20-20 cricket

No, I'm not referring to a small insect with good eyesight - Bree & I attended our first cricket match last night... well, we attempted to, but they canceled the match once they knew that two Americans were in the crowd.

Or maybe it was because of the torrential downpour that threatened to wash away "The Oval".

Perhaps others of you could use a cricket lesson - we certainly learned a great deal. Like in baseball, the object is to score points by hitting the ball either far or well placed. Unlike baseball, you can hit in any direction. If you hit the ball and it reaches the rope then you get four points. If you hit it over the rope, it's worth six points. If you hit it in play, you can run back and forth and get one run for every time you get to the other end... perhaps I'll finish writing out the cricket lesson someday.

For now, let it suffice to say that we enjoyed ourselves, but don't understand how people can watch cricket for five days straight. The match we attended would have been limited to 20 overs a side - we saw all 20 overs for one team, and the first 10 overs for the next team (by the way, only one team hits at a time and they do their entire hitting before they go to the field - one team batted for 2 hours!

We feel much more British now that we've been to the Oval - which was nothing like a million dollar American sports complex. The advertising was much simpler, the main part of the structure has to be decades old. But it did have luxury boxes.

Anyway, it's a late night at work, so I'm going to get back to the grind - let the debate continue on the great author Charles Dicken who founded our church - see comments below. It is the best of times.