Americans Review the Pak/Ind WC Semi Match & Cricket in General

[Fusion]

Two Americans who have little to no knowledge of Cricket review the Pakistan vs India WC Semi Final Match, and cricket in general. If you read this without getting super-sensitive, it's actually quite fun. I thought it was fascinating to read someone trying to figure out the game on the fly and what sort of emotions they exprerienced in doing so. Yes predictably they take shots at Cricket like most non-fans would do, but they also express grudging admiration for the skills involved. The funniest part for me? Their impromptu man-crush on Afridi!


So, Cricket? Maybe?

 

[Top_Cat]

The batsmen have the same few tenths of a second to decide what to do as baseball players, but the range of things they have to be able to do is much greater. It's kind of inspiring to watch it done well.

Fantastic that they got this.

Reading how they figure out an LBW is hilarious. To be fair, there are lifelong cricket fans who still don't get the rule either....

 

[Jacknife]

Really good read and all the more entertaining because I'm a fan of baseball and understood the baseball comparisons. Some of their comments were hilarious, particularly

Another Tendulkar line drive is dropped. Afridi just tore out his own tongue and slapped the fielder across the face with it. He quite literally cannot believe how many times they have let Tendulkar off the hook. Neither can Tendulkar, by the way — he looks like a politician who got caught in a *** scandal at the exact moment SEAL Team 6 was dropping into bin Laden's compound.

and

Gul is back in the game, brought out of the doghouse by Afridi, who speaks to him in a quiet, unanimated, distinctly non-Afridi way, trying to settle him down. "We need you," we imagine him saying. "You can do this. If you don't, I am going to garrote you with piano wire. But you'll be great."

 

[Top_Cat]

Amazing how much they have a similar experience with certain players, though. I find myself being harder on Gul than other players too, get the feeling he just generally looks like he needs to be taken down a peg. Supremely unfair because when he comes through for Pakistan (which is no less frequent than most other good bowlers and certainly far more frequent than other Pakistani's), he does the job so well.

Second the for Afridi too.

 

[Athlai]

Haha the co-creator of Parks and Recration? Gun.

 

[Flem274*]

Best blog.

 

[silentstriker]

We are told that in ODI (One-Day International) tournaments, the team that bats first wins 72 percent of the time. This whole thing is basically NFL overtime. So when India wins the toss and elects to hit first, it strikes us as odd that the announcers would bother to discuss whether that decision is wise, but they do. They then do an interview with the Pakistani captain who does an admirable job of pretending that if he'd won the toss he would probably have just chosen to bat second anyway, but you can clearly tell he just died a little inside.

Also funny how they praise UDRS and how cricket is unconcerned with stupid crap like the 'human element.' Good thing they didn't come in a couple years ago.

 

[Fusion]

I really think they need to review a Twenty20 game next. Think it would make for a brilliant sequel to this blog entry.

 

[Mike5181]

****, they can talk. An NFL game last for hours and hours.

 

[archie mac]

Read it all, was quite good. Not happy they dismissed cricket after one game and not understanding too much about it, but hey at least they watched one game. Just a pity it was not like the SA V Aust semi final of 99.

 

[centurymaker]

Read it all, was quite good. Not happy they dismissed cricket after one game and not understanding too much about it, but hey at least they watched one game. Just a pity it was not like the SA V Aust semi final of 99.

Wish they had watched the eng v ind game instead
It was a tie right?

 

[Spark]

Another Tendulkar line drive is dropped. Afridi just tore out his own tongue and slapped the fielder across the face with it. He quite literally cannot believe how many times they have let Tendulkar off the hook. Neither can Tendulkar, by the way — he looks like a politician who got caught in a *** scandal at the exact moment SEAL Team 6 was dropping into bin Laden's compound.

 

[Howe_zat]

Great blog. Their Afridi-love is brilliant.

It's a shame about their conclusion but I probably wouldn't disagree after watching that innings from Pakistan. It took me several goes to get into cricket after all.

 

[TumTum]

Great blog. Their Afridi-love is brilliant.

It's a shame about their conclusion but I probably wouldn't disagree after watching that innings from Pakistan. It took me several goes to get into cricket after all.

Same, I hated cricket at first, but now I regret on missing out on the glory years.

 

[Daemon]

Best bit on the UDRS

Each side gets two video reviews, and the Indians decide to use one — again, Sehwag is one of their best guys, so it's worth it to try to prove the ump wrong. Instantly, an incredibly authoritative-looking computer animation from a machine called Hawk-Eye (the same Hawk-Eye used in major tennis tournaments, interestingly) — shows definitively that (a) Gul did not foot fault, and (b) the ball's trajectory would definitely have struck the wicket had Sehwag's padded shin not gotten in the way. The computer replay animation looks fantastic. The whole thing takes 20 seconds, and leaves no room for doubt. The crowd watches it on a diamond vision screen and for 40 seconds, the whole contest is turned into a video game, yet it is surprisingly awesome. The fact that baseball has not embraced replay for all matters concerning the game now seems like the craziest aspect of any sport in the universe.

 

[Howe_zat]

Same, I hated cricket at first, but now I regret on missing out on the glory years.

I never hated it, I just meant that it took me a few attempts to "get" it.

 

[Jono]

Haha the co-creator of Parks and Recration? Gun.

Haha I noticed that too. So awesome.

 

[Jayzamann]

Amazing read, thanks for posting. They still managed to tease but were open minded.

 

[vcs]

Fell in love with the game pretty much from the first time I watched. That may partly have been because I was less than 10 at the time (WC '92) and a huge cricket fan for my Dad.

 

[archie mac]

Wish they had watched the eng v ind game instead
It was a tie right?

No idea mate, don't know much more about ODI than those Americans