Who needs channel 417 when you have Cricket?

I've been more than a little detached from American sports for the past three weeks. Before arriving in London to study for the semester, I traveled to Italy and France, where the best I could muster up were some highlights of a baseball game or two on CNN World.\nI have 999 channels on the TV in the lounge on my floor. Unfortunately, the only channel with 24-hour American sports coverage, the North American Sports Network (channel 417), is not available with our cable package -- son of a bee sting!\nSo I did what any sensible American student in London would do: I watched cricket. \nBut it wasn't just your normal cricket match; it was The Ashes, perhaps the most storied and tradition-laden contest in all of cricket. Every two years (with a few exceptions here and there) since the early 1880s, the series pits the Australian national team against the English national team. England won the Ashes back from the Aussies Monday, its first win in 16 years.\nAt first glance, the sport presents itself as a more boring (scratch that -- much more boring) version of baseball, or rather, a sport that vaguely resembles baseball. One batter can be up for hours, and sometimes, though rare, days at a time. Can you imagine watching a three-hour Curt Schilling versus Derek Jeter at bat? Yeah, me neither. \nThe ball is in play no matter where the batter hits it, so what would be considered a foul ball behind home plate in baseball, could result in four runs in a cricket match. It's weird, I know.\nA day of cricket (the test match form played in most international matches) lasts from 10 a.m. till about 6:30 p.m. or so. \n On top of that, each test match lasts five days (Thursday through Monday) in a best of five series. So a full series could last up to 25 days in the span of a month and a half. Not quite the seven game championship series U.S. sports fans are accustomed to viewing.\nWatching the match alone in the lounge, I couldn't fully comprehend the action taking place. I knew some of the general rules of the game, but terminology such as "wicket" and "over" were lost on me.\nI had just about given up on watching when a man who works in my building stepped into the lounge and started putting together some bed posts. He seemed interested in what was on the screen, so I started quizzing him with question after question about cricket. After an hour or so, he cleared up all my confusion and told me he grew up playing the sport in Jamaica and works a few months a year in London. \nWatching the game with him -- Donald is his name -- and having more knowledge after our chat, gave me a new appreciation for the sport. Heck, I even started to enjoy it. The game requires an insane amount of mental toughness to last all day at such a high level of competition, and batting and fielding cannot be done without excellent hand-eye coordination and reflexes. Cricket players are flat out athletes.\nThat afternoon, it didn't matter that I didn't get to see a linebacker sack a quarterback or a baseball player go yard.\nIt was about learning and enjoying a sport I knew very little about, and in the process making friends with someone I would have otherwise never talked to. If you ever need proof that sports can bring people together, look no further than a white kid from the States and a black man from Jamaica watching cricket together in London.