricket match but it doubles as a piece of lovemaking. Or is it the other way around?
So, cricket’s that game that you play with a flat bat and both the pitcher and batter wear something like a hockey goal tender’s shin guards. Oh yeah, and I heard that the games can go on for days. But do they have hot dogs and beer?
Mike
I found out the news from my next door neighbor, who is from Pakistan, while I was mowing my lawn. He’s been following the games on television. All I could say was, “Cricket? Ireland?”
Tony
It has turned out the Bob Woolmer was strangled just hours after the test match. There were some lugubrious hints about betting and very upset people in the papers.
Reading between the lines here, the accusation must be that someone accusing the side of throwing the match strangled Woolmer. But why pick on Woolmer? Players have been fined and, in extreme cases, had their careers ended, by cooperating in various ways with bookmakers. But why would a coach be involved? I can’t remember an allegation where the whole team was involved; that would be very hard to engineer. These players are treated like film stars, not only in their own communities but throughout the cricketing world which is much larger than, say, the baseball world. The down side is that they can be scapegoated terribly when the wheels fall off. They have a lot to lose and even if they were paid well enough to run away, their families would have to live with the stigma.
Another puzzling feature is this. Pakistan would have been unbackable favourites. If the murderer were associated with bookmakers, the bookmakers must have noticed silly money being placed on Ireland. So why didn’t they adjust the odds accordingly?
Most likely the Pakistani side have been falsely accused of throwing the match.
