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Cricket

Dec 27, 2016Canadian, English, Sports

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Preparation
CONSIDER

What’s your favourite sport?

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Transcript
José Cruz: Is cricket actually hard to play?

Chris O’Sullivan: Uh OK. From a sporting point of view cricket is not really a game about power. You don’t need a lot of strength and power to to be able to play cricket. Cricket is really about timing, OK. Timing of you being able to hit a ball. So it’s a little bit like baseball where your hand-eye coordination- If you’ve got very good hand-eye coordination you don’t need to be the biggest but you’ll be able to hit it fairly well. So cricket is not really a power sport, it’s about a- timing, hand-eye coordination is really valuable. And there is an element of being able to bowl fast (Mm-hmm) or even spin the ball, um…

José: Putting “english” on it, as they say.

Chris: Putting english on it. So th- there is that element as well. But cricket- cricketers in general are not like like, big athletes, they’re not- they don’t have muscles. They’re not ripped you know…

José: So unlike baseball where part of the the goal for a batsman is to smash the ball right out of- out of the actual playing area, (Mm-hmm) that’s not really part of the strategy of a batsman in cricket?

Chris: De- well depending on the game because there is a game called T-20 which is 20-20, each side has 20 overs. And it’s a very short time to get as many runs as you can. So in that form of the game smashing the ball everywhere you can, getting as many runs as you can is definitely the- part of the game. Tha- that’s definitely the agenda. Uh but if you look at test match cricket which takes five long days-

José: Yeah I heard about that. (I mean) It takes five days to play one game.

Chris: Yeah. Yeah. yeah, believe it or not. It it-

José: I’m trying to get- I’ve heard that before.

Chris: Who thought of that game, hey?

José: Yeah! And I’ve thought of that before. and I thought, who came up with that? Like wha- Where does that history come from? Like, I- I imagine cricket was basically a rich man’s sport. Ha- a way to kill an afternoon among the rich elite of of England, right? How old is cricket actually?

Chris: I have no idea.

José: Couple of hundred years? (Yeah) maybe OK so you figure that’s not a game played by poor people. No? You need you need the grounds. You need, well you don’t need a lot of equipment but you need a place to play and poor people don’t have a beautiful place to play like that, right?

Chris: I think tho’ cricket was actually introduced to the masses through compulsory education in Britain (When? Around when?) Oh that could have been late 18th century, perhaps (18th century?) Maybe. Oh I’m really guessing here, but I’m saying like, I’m thinking late 18th century or early 19th century when compulsory education was first started. During that time it was probably the first time where- let’s say working class people had the opportunity to try (Hmm) sports that only the (Right) the more well-to-do woul- could have done so maybe cricket would have been shown or at least taught a little bit at schools and then, who knows. But I- I’m guessing a lot there.

José: Right. So so just getting back to the point. These rich people were trying to kill a few days, right? (Yeah) “Oh let’s make a whole game for the next following week.”
And I’m going, OK so maybe like actually winning the game wasn’t really the point? The point was actually to kill a few days and just you know, wear your whites and and sip uh, cocktails.

Chris: Yeah I mean it was definitely a social angle to it- a five day party with a bit of sport. And then if you think about it, a long time ago if only the rich or the well-to-do were playing a certain sport, it was a way to marry off your sons and daughters to the local-

José: Oh in the stands kind of thing.

Chris: …to the local people who were also coming there to- you know. So it was kind of a social aspect. And of course it’s only played in summer when the weather’s good, because you couldn’t play it in winter. It’s too cold and too wet. So yeah it it all adds to the same thing of- really only the very rich people or at least the well-to-do people would have the capacity to waste five days of their life. (Ha ha) Which- it is a waste really, because it is five days to a game, (Now) which usually ends in a draw.

Consolidation
DISCUSSION

Does your country have a sport that is not popular anywhere else?

Have you ever watched a cricket match?

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José Domingo Cruz image

José Domingo Cruz

Canadian

Vancouver, British Columbia

Chris O'Sullivan image

Chris O'Sullivan

English

South England


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2 Comments

  1. What impressed me the most when I heard about cricket was a cricket club in Toronto, Canada.
    The cricket club was founded in 1956 and was born by the merger of cricket, figure skating and curling clubs. Today, many people are sweating as a comprehensive sports club.
    Especially at cricket clubs, figure skating is famous, and it is also a club that has nurtured many excellent selections. Barbara Wagner and Robert Paul were pair champions of the 1957, 1958, 1959 and 1960 World Figure Skating Championships and 1960. Donald Jackson was the 1960 Sco Valley Olympic bronze medalist and 1962 World Figure Skating Champion. Maria Jelinek and Otto Gelinek, pair champions of the 1962 World Figure Skating Championships. 1964 Olympic bronze medalist at Innsbruck and 1965 World Figure Skating Champion Petra Burka. 1976 Innsbruck Bronze Medalist Toller Cranston. Kim Yo-na, the 2010 Vancouver Olympic gold medalist and bronze medalist at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, won the 2013 World Figure Skating Championships. Javier Fernandez, the 2015 and 2016 World Figure Skating Championships champion and 2018 PyeongChang Olympic bronze medalist. In 2014 and 2017, he became the 2017 World Figure Skating Championships champion and trained the 2014 Sochi Olympics and the 2018 PyeongChang Olympic gold medalist Yuzuru Hanyu.
    It is now closed due to the pandemic, but I hope that the cricket club players will perform greatly again in the future.

    Reply
  2. I was able to learn about cricket by reading and listening this article of cricket. I do not know what kind of sport it is until I read this article because I think cricket is not a major sports in Japan.Cricet is similar to baseball it lunches a ball outside the playing area. I was very surprised to learn that cricket is a power sport rather than a timing sport and that there are not many big and powful players. I used to think cricket is a power focused sport. In Japan, Musashi Yamamoto, who was member of the Japanese professional baseball team Yokohama DeNA BAYSTERS, turened to cricket in 2019. He was a powerful hitter with his big body.This made me think cricket is a power sport. I was very surprised to learn that a cricket test match plays one game over five days. I wonder if I could play for five days and continue to concentrate. I also knew for the first time that cricket has a long history of hundreds of years and is a sport played by the rich people. I am looking forward to it so I want to play cricket if I had the oppotunity.

    Reply

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