Now this is an excellent understanding of the early game and may
explain why the game is so popular in India and the rest of the sub-
continent. They used to be awash with blasted crickets, grasshoppers,
locusts and the like.
In Australia it was adopted enthusiastically due to the appalling row
caused by cicadas in the summer ("Insects have murdered sleep...")
not to mention the occasional movement of the plague locust swarms (I
told you not to mention that!)
I tend to prefer Douglas Adams explanation that it is is the residual
ritual of an obnoxious inter-galactic sect and the fact that we still
practice it is so offensive that we are ostracised by all the aliens
in the spiral arm - they regard the flannelled fools with deep disgust.
Andrew Fildes
afildes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
On 01/05/2008, at 11:57 PM, Bob Whitmire wrote:
>
> Actually, John, it's a term from the game of cricket. You see,
> crickets are very annoying creatures. When they get into the house,
> they can make a horrendous racket. But they also have the unnerving
> quality of falling silent at just the right moment to prevent the
> seeker from discovering their hiding places. (You wondered where the
> seekers came from in the Harry Potter books? That's right, cricket
> hunters, or, as we know them, batsmen, though Ms. Rowling took some
> liberties with the concept with that whole broom flying thing.)
>
> In Jolly Olde many years ago, some chaps got together to discuss
> their large country manors filled with chirping crickets. Sleep
> depravation was becoming a problem. In true English tradition, they
> decided the best approach would be a competition. They dressed in
> white so as to be more easily visible in the dark, and chose as their
> weapon a long flat board with a handle, which they called a bat, so
> called because one of their number, before the rules of the game
> could be settled upon, thumped a passing bat out of the air with his
> stick. (History has taken the identity of this gentleman, but
> tradition holds that he was a progenitor of the later, much greater,
> Sir Donald Bradman.)
>
> The bat is particularly well suited not only for squashing crickets
> on cold English stone floors, but also swatting them out of the air,
> as noted by the bat-swatting incident which resulted in the name of
> the device. Because of its shape, it's also useful for smashing
> crickets that hide behind objects of furniture, which are lumped into
> the broad category of stumps for purposes of simplicity and clarity.
>
> So after our chaps got dressed in white and tossed back a few gin-and-
> tonics, they set out to smash crickets. One person on the team was
> designated as the cricket collector. He carried a basket, called a
> wicket, to put the shattered corpses in so as to determine which team
> won the competition. But crickets are resilient creatures, and just
> because one has been smashed flat by a bat does not necessarily mean
> it's dead. So the wickets were lined with an adhesive substance to
> keep the crickets from being able to crawl out. Hence the term
> "sticky wicket."
>
> At the end of the evening, the wickets were collected and the cricket
> corpses counted, and more gin-and-tonics were consumed.
>
> Of course the modern game bears little resemblance to the game of its
> origin, but isn't that the way of it all?
>
> I hope all of this clears everything up for you. If you have an
> further questions, you might address them to our brethren from the
> Commonwealth. This little note pretty well exhausts my knowledge of
> cricket.
>
> Helpfully yours,
>
> --Bob Whitmire
> www.bwp33.com
>
>
>
>
> On May 1, 2008, at 9:05 AM, jgettis81@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>
>> Batsman. Is that some Australian dude that catches bats with his
>> bare
>> hands?
>
>
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