Beach Cricket

I spent my Sunday at Maroubra Beach. The sun was screaming, the crowds were hungry, and the stage was set for an exciting professional Beach Cricket finale. As the name suggests, it was cricket. But on the beach. (Beach on a hot day = awesome). The first match was between Australia and England. Australia won the match against England, but then lost the final match against New Zealand.

To give a little more background and insight into what the day of beach cricket entailed: beach cricket is to cricket as the homerun derby is to baseball. The game is simplified and faster than it's respective parent, and there's a boatload of scoring. From what I hear, beach cricket is more fun for the spectators, mostly because it's - at the beach.

In normal cricket, the field looks like a big oval - not the diamond shape of a baseball field. In the middle of the field are 2 "wickets", spaced about 22 yards apart on a strip called "the pitch". A bowler (pitcher in baseball), bowls toward the batsman, who hits the ball. If the batsman doesn't get out, he runs to the other wicket while the fielders try to get the ball. Each sprint between the wickets counts as a "run". In between innings, the teams break for lunch and some matches can last for 4-5 days - sometimes without a result! The match is won by the team with the most runs, which can often be 200-300 runs.

Cricket isn't quite the money and media-driven sport that baseball is in America, but it still has more of an international following than.baseball. It's the 2nd most popular sport in the world, behind soccer. Behind crocodile wrestling, cricket is the number 1 sport in Australia. Instead of throwing around a football or Frisbee at a beach, it's more common to see kids playing cricket instead.

As you can see in the video, we had a big change in the weather towards the end of play. From a ridiculously hot mid-morning and early afternoon to a rainy, breezy afternoon - and my first Sydney beach storm. Australia hits one over the fence in the video, a 6 pointer.