by Voice
As a young woman, the realization that in order to prosper in the workforce I needed to be able to talk about cricket came as a huge relief.
If you knew the extent of my lack of interest in the sport of cricket spectating, you might find this puzzling. It’s hard to pinpoint the cause of this militant lack of interest. It might be a female thing; it might be a reaction to my father’s seasonal lack of availability, or to his one-eyed barracking. My father was your archetypal one-sided sports fanatic. It was quite late in my childhood that I fully understood the role of the other team on the ground. Until then, listening to my father’s exclamations during the endless TV broadcasts, I thought the members of his team were the only actual players, battling blind umpires, unfavourable weather, or worse, the occasional unforced error, in an effort to claim their rightful title of match winner.
In any case, this early disaffection with the game of cricket was only reinforced as a University student, where endless discussion of cricket scores was lumped together in my mind with endless discussions about cars as uncouth “engineer’s talk”.
Fast forward a few years, and the burning ambition to be able to pay for food and rent found me working for a manufacturing company in a largely engineer dominated IT department. As the cricket season commenced I reflexively turned off whenever the inevitable discussions started. But I couldn’t help noticing that I was spending a lot of time talking to myself, and this was highlighted during a period of relative inactivity for my group, when half the day was spent arguing about cricket (and the other half perfecting the giant paper ball). It became painfully obvious at a farewell for one of our group, where the others bonded with management over a cricket discussion while I found myself a lonely outsider, that something needed to be done.
So I decided to bite the bullet and follow the cricket. I shamelessly enlisted the aid of a co-worker who had both demonstrated some knowledge of cricket and shown some interest in my company (no doubt confirming in the mind of many engineers reading this piece the dastardly use of feminine wiles by their female colleagues.) Over a coffee break I confessed the reluctance of my resignation to spending endless weekend hours watching cricket on the tele, half-expecting him to recoil in horror. It took me a while to realize the significance of his counter-confession that some weekends he himself had to miss the cricket and that on those occasions he just checked the score intermittently, but was still able to hold his own at work on Monday. Imagine my relief and delight when I realized it wasn’t strictly necessary to know about the cricket. All I needed to be able to do was to talk about it.
Riffing together we came up with the phrase “at one stage there…” as in “at one stage there Australia was 3 for 103” or “at one stage there Warne was 54 not out”. All that was needed was to check the scoreboard once during the cricket broadcast!
The day before the next lunchtime gathering I searched the newspaper for the cricket news. I arrived at work the next day with a few facts printed on the palm of my hand. After everybody had eaten enough to satisfy hunger, and the conversation turned to cricket, I surreptitiously glanced at my hand and announced “At one stage there Australia was 2 for 75.” This was greeted by a number of wise comments, and I was part of the group. Emboldened by this success, I further announced “At one stage there Steve Waugh was 75 not out.” This was met by a puzzled silence and I found myself on the outside once again. Later my ally explained to me that the correct pronunciation of Waugh is “Waw”. Never having really listened to a cricket broadcast, I had somehow come up with the idea that it was pronounced “woe”. Since at that time Steve (or Mark?) Waugh was captain of the Australian cricket team, this was a major blunder.
My second big effort was Christmas drinks at the pub, where I arrived unprepared but was thrilled to hear the cricket news being announced on TV, and immediately memorized the first piece of information. Later I proudly announced my hastily memorized factoid, and once again it was well received. Then somebody asked me “Who won?” Unfortunately I had been so engrossed in memorizing that I had omitted to note this apparently important detail, and my face fell. An employee with all the social grace of, well, a young engineer working in IT, piped up “You can’t be very interested in the cricket if you don’t know who won.” The members of my immediate group, who by this time were in on the joke, were in stitches. I decided to own up rather than look a total moron, and by that time everybody had drunk enough to take it well.
Boxing Day 2008, and a couple I haven’t met yet are the hosts for the post-Christmas neighbours gathering. The husband greets us at the door with “I was just watching the cricket”. I have a moment’s panic; since I’ve been working at a small non-cricket oriented company the start of the cricket season has passed unnoticed. But through those earlier years of intensive training in cricket conversation I manage to avoid the crimes of appearing uninterested or asking who’s winning. I settle on asking the score, and the moment passes safely.
Thankful for this reminder, and with job interviews pending, I search the web and find the ABC.Net cricket page. There I discover an invaluable innovation, the Live Game Log. The first log entry is a summary of the state of play at the commencement of the day, and the follow-up entries are brief over by over summaries logged in real time. All the information needed to contribute to a cricket conversation available at your fingertips. At one stage there Kallis was not out for 26.
with thanks to Voice – for establishing the perfect level of involvement …. and anticipating a rejoinder from Hung …..
Pingback: The ABC of Cricket | Hungs World
sandshoe said:
It makes me so whiney. No that wasn’t a misspelling, now I can hear them rolling around in the bleachers or somewhere howling ‘maiden over’ and ‘miss spelling, wasn’t she the 22 yards short of a small country on her wicket’, please … I am nothing more than a word associ-ist and I make up the occasional word that makes it with another word said by someone else and I’m on a home run for an award for a misspent, please, childhood. CRICKET>my MOTHER>she SCREAMED at the television things like HUZZAH. I don’t like it I tell you.
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astyages said:
A rare classic from Voice! You should really post more articles, more often, Voice… whatever our other differences, we shall always share our mutual profound disinterest in cricket and/or any other sport (with the possible exceptions of 8-ball, snooker, and chess)! While reading the above, for a moment there I almost felt the impression of a kindred spirit…
🙂
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Voice said:
We have differences? Surely not. Apart from the obvious ones. I may have already mentioned that when my twins were babies, the first question from admiring strangers was usually about their sex. After I had replied “a boy and a girl”, the next question was often “Are they identical?” Makes you wonder.
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Julian said:
“battling blind umpires,”
Very topical.
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Hung One On said:
Fantastic story Voice
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Voice said:
Have I said it before Hung? You are a model of perspicacity, wit, and discriminating taste. You will go far.
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Hung One On said:
perspicacity?
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Voice said:
Or should that have been perspicuity?
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astyages said:
Nice to see you two on relatively friendly terms again… perspicacity, I think, Voice; the ability to perceive things clearly, Hung.
😉
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Hung One On said:
Voice and I are the ideal couple Asty, we have a love hate relationship
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Voice said:
HOO loves to hate me.
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Tomokatu said:
Don’t forget to abuse the bloody seagulls.
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astyages said:
Right! Bloody seagulls!
😉
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Julian said:
So you think your schooling’s phoney
I guess it’s hard not to agree
You say it all depends on money
And who is in your family tree
Right, you’re bloody well right
you know you got a right to say
Right, you’re bloody well right
you know you got a right to say
Ha-ha you’re bloody well right
you know you’re right to say
Yeah-yeah you’re bloody well right
you know you’re right to say
Me, I don’t care anyway!
Write your problems down in detail
Take them to a higher place
You’ve had your cry – no, I should say wail
In the meantime hush your face
Right, quite right, you’re bloody well right… etc
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Hung One On said:
Good band, pity they were English
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Julian said:
Remind me to tell you about the time that they appeared for me. They got a % of door takings and went home with about 22 quid!
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Hung One On said:
Write a story about it for the Arms Jules? Being half English I’m actually taking the piss out of myself. Crime of the Century, great album.
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Julian said:
Which half?
Obviously not your brain. You’re a dead set Cobber. 😉 wink.
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Hung One On said:
I wish I got his brain Jules, my Dad was very bright indeed, maybe I was adopted?
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Voice said:
Nah. Not by someone bright. 🙂
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Julian said:
Did you hear the one about Gillard stabbing Rudd in the back??
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Julian said:
With her nose?
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Voice said:
Walk softly. Carry a big stick.
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Voice said:
Careful Julian. I hear she eats little boys for breakfast, and she got up late today.
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Julian said:
What she neds to do is take a lesson from Abbott–and go jogging. get a bit of lard off.
Those Welsh fillies always tend to ffat. Courtesy of all that mutton 🙂 (_O_)…
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Voice said:
She’ll kick Abbott right up the clever little picture.
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nevillecole said:
This gives me an idea for a killer phone app…sport conversation starters. Each day a few key phrases like “at one stage there Australia was 3 for 103” or “how about Ponting spitting the dummy at Gould?” or “a century from Eoin? what the bloody hell was that?” get sent to your phone. It’s all you’ll even need to strike up a conversation anywhere in australia.
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Warrigal said:
“Classic Catch” Nev.
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Big m said:
There was an episode of the IT crowd, where one of the guys received emails every morning from a website called (paraphrased), ‘How to talk about football, for nerds.’ Similar stuff, ‘refs blind’, ‘why didn’t Thomo shoot, goals wuz wide open’, etc.
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Hung One On said:
Get ’em onside, forward pass, in the back, he dropped it…..
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