Getting Sporty At Lord's

Well, I can say I have now fulfilled a dream of mine: to play at Lord's Cricket Ground. Of course I was playing dodgeball. Yeah, dodgeball, like in that movie. How did I end up playing in a major dodgeball tournament with teams from all over the UK competing at the legendary home of cricket? Good question. Life is funny sometimes.

I came in to work on Monday recharged from my holiday and sorting through my email when one of our directors sent around a question asking if anyone wanted to play in a dodgeball event. The Mail on Sunday (a newspaper) and Everyman (a cancer charity) organized a dodgeball tournament. At Lord's Cricket Ground. How many chances in life do you have to do that? So of course I said, 'hell yes!'

We arrived early and went right to the bar in true British fashion. The team started getting soused (I laid off, having come from a raucaus company party the night before) and we went to practice. Dodgeball is great fun because it's easy to pick up: the rules are simple, it doesn't take a hell of a lot of athletic prowess, and games go quick, so noobs like us could take part without a problem. Of course there are teams who play regularly and (maybe?) professionally - the Leicester City Ligers were there representing, among others. And the costumes aren't a joke either: there were teams dressed as ninjas, in pajamas, and in viking hats.

I'd love to say that in the spirit of true underdogs we rose to the top and won the tournament, but alas we had our proverbial asses handed to us in pretty short order. We were, in the parlance of this generation, pwned. By the team in PJs. So yeah. But it was a great time. Here's a video of what a game looks like (the single game we won), and pictures are on my Flickr stream.

The Best Way to Learn

They say the best way to learn is to involve yourself in something, so to learn the sport of cricket I invested in a 10-pound copy of Brian Lara Cricket 2007 for the old Xbox 360. Actually go out and play cricket? Perish the thought. A video game of cricket? Heck yeah!

Cricket seems like a great game in theory, much like baseball is a great game. It's the kind of game you enjoy watching live, having a chat with your friends and a beer and some unhealthy food and sitting out in the sun and generally enjoying yourself. Cricket seems like this (except a game can take five days). Plus it's subtle. It seems like a sport of subtlety. Kind of like the Go of sports, if you will. Complex and incomprehensible to the observer.

I haven't taken it out of its wrapper yet, but I'm looking forward to some quality time learning how to play the most mysterious of sports.

Europe / America: On Sports

Sports are Serious Business no matter where you are. Some places, sports is more serious business than other places. A lot of people think Americans are really serious about their sports. After all, we turn out by the hundreds of thousands to watch sports where pansies in pads try to move a ball around and take breaks every 30 seconds, sports where fat men try to hit balls with sticks, sports where skinny men and butch women try to hit really small balls with really long sticks, sports where tall men try to put brown balls through laundry bags, and sports where drunken Canadians on ice skates hit each other and something resembling a hamburger patty with long sticks.

But say what you will about American sports: when our favorite NASCAR driver loses a race, you don't see thousands of rednecks trying to run each other over in the parking lot afterwards.

Sadly it seems that in Europe sports can be pretty Serious Business to the point where people can be really badly hurt.