The All Singing All Dancing Cricket on Ice

I watched ice cricket for the first time over the weekend.  Largely, it must be admitted, out of curiosity.  "What is ice cricket?" I'm pretty sure I don't hear you ask?  Exactly what it sounds like.  Eager to spread the reach of cricket to nations which don't normally play it somebody arranged a game of cricket on ice in the middle of the Swiss Winter.

I'm sure you can see the problems.  Firstly, its Switzerland and its Winter!  Switzerland is famous for having a lot of snow clogged up and down as opposed to the nice green flat that cricket is traditionally played on.  Given the difficulty in procuring a patch of flat ground not already covered by chalets or six feet of snow perhaps it isn't surprising that they decided to play it on a lake.  That must have seemed like a brilliant idea, here the freezing (literally) cold would be an advantage since the water was conveniently solid.  So a chunk of lake was marked out as a cricket field and a pitch made of wood (yes, you heard me) was inserted into the ice so that at least the bowlers and batsmen could move without immediately falling over.

All of this took place in St Moritz.  At least it could have been St Moritz, it might have been St Bernard or St Gotthard or some other Swiss located saint.  Whichever one of them has a wacking big lake located conveniently nearby anyway.  Various cricketers were dragged out of retirement or winding down their careers playing for the Balochistan second XI and dumped in the middle of a snow drift and told to get on with it.  The commentators all appeared to be Indian or Pakistani and the commentary consisted of them agreeing with each other about how freaking cold it was.  Yes, it's Switzerland, in Winter!  They mentioned the cold so much I thought I'd changed to the weather channel by mistake.

We were assured by the commentators in those brief moments when they could be dragged away from their temperature analysis that an incredible amount of effort had been put in to produce a viable cricket ground (lake?) and that everything was working well.  It has to be admitted that I didn't see anyone drown so that's a positive although I think the credit for that goes to the Swiss weather rather than the organisers of the match.  Soon eleven desperately cold and miserable men (mostly from the subcontinent) had been herded on to the ice and, before they could escape, umpires and batsmen somewhat reluctantly joined them.  The match was on!

So how was it, this bold attempt to introduce the game of cricket to people who had never played it for the very best of reasons?  It was rubbish.  The bowlers (apart from one brave soul who took most of the wickets) were wearing gloves.  Everybody was wearing enough clothing to make the thing look like a party for michelen man cosplayers (I'll bet there are some).  The first ball came down, the batsman hit it smartly between a couple of the fielders who remained riveted to the spot too afraid to move.  The batsmen then waddled down the astroturf covered, wooden pitch to complete the "run" before one of the fielders moved gingerly to where the ball had come to rest in a mound of snow and retrieved it.

And so it went on.  By the time the first few overs had been completed I was glad of the weather commentary because it was so much more interesting than what was happening on the pitch.  Things did pick up a little as the fielders got a little more confident about moving about on ice (or were simply afraid they would freeze to death if they stayed immobile) wickets fell, sixes were hit there was even a waddle out.  The waddle out incidentally was Michael Hussey who obviously hasn't saved any of the money he made when he was playing cricket for Australia.  The whole thing was rather like cricket with all of the exciting bits removed.  Think about that for a moment.  It was a bold experiment and everybody got a trip to St Anton (or wherever) presumably at the organisers expense but I can't imagine it catching on.  It would be like holding the next Winter Olympics at Lords.

On an unrelated note I see in the news a few days ago that some woman in America flushed her emotional support hamster down a toilet after it was refused permission to go on a plane.  I suppose I'm a deeply unworthy person but I'm laughing even as I type the sentence.  I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that the hamster wasn't adequately filling its emotional support duties.  Possibly next time they could furnish the young lady with a responsible behaviour aardvark.  At least it would be more difficult to flush.