More typical would be the North Sydney Oval. Harper applied for membership for his son, who will likely get his seat around the year 2000. There are 80,000 people now waiting to become members so they can watch cricket in the summer and Australian Rules Football in the winter.Īmerican Bill Harper, a resident of Kauai, Hawaii, recalls that he applied for membership in 1939. Even with the expansion, there will not be enough seats to meet the demand. In Melbourne, the game is played at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), which is being expanded to seat 110,000. The shepherds wouldn't recognize the grounds now. Tom McCullough, director of the Australian Gallery of Sport, says the game dates back to the middle ages, when shepherds threw a leather ball that another shepherd would try to hit with his crook. In a way, that might be closer to the roots of the game. You either go to the pub or play cricket," explains Ian Kirk, who has only played on the dirt pitches of Wangaretta, Victoria. "Cricket in the country is more social than serious. The game is even played in the bush on pitches (fields) used as fodder by kangaroos. The Cricket Association of New South Wales estimates there are 200,000 active players in the state. Within each state there are different levels of play as well, ranging from age 10 to age 70. This 19-game series (each game lasts four days) continues to the final on April 1. 1 with the start of matches for the Shefield Shield, Australia's version of the World Series. The national season opened up in mid-October and moved into full swing Nov. The finals are on March 25 and the winning team takes home $37,800. It will mark the first time South Africa has played international cricket since 1970 and its first official sports outing since sanctions were lifted last year. 22, nine teams - including South Africa - will compete in a World Cup, played every four years. India and the West Indies are Down Under for a series of matches. In Australia, this is a summer filled with the sound of leather on wood (bats are made from English willow). "It's really our only national game," says Ian Johnson, who captained Australian national teams from 1946 to 1956. And few countries play it harder or more fanatically than Australia, where 550,000 men and 12,000 women play the sport. Games are on television and women are allowed to join most cricket clubs, which used to be all-male.įor better or worse, cricket is approaching the 21st century. In some matches, cricket players are as colorful as parrots some matches are over in hours, not weeks and some players suit up for A$250,000 (about $189,000) a season, not for honor. Today, as the headlines say, it's "Blazing Stumps."
The game built "character" in men whose destinies lay beyond the Khyber Pass.
YES, there was a time when cricket was played by gentlemen wearing pure white linen.
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