Boys and their Balls - Part 22

 Cricket

If baseball is the classic American game, then cricket is the classic English game.  The English have been playing cricket for a while.  There was a reference to it in an English court case in 1598.

I made the gif above from a series of photos called "Nude man playing cricket, batting and drive" from Eadweard Muybridge's 1887 book Animal Locomotion.

Cricket is played primarily in Great Britain and some former British colonies, including Australia, India, Pakistan, South Africa, and the West Indies.  Like baseball, there's a pitcher (called a bowler).

Above: fast bowler Chris McCabe on the Sunshine Coast Scorchers team, from an Australian naked calendar.

And there's a batter (called a batsman) and a catcher (called a wicket-keeper).  But that's where the similarity to baseball ends.

The thing in the middle is called a wicket.  (The term "sticky wicket" comes from this game.)  The wicket has three "stumps" (vertical poles), with two horizontal "bails" balanced on top of them. There are actually two wickets, one at each end of the "pitch", 22 yards apart, and two batsmen, one by each wicket.  The bowler (pitcher) tries to hit the stumps so the bails fall off, in which case the batsman is out.  The batsman tries to hit the ball with a bat that has a flat, rectangular face, to prevent this from happening.

Above: a page from the Burscough Cricket Sports and Social Club Calendar, 2014, another British naked calendar.  We'll see more from this calendar tomorrow.

If the batsman hits the ball, then both he and the other batsman run to the other wicket, passing each other.  If they get there before the other team can return the ball to the wicket, then they score a run.  If the other team is taking longer to retrieve the ball, the two batsmen can keep running back and forth between wickets, scoring more runs.

Above: batsman Scott Milini in the Sunshine Coast Scorchers naked calendar.

If the batsman hits the ball past the boundary of the field, it's kind of like a home run in baseball.  It automatically counts as four or six runs (depending on whether the ball hits the ground before going past the boundary), and the batsmen don't have to run back and forth.

Above: English professional cricket players James Anderson, Stuart Broad and Alastair Cook.

You know how some people complain that the game of baseball is too slow-moving?  Well, a game of cricket can last for days, with the game being suspended before it gets dark and resuming the next day.

Above: Australian cricket player Shane Watson. 

Because the games can last so long, there are special rules about suspending play for lunch, tea, and drinks.  Leave it to the English to have a sport where they suspend play to have tea!

Above: English cricket player Chris Tremlett posed naked for Cosmopolitan magazine. 

We end with model Jacob Hoxsey in his cricket gear.  He's not a professional cricket player, but he's certainly an unashamed male.