Making Sense of Cricket

It's no secret that, as an American, my solar system of sports has baseball, football and basketball firmly fixed at its center.  Revolving just around those three is hockey, a truly-Canadian sport which has been adopted by the U.S., and soccer, a sport rapidly growing in popularity here in the States as youth participation rates continue to skyrocket and as the U.S. men's national team continues to improve.  Outside of those, a bit further from my core, are the individual sports with worldwide appeal - golf, tennis, auto racing, etc. - which I admittedly don't pay terribly close attention to most of the year, but which I'll keep tabs on during key competitions such as the Masters, Wimbledon or the Indianapolis 500.

Somewhere at the very outskirts, in rarely-reached portions of my sports galaxy, are the strictly global (read: non-U.S.) sports including cricket, which has become an ESPN newsworthy sport this week because of the Cricket World Cup (see right: the ESPN.com homepage featured a photo from the India vs. Sri Lanka final this morning).  With what I consider the world's most confusing sport infiltrating mainstream American sports media, U.S. sports fans such as myself likely find themselves wondering how they should handle and process this new sports-related information.  Honestly, I'm not sure what the answer is.

On one hand, it's almost too easy to dismiss cricket altogether.  Not only is the sport confusing, but it's (at least on the grand scheme of all sports) fairly similar to baseball, which we already have, already understand and already enjoy (some of us do, anyway).  With this being Opening Weekend in MLB and with tons of great games to watch, why bother trying to process yet another set of players, rules and statistics?  While living in Richmond, VA over the summer of 2003, I learned the basic rules of cricket from my Indian coworkers.  Even after receiving this rudimentary lesson, I find following cricket almost impossible.  I tried to check in on the progress of the India vs. Sri Lanka final earlier this morning, and the "Summary" tab of ESPN's CrickInfo scorecard looked like the image below.  One quick glance, and I went right right back to checking today's MLB pitching probables (Hanson!  Lannon!  It's the Braves and the Nationals on MASN!)

Despite knowing more about Cricket than 99% of Americans, I can't make sense of the Scorecard.

There's a lot more to sports than statistics and rules, however, and some of the world's best sports are known more for the fan response they prompt than for the quality and excitement of the games themselves.  This summer at the World Cup, I learned to appreciate even the most sloppy and "boring" soccer matches by embracing the cultures, energy and passion of the fans.  This week, Cricket is generating a similar buzz among fans across Asia and Europe, and if nothing else that demands the respect of American sports fans.  I have friends here at school who began watching the cricket finals at 2 AM local time last night, and are still watching as the eight-plus-hour-long match rolls on.  While Americans may not understand what exactly is going on, or how a match could last so long, or why the players are wearing collared shirts, if nothing else we must respect and admire cricket for the excitement it is generating across the globe.  If, come October, MLB's World Series can generate even a fraction of the cricket World Cup's passion, we'll be in for a special Fall Classic.