IT IS CRICKET

The game of cricket may seem slow-paced to some, but it does not involve “a bat that the English call a wicket.”

It involves a bat that the English call a bat. The wicket is the target at which the bowler aims the ball, and which the batsman tries to protect.

Drake’s mistake would be roughly equivalent to an English theater critic referring to baseball as a sport “involving a bat that the Americans call a plate.”

MICHAEL PEARCE

Long Beach

Since no one knows how cricket is played, as a dubious public service we include the following from a famous English dishtowel that aims to explain the inexplicable:

“You have two sides, one out in the field and one in. Each man that’s in the side that’s in goes out and when he’s out he comes in and the next man goes in until he’s out. When they are all out the side that’s out comes in and the side that’s been in goes out and tries to get those coming in out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out. When both sides have been in and out including the not outs that’s the end of the game.”

For the real thing, there’s a free cricket match scheduled between the King’s Head Pub XI and a team from Fresno this afternoon in the Valley at Woodley Park in the Sepulveda Dam Recreation area. Bring your own Watneys and a good book.