When we first became aware of this game, during our time in England, we attempted to learn the rules from our housemate Kris (an Australian), but we couldn't get over the fact that a proper game, known as a Test Match, takes upwards of five days to complete. For the uninitiated, the gameplay is as follows: a guy in white tries to knock over a couple of sticks (known as a wicket) by throwing a little red ball really fast. Another guy, also in white, wearing almost as much padding as a hockey player, tries to prevent this by knocking the ball out of the way with a flat piece of wood. The batter gets points if he hits the ball far and runs to the other end before the fielders, also wearing white, can throw it back in and knock over the wicket, which would put the batter out and make him do a walk of shame off the field. They repeat this, hundreds and hundreds of times, for days on end, until one team has a definitive victory.
The big competition is the semiannual “Ashes” competition between England and Australia. The competition gets it's name from a mock obituary for the death of English cricket, on the occasion of the first major loss to Australia back in 1882. The trophy is quite cute - we got to see it at a special exhibition at the Melbourne Museum – it's normally kept at Lord's Cricket Ground in England. The contest consists of a series of five test matches – a total of 25 solid days of cricket. Australia has dominated the contest for many years now, but England “won back the Ashes” during the last encounter, so there were high hopes for this series. A huge contingent of English fans, known as the “Barmy Army”, made the journey halfway around the world to cheer their team on.
We got tickets to the third day of the fourth test, held in Melbourne. The visiting team was faring rather poorly, and had in fact lost each of the previous three matches, so that the Ashes had already been won by Australia before the first ball was thrown. England was basically playing to salvage some semblance of dignity. The Barmy Army did not sound defeated, sending up huge cheers and singing songs at every opportunity. Red-and-white English flags (not Union Jacks) were in abundance. When play started for the day, they picked up where they left off the day before. Since everyone's in white, it took us a few moments to figure out which team was batting and which was fielding. Eventually, we figured it out from the scoreboard. There is only one name we consistently recognize in the cricket world, not so much from his on-field record (which is apparently stellar), but from his off-field antics - and he was batting.
Shane Warne has been banned from the game for taking drugs, and has been caught numerous times in compromising situations with young women who were not his wife. He was dismissed in fairly short order, and the Australians took the field. Every time Warne went to bowl, a huge cheer of "Warney" came up from the crowd. After a stellar career, he was retiring after this series, and this was his last home-town match. The Australians kept throwing, and the English kept trying to hit, for hours and hours. One by one, the English were dismissed with unimpressive tallies, until finally they were all out. By the end of the third day, England had batted twice, and Australia had only batted once - but Australia already had more points, so they won the match quite decisively. They went on to win the fifth match in Sydney, too, sending the Poms home in shame. Incidentally, this is what the trophy looks like:
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