The Old Boy is on holidays. Apart from the look of jubilation when he came home from the last day of work, the biggest clue is the amount of cricket that’s being watched on the telly. I say “watched” but, let’s face it, there’s quite a bit of “snoozing in front of” that’s also going on.

It’s a test match: Australia v New Zealand. That means the game will last for 5 days. (You heard me correctly, America and other non-cricketting countries: 5 looong days.) So far, it looks as though Australia will thoroughly beat the NZ team. It should help to allay the national pain inflicted by the All Blacks (NZ) team’s thrashing of the Wallabies (Oz) in the Rugby World Cup, a week or so ago.

For those who don’t know, not all cricket matches last 5 days. There are also one-day matches, which is much more reasonable, but they last all day...all day! It’s the only game I’m aware of, apart from an extended match of “Risk”, that takes so long to play. It’s an anachronism in this era of instant everything. What surprises me is the number of kids who take up this sport. You’d think that, with the regular diet of one hour matches in most other sports, half-hour television shows and one minute cartoons, they’d find the sheer length of playing time off-putting. But they don’t.

The best time to watch cricket is the last half an hour, especially if the scores are tight. Otherwise, give me a game of tennis any day of the week. Or Aussie football. (I’m really missing the footy!)

I intend to do a lot of writing on this holiday break. I’m going to have to figure out a new spot to do it in. I’m used to writing in silence. I find any noise, even music, distracting to the point of not being able to put one word in front of the other. (I have friends who do all their writing to music and I’m in awe of them.)
But, it’s the Old Boy’s holiday and he deserves the break. Hmm…

Trust the English to come up with the sort of game that goes on and on and on, with occasional bouts of “that’s interesting”, that’s played standing out in a big field all day in summer. (Oh, that’s right, their summer is like our autumn. They obviously didn’t take the colonies into account when they invented this game.) Trust the English to celebrate the anachronistic, the eccentric, the gentlemanly polite traditions of a game that no longer suits the pace of the modern world. Maybe that’s why so many like it.