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[OM] Re: (OT) stopping

Subject: [OM] Re: (OT) stopping
From: om4t@xxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Thu, 01 May 2008 13:02:17 -0300


Not a bad commentary on cricket and especially one by a Maniac :-)
 

jh

----- Original Message -----
From: Bob Whitmire <bwhitmire@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thursday, May 1, 2008 10:57 am
Subject: [OM] Re: (OT) stopping

> 
> Actually, John, it's a term from the game of cricket. You see,  
> crickets are very annoying creatures. When they get into the 
> house,  
> they can make a horrendous racket. But they also have the 
> unnerving  
> quality of falling silent at just the right moment to prevent the  
> seeker from discovering their hiding places. (You wondered where 
> the  
> seekers came from in the Harry Potter books? That's right, cricket 
> 
> hunters, or, as we know them, batsmen, though Ms. Rowling took 
> some  
> liberties with the concept with that whole broom flying thing.)
> 
> In Jolly Olde many years ago, some chaps got together to discuss  
> their large country manors filled with chirping crickets. Sleep  
> depravation was becoming a problem. In true English tradition, 
> they  
> decided the best approach would be a competition. They dressed in  
> white so as to be more easily visible in the dark, and chose as 
> their  
> weapon a long flat board with a handle, which they called a bat, 
> so  
> called because one of their number, before the rules of the game  
> could be settled upon, thumped a passing bat out of the air with 
> his  
> stick. (History has taken the identity of this gentleman, but  
> tradition holds that he was a progenitor of the later, much 
> greater,  
> Sir Donald Bradman.)
> 
> The bat is particularly well suited not only for squashing 
> crickets  
> on cold English stone floors, but also swatting them out of the 
> air,  
> as noted by the bat-swatting incident which resulted in the name 
> of  
> the device. Because of its shape, it's also useful for smashing  
> crickets that hide behind objects of furniture, which are lumped 
> into  
> the broad category of stumps for purposes of simplicity and clarity.
> 
> So after our chaps got dressed in white and tossed back a few gin-
> and- 
> tonics, they set out to smash crickets. One person on the team was 
> 
> designated as the cricket collector. He carried a basket, called a 
> 
> wicket, to put the shattered corpses in so as to determine which 
> team  
> won the competition. But crickets are resilient creatures, and 
> just  
> because one has been smashed flat by a bat does not necessarily 
> mean  
> it's dead. So the wickets were lined with an adhesive substance to 
> 
> keep the crickets from being able to crawl out. Hence the term  
> "sticky wicket."
> 
> At the end of the evening, the wickets were collected and the 
> cricket  
> corpses counted, and more gin-and-tonics were consumed.
> 
> Of course the modern game bears little resemblance to the game of 
> its  
> origin, but isn't that the way of it all?
> 
> I hope all of this clears everything up for you. If you have an  
> further questions, you might address them to our brethren from the 
> 
> Commonwealth. This little note pretty well exhausts my knowledge 
> of  
> cricket.
> 
> Helpfully yours,
> 
> --Bob Whitmire
> www.bwp33.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On May 1, 2008, at 9:05 AM, jgettis81@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> 
> > Batsman.  Is that some Australian dude that catches bats with 
> his bare
> > hands?
> 
> 
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