An American at the cricket
Hadley Freeman takes some time out to watch a game between Authors Cricket Club and the Shepperton Ladies Cricket Club, and is quite baffled just as she is with some other British peculiarities
What I mainly learned, though, was that, contrary to my hopes, one cannot grasp the rules of cricket through osmosis. No, nor through flinty if squinty-eyed observation neither. So instead of talking knowledgably about wickets and stats, as I fully imagined myself doing by the fourth hour, the whole experience was somewhat akin to the (one) time I went to an opera: beautiful, to watch, rather elegant, to observe but utterly, utterly incomprehensible to me.
Siddhartha Talya is a senior sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo