The next day we got up bright and early to catch a cricket game. Here I am on the Underground, their subway system. It's a lot like the DC metro in the sense that its clean, and runs from 6am-1am ish. It however is in a horrible state of disrepair in the sense that any given day half of the underground would be closed for maintenance, so you always had to check all the construction notices and adjust your route on the fly. Also, if your handicapped you are screwed. There are only maybe 10 stations in London with elevators, and these things are far underground (lots of stairs and elevators).
We got to the cricket match at the beginning...it was at The Oval, one of London's two major cricket grounds. The match was Surrey vs Somerset (Surrey was the home team)
Cricket is officially the most boring pointless game in the world. Let me give you a quick run down of the rules. There's this giant field here...with a rope spread into a giant circle marking the boundary. There's then one dirt area in the center where the "pitcher" (bowler) and batsman go. Then the rest of the field is covered with outfielders (10 of them). The bowler throws the ball at the batsman (can't bend the elbow), and trys to knock the wickets out behind the batsman (this only happened maybe two or three times the whole match). The batsman trys to defend these by hitting the ball. When he hits the ball, one of several things can happen. It can go over the rope (like a home run), and this gets him 6 points. It can bounce or roll over the rope which gets him 4 points, or more likely it will just bounce somewhere in the field where a fielder needs to get it. While the fielder is trying to get it, the batsman runs to the other side of the center strip thing (and so does another batsman). Each time he runs before they throw the ball back gets them a point. This goes on until 10 batters are out or (in this form, a one dayer) 50 "innings" pass. An inning is 6 pitches. All one team. Then the other team goes up to bat and trys to beat the score. The version we saw this takes an entire 8-9 hour day. In a traditional match, it takes 5 days. I kid you not.
Ok so the sport sounds ridiculously boring...but it was a blast! Why? Because it turns out the reason people like cricket matches is that it's really a drinking game. The British are alcoholics, the whole lot of them. There are so many reasons they have for drinking various times during the day, and large amounts.
The group in front of us bought 6 rounds of beers (20oz), two bottles of wine, and a bottle of vodka.
You don't have to pay much attention to the game, since no play really can make or break the game until the very end. So people just drank, talked, read magazines, newspapers, etc. This got considerably more fun by the end of the day when everyone was all liquored up. The most entertaining was a large group of Australians who kept singing about the various players and would get into various shouting matches with brits around them.
Kelly figured out the rules and here is holding up a "4" when someone hit a "4".
Our team lost, and we headed into the financial downtown area of London to catch the Jack the Ripper tour.
In the background is "The Gerkin" their newest skyscraper.
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