Snow Cricket

Most Australians love cricket.  It's a sport watched by thousands of spectators over long hot summers.  I remember as a young girl watching day-night matches whilst we were on holidays at Coolum Beach.  My Mum, particularly in the last moments of a game, would anxiously watch the match and yell at the television. I imagine that this was with the misguided hope that the players would hear her and pay attention to her cries.  All my family however, would sit on tenterhooks and barrack for our team hoping that the number of runs would outweigh the number of balls left to play.  Often in a day-night match it would come down to the last ball which made a game very exciting to watch.  

So it is with this love of the game that we decided to introduce it to some hearty Canadians on Australia Day.  Although it was not hot, not sunny and the pitch was very icy, we set up the stumps in a mound of snow, shovelled the path for a pitch and tried to teach the rules of the game.  Playing cricket in this environment proved to be challenging for a few reasons.  1.  It was very cold and it didn't take long to lose sensation in our hands. 2.  Running on ice, snow and gravel is near impossible.  In fact hobbling is a more accurate term for getting to the other end of the pitch.  3. The inconsistent pitch surface wreaks havoc on the trajectory of the ball and therefore the batsman's anticipation of said ball is almost non-existent.  4.  Playing with a child's size two cricket bat, whilst great for the kids, makes batting for the adults a back breaking exercise.  

However we did have a great time and a a lot of laughs.  I think our friends thought we were making the rules up as we went along.  For anyone who knows the game of cricket you will know how confusing the rules really are.