Anyway I made it to the venue, a pub near Harvard square around 9.15 am, ready for the 9.30 start. When I rocked up I was dismayed to learn that rain had delayed play and it was looking shady as to whether the game would be played at all. There were a handful of Aussies sitting around chatting who I didn't know so I grabbed a seat alone, watched the rain fall on the big screen and boringly waited. Bay-buddy soon rocked up, so taking advantage of time to kill, we grabbed a coffee and breakfast.
The room showing the cricket in the pub started to fill pretty quickly and soon enough all you could hear were Aussie accents, and the few American accents suddenly seemed foreign. It was a bit weird. Bay-buddy and I soon started chatting to a young married couple who had driven a few hours from Vermont to watch the cricket. The guy was from Melbourne and worked in finance while his wife was an American nurse. They were pretty friendly and we got along quickly. The bloke started getting stuck into the beers pretty early on and by the end of the day he was well and truly smashed and raucous, much to the embarrassment of his wife who tried to keep him tow. Having little success at subduing her husband she decided the only way to deal with the situation was to be drunk (pissed in Aussie-speak) herself. She was "battling beer with wine" in her words. Thankfully they weren't planning on driving anywhere that night and were staying in Boston for the night.
Everyone in the room was nervous of the game not starting, but when we finally saw the covers come off the pitch there was a huge cheer, even though the match was being shortened to 38 overs. Before the game I was telling Bay-buddy how much I wanted to see Gilchrist smash a hundred since his batting had been sketchy throughout the tournament. I was bloody ecstatic as we watched Gillie slog 149 in quick time and with the beer flowing, I was having a bloody awesome time. There was a significant Indian contingent in the crowd, my Bay-buddy being one of them, who were barracking for the Sri Lankans and I enjoyed sticking it to Bay-buddy everytime Gillie smashed a 6 or sent the ball flying into the boundary.
By this time, the room was packed to the rafters and it felt like it could have been any pub in Australia. Put on some cricket, supply some beer and it's amazing how the Aussies came out of the Boston wood-work.
Even though I was going (rooting in US-speak, root means to have a shag in Aussie-speak) for Australia I wanted to see a good tussle between the two teams and with Jayasuria taking it to the Aussie bowlers it looked like the Sri Lankans were in with a slim chance of running down the massive Aussie total. It was not to be however and the game ended somewhat anti-climatically after a bizarro stuff up of ending play early due to bad light and declaring Australia the champions, only to change the declaration and forcing play of the remaining overs so the Australians could win (again).
Boonie would definitely approve of the Aussie win, as long as he had a slab of VB to celebrate with of course
So 6 hours after arriving at the pub, with a satisfying outcome and a few tasty ales later, I stumbled out of the pub with Bay-buddy and a few other American work colleagues who came to check out this strange sport called 'cricket'. We tried to explain the rules to them without much success, even when we related everything back to baseball, but nonetheless they seemed to enjoy the game atmosphere and were amused at all the drunk Aussies:
Me: "If the bowlers 'pitch' the ball and the 'hitter' hits the ball to the boundary, it's like a home-run worth four points. Get it?"
Americans: *blank stare* " Why are there two people holding bats again?"
Me: *leaves to get another beer*
Oh yeah, mercifully, no-one did the 3 x Aussie/3 x Oi barrack over the entire day.
No comments:
Post a Comment