remote control

…at any weekend you don't see many people in their whites play cricket anywhere around here at the coast…not like in canberra where ovals are usually peppered by these players in long pants…but like canberra, we watch the sport on the pub flat screens…

then again, there usually are many different things going on on different screens in any pub here, i couldn't be sure what exactly are the other drinkers watching…perhaps they aren't watching the screens at all…most times these half dozen or so tvs blare out music clips, different rules or leagues footies, car, bike, horse and dog racings, the tennis match between ivan lendl and boris becker from way back in '89, and the cricket of course…and nobody is actually watching any of these flickering offerings…patrons are mostly trying to talk with one another over and above the whole hubbub…


we were all encouraged to try all sorts of sports while i was in boarding school...but i never got around to knowing what a cricket score means let alone how the game is played…then i got this explanation from a book my son left behind…this is how cricket is explained to a foreigner, it says [although it doesn't explain whether the foreigner is one who is from a non-cricket country or someone who is foreign to the game]…it starts like this:

you have two sides, one out in the field and one in…each man that's in the side that's in goes out…and when he's out he comes in and the next man goes in until he's out…when a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he's out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in…

when they are all out, the side that's out comes in and the side that's been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out…

sometimes, there are men still in and not out…

there are two men called umpires who stay all out all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out… 

when both sides have been in and all the men are out [including those who are not out] then the game is finished…

…and still...i'm nowhere nearer to knowing what a cricket score means…








...did you not know that...watching tv uses up 50 percent more calories than sleeping...?