Test cricket mentioned on MMQB (SI/CNN) from American perspective

[Ultimate_Game]

Most football fans (American that is not footie) know about MMQB - Monday Morning Quarter Back. It's a weekly article on football on SI/CNN every Monday which recaps the goings-on in football including games on Sunday and stuff outside the field. MMQB is one of the most popular sports articles in US with plenty of fan following. This week the author (Peter King) talked about his experience watching Eng-WI test match. It's an interesting read coming from an American who had no clue what cricket is all about before he watched the game. Here's the link... http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/writers/peter_king/05/21/mmqb/1.html And here's an excerpt from the article...

I have seen one long day of test-match cricket, and I can draw one major conclusion: It's incredibly civil. My brother lives about an hour north of London in the countryside, and he's forever wanted me to come over to see cricket. No time like this quiet NFL offseason to break away. So we set off on the train Saturday morning for Day 3 of the five-day test match between England and the West Indies. Ten countries around the world play test-match cricket. We connected with Neil and got on the train in his town, Luton, around 8:30. At the same station, fans of the soccer team West Ham got on chugging Foster's, headed to their own game in London. Foster's. At 8:30. Then we connected with the Tube on the outskirts of London and got to Lord's, in a nice London Neighborhood, about 10. We watched the teams warm up adjacent to the gigantic field (about 150 yards in diameter) where the match would be played. In warmups, players use baseball mitts to catch balls, though players catch bare-handed during the game ... Forget the rules. It'd take all day. Suffice it to say, though, I had no clue walking into the place what I'd be seeing, and halfway through the day, with the help of Ken and Neil, I understood about half of what I was seeing. It's like learning a language by speaking it with natives. If you watch a game with people who love it and are good at explaining it, you get it in a couple of hours. Hours. Lots of those in a test match. It starts at 11 in the morning and runs until 1. Players and fans stop for lunch for 40 minutes. The second session is from 1:40 to 3:40. Then they stop for tea. (Or, in my case, beer.) The third session is from 4 to 6. Strange atmosphere in the stadium. At precisely 11, with no warning from the PA announcer or the scoreboard, play began. Just started. Through the day, I kept waiting for music, or loud videos, or something on the scoreboard. Nothing. The occasional replay, and that was it, other than the numbing numbers on the board. I spent the first couple of hours getting the hang of the rules and hieroglyphics on the scoreboard, and soaking in the whole deal. An hour in, I went to the men's room and saw three kids, maybe 12, playing cricket in the concourse. One hit the ball toward me. I picked it up and tossed it back to them. "Cheers!'' one kid said with a smile. Neil bought us tickets to the hospitality tent, where lunch was served. Cerviche of halibut, it was called (cold fish), with seared chicken breast and French wine. Would Jerry Jones serve Cerviche of halibut at Jerryworld? We settled in for the afternoon session. There was an instant replay review of a close play, and Neil extolled the virtues of this replay system versus the NFL's. "Here, if you call for a review, and you're right, you don't get penalized -- you can keep reviewing calls if you're right,'' he said. "In the NFL, if you've exhausted your replay reviews, and you see an obviously wrong call, you can't challenge. That's bollocks.'' Bad, he meant. Neil, as you may recall (I've written about him before) lives here but worships our football, and he's created this football-nerd site with all sorts of playing-time stats that he and his PFF crew get by dissecting TV tapes of games. But he's passionate about cricket too. "You come to a test match,'' he said, "and it's not always exciting. So you turn to the guy you've come with, or the people around you, and you talk. The conversation takes over. It's great. You relax, you have a beer, you talk, and then something exciting happens and it's back to cricket. It's a great dynamic.'' In the third session, one of the English fielders stepped outside the boundary to sign an autograph for a young boy in the first row of the stands ... while play was going on. It was Jonathan Trott, a big 49ers fan, I'm told. On the next play, the ball was bowled (pitched), and "CRAAAACK'' ... the ball rolled out to Trott, who'd just stepped back onto the pitch. He ran for it, caught it, and threw it in. A few minutes later, a guy a few rows ahead of us announced, "It's my birthday!'' He passed a happy-birthday plate of Victoria Sandwich -- an English sponge cake -- around. I got the little piece with the "H'' on it, and passed it to the stranger next to me. Another men's room trip. Outside, in the concourse, a boy about 8, his father, and (I presume) his grandfather played cricket, the little boy bowling to the old man, the father catching the batted balls. If you want to know how sport gets passed from generation to generation, even sport that seems mind-numbingly difficult to understand and endless like cricket, this was the snapshot to tell you why. Now Shivnarine Chanderpaul was at bat for the Westies. Strange-looking guy. Short, with an odd stance toward the bowler. Most batsmen face the bowler (the pitcher) the way batters do in baseball. But Chanderpaul had an open stance, mindful of the old Tiger, Dick MacAuliffe. He's famous for being impossible to retire. In fact, on this weekend, he'd face 425 balls before being retired (not until Sunday afternoon). He was nearly retired on the funniest rule of the game: LBW. Leg Before Wicket. If you're batting, and you allow the bowled ball to hit your leg before it can hit the wicket behind you, and the umpire rules the ball would have hit the wicket, you are called out for an LBW. So Chanderpaul nearly was called out Saturday afternoon for an LBW, but upon review, the official ruled it would not have hit the wicket. Play on, then. On the next two balls, Chanderpaul hit them for four runs apiece. "Brilliant!'' Neil called out. Chanderpaul reminded me of Ichiro, a smaller guy who plays with such precision (though Ichiro seems in decline now). Steady Eddie, not a big slugger, concentrating on surviving and nipping away at the English lead. I liked watching him a lot. Then it was over. No big announcement. We got up, walked out, and I suggested that since Abbey Road was so close, we should find it and walk the most famous crosswalk in the world. Funny thing is, about 40 or 50 people had the same idea at 7:15 on a Saturday evening. So we waited as Beatles nerd after Beatles nerd did their best John-Ringo-Paul-George imitation. Too young to know what I'm talking about? Google "Abbey Road album cover.'' You'll see why 54-year-old men get really excited to see a silly crosswalk. On Sunday evening, Ken asked me what I wanted to do Monday before he dropped me off at Heathrow around 3. "Let's go to the match,'' I said. Why not? Ten pounds apiece. So we'll go until lunch. I wouldn't say he's got a convert, but I'm interested. Fun sport, fun atmosphere, fun company.

[anotherhawkeye]

Interesting read.

[Crookbond]

Interesting read. The charm of Test cricket at it's display.