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Cricket in the USA: “the ball is wood”

By Will 4 years ago, mid-April Leave a comment on this post

This isn’t a blatent attempt to laugh at other countries who try and fail to understand cricket - it’s not. Well, not directly anyway. This article, about the take-up of cricket in New York, had me in fits. Gems including:

Games can last all day or several days. Two batters — make that batsmen — are up at the same time for the same team. Teams can score hundreds of runs. The pitchers are called bowlers. The ball is wood and the fielders don’t wear gloves.

A wooden ball! I really should read up more on the history of cricket because, I presume, wooden balls might well have been used hundreds of years ago…but not any more. There’s a fascinating article showing how an Indian manufacturer makes their cricket balls, which is roughly what I had thought - leather, cork, wool & rubber.

I’m all in favour of the likes of the USA (and China don’t forget) jumping on the cricket bandwagon…but you can’t help smiling at their struggles to detach cricket’s nuances from baseball!

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2 Responses to “Cricket in the USA: “the ball is wood””

  • akr wrote:
    April 15th, 2005 at 12.46 pm

    hey will
    mike the kiwi dug this up a while ago which I mentioned here as well (http://sporty-a.blogspot.com/2005/04/weekend.html),and though the article is well emaning, it really is sad they still have a limited perception. I mean, it is ok if they are not sure and thin kit is possibe that the ball may be made of wood, ut why write as if it is fact?
    this was interesting too, though a little old:
    http://www.chapatimystery.com/archives/not_baseball/crickets_chirping.html

    ps- will: so whats the pup called, then?

  • Will wrote:
    April 18th, 2005 at 11.21 pm

    Hi AKR - I can’t work out if that post (http://www.thatshortkid.com/archives/000061.html) was tongue in cheek, or if the bloke is completely ignorant. Probably the latter :)

    Not got the pup yet - maybe later in the year. And The Bastard is still a strong contender :)


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