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.