I don't know if my fellow one-to-one teachers have had this experience, but on more than one occasion a learner has said to me brightly at the start of a lesson "Can you tell me about cricket today please? Is it true that it really lasts 5 days?". He (it's usually a 'he', but not always) then settles back for an easy 'listening' lesson, knowing that there is no short way to explain this somewhat bizarre game. This is especially so when the learner comes from a country where there is no 'summer' game such as baseball where at least you have some sort of concept of batting and scoring runs.
These thoughts came to mind with the arrival in the post today of this year's cricket programme for Oxford University, whose home ground is the University Parks, just off the Banbury Road in North Oxford for those who don't know. I don't really recall now why I'm a member of the OU Cricket Club: after all it's pretty easy to see a match - there's no charge whether you're a member or not. The only advantage is that you can almost always sit down as you have the right to sit in the pavilion. This also means you can keep out of the rain - but they don't play when it rains anyway, so that's perhaps a limited advantage.
I'm not going to explain the rules here, except to say a match involves two teams of eleven players, who wear white shirts and long white trousers, and that while it can last 5 days, 3 is more common, and even 1 for a 'limited' overs' match.
Sport in the UK has become much more professional over the years with both rugby and cricket going this way in relatively recent times, and this has had an effect on the fixture list in the Parks. Oxford and Cambridge, dating back to 'Chariots of Fire' times, used to provide many of Britain's top sportsmen; and indeed with the public schools some might say they were the bastion of the 'true' amateur spirit in sport. Oxford used to play almost entirely 'first class cricket', i.e. against the County teams, but a few years ago the combination of professionalism in their opponents and university tutors hesitant about allowing their students 3 days off just to play sport caused a decline in competitiveness in these matches; so much so that the cricket authorities decreed that unless Oxford agreed to field a combined team with neighbours Oxford Brookes University it would lose its first class status. This merger now has now taken place, and although team lists are not normally available at the ground these days, enquiries reveal that around 9 of the 11 players in a typical match today are Brookes men - 'not quite cricket' the purists might say.
So, what should we tell our students? The easiest thing, rather than getting bogged down in explanations of 'leg before wicket' or 'silly mid off' is to point them in the direction of the Parks and tell them that this season there are a couple of early season first class (3 day) matches: 1 - 3 April against Nottinghamshire and 7 - 9 April against Warwickshire. If they ask how the England team is doing these days, tactfully change the subject, pointing out that we're doing the second conditional today.
