I rely on BBC for much of my electronic news. Over breakfast today, I read the news on my
tablet. Today’s big story—after the Iran
nuclear deal—is England’s “crushing defeat” in Australia. The article explains the nature of the defeat
in a language utterly incomprehensible to me.
In this case, the medium is cricket.
The article starts, “Facing a target of 561 to win, or two
days to bat through for the draw, England disintegrated from 142-4 to 151-8 and
then 179 all out late on the fourth day to go behind in an Ashes series for the
first time in seven years.”
What I glean from that opening is that England took a
thrashing. How that thrashing occurred,
however, is mystifying to the likes of me.
Two of the players started the day “looking comparatively
comfortable, the pitch still doing little to assist the bowlers despite the
emergence of a few cracks.” And then
there was a “nasty spell of fast bowling.”
I believe one of those two comfortable players threw it away when he
took “the short-ball bait from Johnson and” pulled straight to substitute
fielder. Sneaky team, those Australians. Fast bowlers, too.
There was a hail delay, which regrettably “interrupted
Cook’s previously excellent concentration.”
It was all downhill from there.
“In the off-spinner’s next over, Matt Prior played
needlessly at a ball outside leg stump and deflected it straight to leg slip
for a paltry four.” The frosting on the
cake came when one of the players “gloved the rampant Johnson down the
leg-side, and when [he] went for a second-ball duck—chasing a wide one and
edging it to Steve Smith at third slip—England had lost four wickets for nine
runs.”
Another rain delay and, though there was a valiant effort by
one Joe Root, the result was victory for Australia.
I consulted Wikipedia to see if I could make some sense out
of this jargon and have concluded that though there is some small resemblance
to baseball (bats, balls, runs), I’ll have to return to the womb and be born an
Englishwoman in order to even begin to comprehend the game.
In any event, I offer up my congratulations to the
Australians and wish the Brits better luck next time.
