Sport

One of my goals for traveling is to see and learn about sports from all over the world. Erin and I have both been impressed with Australian's love for sports - and we do mean ALL sports. If you can think of a sport, they play it in Oz. We have seen sports that we haven't heard of and even sports that make no sense whatsoever, and we've tried.

One example is netball. Netball is a lot like basketball, but the players are not allowed to dribble. Also, the basket does not have a backboard. While we were walking in Canberra, we found a netball court. We could only imagine how difficult it must be to score a shot without being able to use the "bank".

As far as sports that have caught our interest (ok, Erin isn't as intrigued as I), cricket has made the list. I had heard of cricket before, but I had never made a concerted effort to understand it. We first started to recognize the fervor for cricket while we were in New Zealand, and folks in Aussie are equally into it. I really get a kick out of asking locals to explain various rules of the game, as they get all worked up and excited about it. There is nothing like talking to an elderly gentleman about the nuances of the sport to see how red his face gets in describing a "golden duck".

I won't get into the convoluted rules of the game on the blog, but if you are interested I can explain what little I do understand separately. Think of it this way: it is kind of like a very long version of baseball with 10 outs at a time and the pitcher (called a bowler) must bounce the ball before it can be hit.

While we were in Melbourne, I decided to attend a match. To be honest, I didn't think I could make it through an entire game, because they sometimes last more than 8 hours. And that is just the one day match. In "true" cricket (called a test match), the game actually lasts for FIVE days! Anyway, I arrived at the Melbourne Cricket Grounds (MCG) at around 6:45ish, even though the game started at 2pm. The second session had started, so I got to watch the Aussies bat and they eventually won the game. It was a riot to see the home team beat the New Zealanders, even though I wasn't really rooting for one team or the other.

The MCG is one of the most famous cricket grounds in the world, and I was very excited to visit. The arena holds nearly 100,000 fans, but the game I went to was only attended by about 50,000 folks. I found it notable that there were no major breaks and the big screen television had only one trivia moment throughout the time I was there. In American sports, the big screen is often kept busy with announcements and trivia games and the like to keep the crowd interested.

The other really interesting story here is that the wave (for some reason it is called the "mexican" wave in Australia) was banned recently. It was a controversial decision and the crowd was clearly displeased with not being able to participate. In the video, you can hear the crowd banging their seats as they anticipate the wave approaching their area. I'm not sure how that many people stayed in an open air arena in 90 degree heat for that long a period of time without doing something more mischevious and rowdy than a simple "mexican" wave.