Cricket!
October 11, 2008

At the Durga Puja celebration I met Kym, who is the wife of the coach for the Bangladesh cricket team. She invited me to come to the game, and since I have wanted to see a game for about two years, I happily agreed!

Since she is a VIP, we got nice, air conditioned box seats right over the middle of the field. Kym tried to explain the rules to me. It seems a bit like American baseball, except the batters run back and forth between two sets of sticks (called wickets, though apparently there are six different meanings for wickets in the game!) instead of around bases. Each batter continues to bat until is gets out. Because of this, games can continue for days. The game that I was watching was a one day came, however, so it was capped at 50 overs. Even so, it was quite long and so we just arrived for the second half of the match where Bangladesh was batting. (New Zealand batted earlier in the day.)

The stands were packed and there was an air of excitement, because two days before (on the same day we went to the Durga Puja festival) Bangladesh had won their first cricket game in years. Sadly, they did not fare so well today...

Cricket Stadium
The stadium (as seen from our lovely air conditioned box seats!)


Batters
Batters running back and forth trying to score.


Scoreboard
The score board was very low tech! There were many guys standing behind it who updated it after every play.