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Strictly Cricket
An American overseas looks at the British national sportand finds it "confoozing," to say the least!
by S/SGT. KARL L. PETERSON
WHEN Great Britain was packed with American troops for the European invasion, Sunday afternoon strollers in London's Hyde Park used to ga2;e in puzzled awe at Yank troops playing baseball. But those Britains who at first heartily applauded pop flies in the belief they were home runs can now laugh in turn, as we did then, at the American approach to cricket. G.I.'s in England, Australia and India are encountering the gentlemanly sport, and finding it "confoozing" to say the least.
Abner Doubleday's invention of baseball in 1839 is like yesterday afternoon compared to cricket, whose disputed origins are lost in antiquity. Certain it is that King Edward IV, a sort of 15 th Century LaGuardia, banned the game in 1477 because there was too much betting on the outcome of matches, although history does not tell of any heavily-subsidized Oxford or Cambridge athletes creating a big cricket scandal by selling out to the bookies.
The staid Marylebone Cricket Club, ruling body of the game, has been collecting membership dues for a little matter of 200 years, in which time cricket has gained a code of ethics, manners, messy traditions and old ivy.
A cricket field (pitch) must be at least 450 feet square, and play proceeds in all directions from the two wickets placed in the center and 66 feet apart. These wickets consist of three knee-high wooden stumps, each about an inch thick, with a small block (bails) laid across the top ends. The pitcher (bowler) runs up to one wicket and stiff-arms the ball overhead towards the base of the other wicket, where the batsman attempts to hit it on the bounce. The bowler's object is to knock the block off (the wicket's, that is), to accomplish which he may hurl fast ones, slow ones which break right or left after hitting the turf, or a super-blooper called the "googly." Use of resin on the ball or hands is viewed with alarm in purer cricket circles, and as for a spit ball — well, really, old boy!
The batsman swipes viciously at the apple with his flat, wide-bladed bat, which looks like a laundry-paddle, and since there is no foul territory in cricket, the artist at flipping them off to his right and to the rear is considered a very sharp operator indeed. Fielders, under such glamorous designations as the "square leg," "silly mid on," and "short slip," are scattered all about, playing bare-handed. Since stopping a hard-driven cricket