March 09, 2006
Sports with lunch breaks
As any baseball fan who has a desk job and colleagues within hearing distance will know, the advent of websites that allow you to monitor the box score of the game has allowed one to both work and follow the game all day long.
The same nifty service is available for cricket fan at cricinfo. Today I have been semi-enjoying New Zealand let the West Indies back into the first test. And then the scores stopped updating! What happened? The scoreboard was stuck at West Indies 160/5 (45.0 ov) for quite some time.
Lunch happened! The things you forget when you've been away from home a while. They take a lunch break in cricket matches. What a great game.
Yes, one of the large mental obsticals any American faces in understanding and embracing cricket is that matches go on for *days*. We have a hard time wrapping our minds around that kind of pacing (but it helps to know and love the types of baseball strategies that play out over the course of that game and extend that thinking to cricket strategies). And, yes, it is really cool that the game breaks for lunch and tea. I remember seeing a match on satellite t.v. once and was puzzled by folks running out onto the pitch. At first, I thought there was an injury, but then the announcers helpfully explained that it was a "drinks break". Cool.
Also, thanks for showing a picture of the CricInfo display. I've never followed a match on CricInfo before. I really like the layout -- especially the "Recent Overs" where you can see the outcome of the recent deliveries (dot ball, boundary, etc.).
Posted by: Carrie at March 10, 2006 04:33 PM