Many years ago, a friend and I presented a weekly radio programme in Marbella on the Spanish station Onda Cero. Our delight when the station manager told us that it had very high ratings was somewhat tempered by his caveat that it was “almost certainly because it follows directly on from the extraordinarily popular Goma Espuma programme and their listeners don’t bother to turn yours off”. Great, thanks for that, sir.
Anyway, our show consisted of various features, one of which was to try to explain various UK customs and traditions to a mildly baffled Spanish audience. That cheese-rolling-down-a-hill thing they do in Gloucestershire was one of them and Morris dancing was another – I’m sure you get the picture.
We always laughed a lot during that part of the show and, according to the feedback, so did quite a few of the lazy Goma Espuma fans who were still hanging around at that point.
The only time we had to cut to some music because our mirth was so wildly unprofessional (it still makes me chuckle just thinking about it) was during a show when we tried to explain the rules of cricket. From silly-mid-offs to leg-before-wickets, from flippers to snickometers, as we chatted it became increasingly evident to both of us that neither one had ever before stopped to contemplate the exquisite absurdity of the game in such detail.
The more we dived into the idiosyncrasies of spin bowling grips, bouncers, beamers and shining one half of the ball on your pants – trying in vain as we went to translate everything into some vague approximation of Spanish – the more we found ourselves bent over double, helpless with wheezing laughter. The programme didn’t last very long after that – they said it was because they needed more time for news coverage but I’m pretty sure it was the cricket.
The other day, a customer asked if he could watch a match in the pub and I agreed eagerly, hoping it would be a five day test match reaching its nail-biting conclusion.
Unfortunately, it was that Twenty20 version of the game which isn’t really cricket at all; as far as I can tell, it’s more akin to baseball which is, as everybody knows, just rounders in tight trousers.
It’ll be a shame if future generations forego the delayed gratification of the longer game for the slogfest which is Twenty20 because there’s a profundity to the former sadly lacking in the latter.
Actually, I’m not even sure if the term ‘silly point’ exists in Twenty20 cricket but I suppose that’s precisely the point, silly.
