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What sport in the UK replaced football as the most watched spectacle in the summer of 2005; even if it was only for a few months? What sport’s national team enjoyed a victorious, open-top bus tour of London and met the Prime Minister? Cricket, of course! The summer of 2005 will be remembered for a long time by the supporters of the English cricket team. For the first time in a generation, England beat their oldest rivals, Australia..
So how do you play this confusing game? Cricket is a bit like baseball but more complicated. There are two teams of eleven batsmen who score runs by hitting a ball, while fielders try and get them out in different ways. The fielders bowl a hard, leather ball at a set of three sticks called a wicket. If the ball hits the wicket the batsman is out! He can also be caught out or run out – just like in baseball. The team that scores the most runs wins the game.
Many people consider cricket to be the ‘traditional’ English sport. That’s not surprising as it is part of the history and culture of England and there is reference to a game like cricket being played during the time of King Edward I over 700 years ago. The first organised game of cricket took place in the south of England in about 1730. From 1870 onwards, the popularity of cricket began to spread around the world.
The first international game, or “Test Match”, between England and Australia was in 1877. Since then, the number of countries playing Test matches against each other has increased to ten. As well as England and Australia, these include Bangladesh, India, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa, Sri Lanka, the West Indies and Zimbabwe. Nowadays, it is supporters outside the UK who are the most fanatical. For instance, matches between India and Pakistan regularly attract crowds of 100,000 – winning is a matter of national pride.
Bangladesh and Zimbabwe are the newest members of the top group of international cricket playing nations. Countries such as The Netherlands and Kenya have been trying to join this top group for many years. There is growing interest in cricket in South East Asia and Thailand, along with Malaysia, have recently become Associate Members of cricket’s world governing body, the International Cricket Council (ICC). This is the first step on the ladder to becoming Test match playing nations.
There is no doubt that, over the last 20 years, cricket has lost its appeal to the younger generation. The top, international games will always attract big crowds but the game has suffered from dwindling interest at local and amateur levels. Part of the problem is that cricket is regarded as a long and boring game – Test matches can last up to five days. This is no match for the instant excitement of other sports such as football and extreme sports. Cricket is also seen as a sport of the older generation and certainly does not have a ‘cool’ image.
Over the last 5 years or so, Cricket has given itself an image ‘makeover’ to try to encourage young people to watch and play the game. The traditional white uniform has been replaced by multi-coloured kits and teams have adopted nicknames like Premiership football clubs. The most recent change in England has been the introduction of “Twenty20” cricket in which games only take a few hours, rather than days, to finish. Games are even played under floodlights and can be decided by cricket’s version of the penalty shoot-out. Many games now end in nail-biting finishes keeping spectators on the edge of their seats.
Many ‘traditionalists’ are against this modernisation of the game. However, these changes have been successful in attracting younger fans to the game. For the first time in years, youngsters in the UK prefer to spend a summer afternoon playing cricket instead of sitting in front of a computer screen playing virtual reality versions of their favourite sports. So, is cricket about to become the “new football” as some reporters have suggested? Probably not, given the worldwide appeal of the ‘beautiful game’, as football is known to its fans. But at least cricket is now showing it can appeal to a new generation of players and supporters.
a generation – all the people born around the same time.
a rival – a team/person who is always in competition against you
complicated – difficult to understand because it has lots of different rules
dwindling – getting much smaller or very less
amateur –play sport for fun and without getting money for it.
instant – something that happens very quickly
a makeover – a change to make something better than it was before
a traditionalist – someone who believes in old ideas and the old ways of doing something
nail-biting – very exciting
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If you would like to practise your English, try the following activites:
Decide what different numbers refer to in the text
Decide if the following statements are true or false.
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Ojong Egbe writes “The British and to some extend the Chinese, to the best of my knowledge, contributed enormously towards the conception and realisation of today’s eye-catching and beautiful game of football. Likewise, by hosting the first organised cricket game, the English have been able to secure their roots and carry on hands-on practice with it as well. Now, I think that with the continual geometric increase in the number of Test match playing nations and subsequent representations in the International Cricket Council, cricket is undoubtedly up and coming as the ‘new football’.”
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