Looking back, it feels exactly like the start to an episode of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia. (Mom and Dad, this is a subtle reminder that I would love to have it on DVR when I get back.) Camera opens on two guys with beers, a handful of empties lying around and something stupid going on. In this case an American guy wearing red and black plaid sunglasses with a yellow shirt and a Scottish guy with a big wide brimmed hat and black sunglasses, both grinning stupidly and cheering loudly while the Sri Lankans go crazy, dancing and waving hundreds of flags. Then the first black screen pops up with “11:45 am” written across it. The second reads “On a Thursday.” And then the show starts.
It was at that point, 11:45 on a Thursday morning, when the fourth round of beers rolled around that I knew I could like cricket despite it being in the words of one Englishman, “Dreadfully boring." The game makes baseball stand out in my memory as an action packed fast paced sporting event that should hold the viewer on the edge of their seat. Here’s cricket through the eyes of an American in 200 words or less: There are two batsmen (batters) that stand in opposing boxes, facing each other and there are two bowlers (pitchers) that throw to the opposing batsmen. Instead of home plate, the batsmen stand next to the wickets, three poles stuck into the ground with a crossbeam. If the bowler hits the wicket with the ball, the batsmen is out, if the batsmen hits the ball four things can happen. If he hits it over the outfield line without bouncing, he gets six points. If he hits it over with a bounce it’s four. If the opposing team catches it, he’s out. If he hits it inside the park he can choose whether or not to run. Running entails the batsmen running to other’s box before the fielders can throw the ball in and hit the wicket. Because the batsmen can choose to run or not to run it means the game is really boring. Like baseball except you swing at every pitch and then choose when to run. That’s pretty much it, the rest matters in the same way foul ball rules matter or the way the inning system works, important but not necessary to know what’s happening on the field.
That was exactly 200 words in case you weren’t counting or got so bored and took so long to read it that you figured I lied and had gone way over.
Back to the match, which held enormous significance to the Sri Lankan people and followers of Cricket in general. It was Murali’s last match. Murali was one of the best bowlers ever and he needed just 8 wickets (outs) to reach 800, a feat which had never before been accomplished. When the match continued on Thursday (it started on Sunday), there were only 2 wickets left in the game, and one was gotten within the opening minuets by Sri Lanka’s other bowler. So you can imagine the tension in the crowd that morning. Bands on opposite sides of the field alternated depending on who was bowling and every time that Murali was up the crowd went wild. This went on from approximately 10:33 when the other pitcher got the wicket (out) until nearly four o’clock that afternoon. This craziness was broken up 2 breaks. The first was for lunch and the second for tea. Literally play stops at 12:00 and the scoreboard reads, “Lunch Day 5” and then again around 3 in the afternoon play stops and it reads, “Tea Day 5.” My best guess is that Cricket came from England.
By the time lunch was over, Murali was still bowling and I had long lost count of which round of beer we were on. As mentioned earlier, I was hanging out for the day with a Scottish fellow – his girlfriend wasn’t feeling well and he needed someone to drink and watch Cricket with and well I was pretty damn tired of lying on a beach all week and need someone to explain Cricket to me. Needless to say the combination of the mutual interests of drinking and sport went well together. I’d met him the night before while waiting to meet two friends at the very luxurious Sun House hotel. It is a small boutique hotel that reeks of the good ol’ British Empire from the moment you step through a nearly invisible door, in a solid concrete wall and into a cobble stone courtyard. Inside the bar, which was decked out in memorabilia from the glory days and pictures of authors who had come to the Galle Literary Festival (ran by the owner), a Beatles album played and half a dozen British ex-patriots sat around making small talk. There were three guys who ran a small hotel north of Galle, a profession which obviously made them far more informed and cultured than the rest of us. They asked very few questions but had answers to everything from the spiciness of certain curries to the likelihood of a Sri Lankan national highway system.
Then there was a lady dressed in a double breasted khaki suit/skirt who claimed to be in fashion when first approached. The suit seriously looked like she was due for a safari with Hemingway in the morning. I’ve never seen anything like what she was wearing except in the movies and I know little about fashion but I can tell you that she had not seen the lower side of a catwalk in sometime, if ever. Over the course of the evening it came out that by fashion she meant sweatshops - a modern day slave master who spent her time examining the factories across the country, and dinning with other keepers of the downfallen Empire, complaining about the lack of civility and the rising of prices by a few pence.
Finally there was the couple from Saudi Arabia. He Scottish, she South African and both equally happy to be out of Saudi. Who ever thought that sticking a proud Scotchmen in a dry, practically celibate country and then 'force' him to go on vacation every three months on the company's dime was walking the fine line between genius and insanity. Genius because there would otherwise be mass suicides of Scotsmen in the Middle East and insane because it promotes the endless buying of rounds of gin and tonics. It was at the fourth round at the Sun House that he proclaimed, in perfect sobriety, that it was his national duty to make sure everyone had plenty to drink and it was at that point that I lost track of the rounds. Later it came out that he worked for a large international company and was a buyer of stuff that “make things go fast and go boom.” I am about 95% sure that the quote is accurate. Anyways, we decided to meet up in the morning to see the match.
Again, back to the match. Murali's final wicket came after many false alarms and reviews from upstairs - there was no way that they would let him off with anything less than a fair wicket. When he finally got it the stands erupted in a mass of cheering and dancing and soon after the cannons began their salute to the champion. The cannons are a spectacle all their own. Several days before I had watched with three other volunteers from the ramparts of a fort across the street as the workers did their best to fire them and keep their lives in the process. We were several stories up on this fort and most of them exploded not much higher than our heads; a few actually made it high into the sky and just as many barely made it six feet. These would come bouncing down and prompt a frantic scramble for cover from the people in the area. One even landed on the field and one poor soul was prompted to kick it away from the people before it exploded which it did, thirty seconds after his last boot. On this day, such was their fury that the entire field was engulfed in smoke and fuming remnants smoldered on the field. Murali was carried around the pitch on the shoulders of his teammates and everyone went crazy, scuffles broke out later in day at tea time and the by that point the kegs had been tapped and crowd formed waiting for new ones.
The game was not over just yet though as Sri Lanka still needed to bat again to regain the lead and make the victory official. I know this is kind of confusing and as much as I hate to revert again to referencing my least favorite of America's pastimes I will. Murali got his 800 wicket as what we would call the last out in the top of the ninth, but because this is cricket the bottom of the ninth lasts for hours and all you need is 2 runs in basically a 6-5 ballgame. The only reason that this is worth mentioning is because our drunken minds firmly believe that we came seriously close to being injured when the winning run, a 6 pointer sailed through the tent above us and slammed into the ground several yards away, leaving a sizable hole in both the canopy above and ground below. We stuck around just long enough to watch the crowning of Murali, their new national hero by the President and other Cricket dignitaries, then hoofed it back to the tranquil and prestigious Galle Fort Hotel where we unceremoniously jumped into the pool and ordered a round of gin and tonics while a few elder Brits watched with unwavering calmness.
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