Slow Ball

Hong Kong may have reverted to Chinese control this week, but Anglophiles can take solace in the knowledge that the sun still has not set on cricket.

Oy vey, to use an old British expression, does it endure.

For colonials, worldwide cricket is more than a singing bug, it is a mind-set, a passion, and, as I discovered earlier this week, a dreadfully slow sport.

I took a trip down to Woodley Avenue Park for the Independence Cup, an international exhibition tournament, to see what all this cricket business is about.

The Southern California Cricket Assn. is sponsoring the event, which runs through Sunday, in an effort to raise the profile of the world’s second most popular sport in the land of slam-dunks, gridirons, peanuts and popcorn. Three national teams are in attendance from India, Jamaica and the United States and a fourth, composed of Southern California’s best players, is representing the 36-team association.

I decided to take a staunchly American attitude in my investigation of this great pastime, which originated in England and bowled through the Empire faster than a ball through a wicket. Stoically self-reliant and stubbornly ignorant, I resolved to sit through an entire game without so much as a “what the heck is going on?” Ah, if only it were so simple.

First of all, cricket players do not have games--they have matches, as in tennis. And hours after my arrival at the cricket fields, I discovered that one does not just sit through a cricket match. One lies and paces and talks and leaves and returns throughout a cricket match. In fact, traditional cricket matches can take five days. That’s a lot of peanuts.

Basically, cricket is a lot like baseball.

You get a bunch of guys called batsmen who take turns standing in the middle of a big circular field trying to guard one of two “wickets”--or bits of wood balanced atop a row of three poles--from a “bowler,” or pitcher. The bowler trots toward the batsman like a high jumper and then whirls his arm around spastically before releasing the ball at upward of 90 mph. Often the ball ricochets off the ground. In cricket this is a perfectly good throw; in America we call this a wild pitch.

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Each batsman wields a paddle-like “bat” and wears pads and masks akin to LAPD riot gear. A batsman protects his wicket and tries to hit a “four” (a ground ball out of the circle) or a “sixer” (a home run), without popping up the ball and getting it caught by opponents. After the ball is hit, the batsmen run back and forth between wickets. One batsman can be up for hours at a time.

As I said, cricket is nothing like baseball.

Pat Patnaik, manager of the Southern California team, says a true cricket player must be born to this complex game, as he was in his native India.

“There, it is a passion, a way of life. . . . It is a religion,” Patnaik said. Parliaments in India and Pakistan, for example, have been known to recess in deference to big cricket tournaments. Cricket players there, though not paid as much as NBA superstars, take on deified status, as in the case of the legendary Imran Khan, a Pakistani who has been touted as a viable candidate for prime minister in his country’s next election.

“It’s a gentlemen’s game, it’s a principled game. If you notice even the colors worn by the players are those of a gentleman,” said Antonio Wellington, 46, poking at the dreadlocks bundled under his cap.

Just as Wellington promised, the cricket players in Woodley Park wore the prerequisite white and could be distinguished from one another on the field only by the color and shape of their disparate hats. Off the field, players waiting their turn at the wicket sprawled out on the grass, often sleeping in the shade of trees. Outfielders, apparently unconcerned by the unfolding match, chatted with spectators as they watched for sixers. Reggae music and the scent of curry floated over the fields.

But just as I forgot that I was at a sporting event, a spectator called out to me in lilting Jamaican patois. “Sir, would you please step aside.”

No “Down in front!” or “Move out the way!” No expletives. No fisticuffs.

It’s enough to make you weepy.

But I began to wonder if such a genteel sport could fly in a nation that is home to crotch-grabbing baseball players, cannibalistic boxers and the World Wrestling Federation. After all, cricket is not exactly an extreme sport--unless you mean extremely long.

What would happen, for instance, if Monday Night Cricket replaced Monday Night Football? Would we Americans lay down our remote controls, settle back into our easy chairs and lounge for a weeklong match? Think of what that would do to the American economy. Think about how many six-packs that would take. Think of the divorce rate.

But David Sentance, the Southern California Cricket Assn.’s vice president and a British expatriate, tried to put me at ease.

“American life moves too fast,” Sentance said. “Cricket is a sport that helps you develop the poetic side of your nature.”

I guess all those hours standing around in a field could make one wax poetic--after all, you could read Homer in the time it takes to complete a match.