A cricket afternoon

LONDON – I finally had a real British experience.

On Sunday, I attended one of the most British – and global – events here, cricket.
I’ve had experience with cricket. Last summer, I wrote a feature on cricket for the Memphis newspaper. So even though I hate baseball – the closest American analogue – I purchased tickets for a match.

Five minutes after I arrived, a fan next to me asked, “You came to a cricket match and you’re not consuming alcohol? Do you want some of mine?”

I laughed and said I was fine. The rest of the match was rowdy, with most fans drinking.  

Having been at Wimbledon on Thursday, I thought cricket would be the same. Polite, quiet, snobbish.

But this wasn’t Wimbledon. This was loud, just like all the soccer games I’d heard about. If Wimbledon was a visit to a museum, cricket was a pub.

One of the fans next to me, Oliver Watson of Oxford, said it best: “It’s an experience.”

The two teams – the Middlesex Panthers and the Sussex Sharks – were competing in a match during an annual cricket event, the Twenty20 Cup. While Middlesex was last year’s champion, this year’s team has been “dreadful,” said one fan sitting next to me.

The Panthers were in light pink, the Sharks in baby blue. Despite wearing a navy blue shirt, I cheered for both teams.  

The crowd mostly supported Middlesex because Sussex is near Brighton, on the coast.

Lord’s Cricket Ground is the home of English cricket. The stand where I sat was dedicated by His Royal Highness Prince Phillip in 1998. This definitely wasn’t like going to a baseball game, where stadiums are dedicated by banks and Fortune 500 companies.

A group of four Sussex fans sat nearby, adding color to what was already a rowdy game. They only had a few real cheers, which they repeated every few minutes, even when it seemed their team couldn’t win.

One song went to the tune of “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands” and kept going for 10 minutes. They had changed the lyrics to “In nine years we won one trophy, we’ve won one trophy in nine years.” This progressed until they reached “nine trophies in nine years.” Another song stole the tune from “Winter Wonderland.” Another time they sang part of “Hey Jude” replacing the “Hey Jude” with “Sussex” drawn out in their drunk voices.

I’ve always enjoyed attending basketball games, but I’ve never felt such a sense of camaraderie as I did at the cricket match.

Cricket has a stereotype of being slow and boring. Twenty20 cricket is the fastest type of cricket, and the match lasted 3 1/2 hours.

Middlesex scored 127 runs in the first half, and at the start of the second, it seemed Sussex would not be able to catch up.  

But as the match went on, Sussex caught fire and won 130-127 with one over (similar to an inning) remaining.  

This week will be my last in London. I leave for the States on Saturday – the fourth of July. Even though I’ll spend that day barbecuing, seeing my family and celebrating our independence from the country I’ve called home for two months, I’ll take a lot of memories with me. Theater performances, museum visits, city tours. But this match will be an example of how something most people assume is stale and old can be a thrilling way to spend an afternoon.  

Maybe I’ll even give baseball another chance.