The All-Star game - a cricketer's perspective
July 16th 2008 12:31
It's a global game, and many other countries were represented in the All-Star game, but it's an essentially American day, a window to its culture.
As a boy growing up in southern Australia, my winters were all about Australian football and my summers were about cricket. I played four seasons of baseball in the years after retiring from the rigours of football, but I never learned the rules thoroughly enough to be able to join in the arguments which are enjoyed by everyone from bush league players to major league managers.
It is a deceptively complicated game, it is rich in tradition and lore, and it is dominated by statistics. These are attractions which any cricket aficionado will understand.
In my younger days I went to a party in San Francisco. There were only two men at the party because there were only two heterosexual couples present. I was approached fairly early in the evening by a woman who stood before me and locked her eyes to mine. I imagined she looked less then friendly, and I timidly wondered if it was my maleness or my Australianess which was about to be called into question.
"What is the difference," she asked, "between baseball and cricket?"
What a delightful question. The answer, I suggested after a little consideration, might best start with a rephrasing of the question: "What are the similarities between the two games?" I mentioned the obvious division of games into innings and the similar roles of bowlers and pitchers, batsmen and batters, wicketkeepers and catchers.
But then things started to go awry. She looked disbelieving when I said a cricket game can last five days and her eyes glazed when I mentioned the LBW law. Which was a shame because she'd tuned out before I got to the best bit - the love of both sets of fans of the numbers which are the fabric of their game.
We have nothing in cricket that compares to the All-Star game. We have nothing that brings together, on one big stage, every year, a massive and merry spectacle which places before the viewer everything that was and is good about the game.
They do it well, the Americans.
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