what Was, what Is, and what Will Be

I mentioned in this post a few months ago that it had been a goal of mine to get a cricket ball while I was in England three years ago, but that didn’t happen.  A few weeks ago, however, I had the opportunity to help lead a study abroad in Trinidad and Tobago (also a big cricket playing country).  We saw a number of matches being played as we drove around the islands, but never really stopped to watch (too busy learning, I suppose).

At some point in the two weeks, I mentioned this goal to Dr. Hallett (a.k.a. Choo Choo Steve, more on the quickly dubbed trail names later), to which he said “OK, we can do that”.  We stopped at a shopping mall near our home base of Pax Guest House outside of Tunapuna, and sport shops were not hard to find.  So, I got my cricket ball.  And then, I got to play cricket.

That night (the last night we would be in the country), we walked down to our usual Penultimate Frisbee game on the soccer pitch halfway down the mountain road (fine to walk to, a bitch to walk back from), picking up pieces of plywood and branches along the way.  The plywood turned into a wicket, and the branches the bats.  Hallett said this was very West Indies, and very wartime England, just picking up spare pieces of junk and having a good time of it.  The pieces of junk worked great, with the wood propped up on its end to fall when it was hit, and the bats only shattering about every third swing.  Chris, one of the Botany students, played baseball in highschool, so he mostly knew what he was doing, and Hallett is English, so he at least sounded like he knew what he was doing.  I played tennis and ski raced in highschool (in Wisconsin), so I had very little idea of what I was doing at all.  I did manage to get the hang of it after a while, hitting a few runs and even throwing a few batters out.  Seriously fun, but my arm hurt for the next week (guess I’m not used to throwing a ball with a locked arm, who knew).

We finished the evening with our Ultimate Penultimate Frisbee game of the trip and fun was had by all, even though the deceptively speedy short professor’s team won.  Somehow, a few people had enough energy left after to sprint up the last few switchbacks (where was that energy on the playing field, I asked), and then back off to Pax to collapse, get clean, and wait for the supper gong.  That sweet, sweet noise which meant abundant  and fantastic food.

Well, this should be the first of many tales from my most recent study abroad.  This writing has been a long time coming, and now I finally have some freedom on my hands to set the stories free.  So grab a cup of tea or coffee or what have you, sit back, and enjoy.

One of my professors recently had the opportunity to teach a class how to play cricket.  He started out with the generic explanation of “it’s sort of like baseball, but you play for five days” which really doesn’t tell you much.  He then put up a slide which went something like this –

“You have two sides, one out in the field and one in. Each man that’s in the side that’s in goes out, and when he’s out he comes in and the next man goes in until he’s out. When they are all out, the side that’s out comes in and the side thats been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out.

When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in. There are two men called umpires who stay all out all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out. When both sides have been in and all the men have out, and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game!”

I thought it was funny, but mostly because I’d seen it before and knew it was a joke.  The rest of the students sort of just sat there, one even asked a serious question.

The context for this lesson in sport and in comedic timing was the class for the study abroad to Trinidad and Tobago that I somehow was given the privilege of instructing.  One of the things we may be able to do while we’re on those Caribbean islands is get our asses royally kicked by locals in a game of cricket.  All the students in the class are fantastically white, and I doubt that any of us has touched a cricket bat in our lives.  Should be interesting.  I doubt my bowling skills are any good, but I really want to see if I can knock the bails off the stumps with a frisbee from the same distance the ball would be bowled from.

Point is, one of my goals from my UK trip was to get a cricket ball.  That did not happen.  Maybe it’ll happen in May…