Cricket

I learnt a lot last night.

There's this game called cricket.  And it seems that one person throws a ball at another person, who tries to hit it.  If they hit it the wrong way, yet another person might catch it.  If they hit it the right way, they get to run backwards and forward between some sticks.  If the ball gets hit a really long way, they get what they call 4 runs, but nobody runs at all.  They just walk to the middle and give each other high fives.

There's another wrinkle - if the ball gets hit over the boundary thingy without touching the ground they get 6 runs.  Nobody runs, but everyone gets incredibly excited - except the people standing around doing what they call fielding.

Are you with me so far?

But there's a catch (no, not catching the ball), if the person who is throwing the ball is really really clever, he can miss the person trying to hit it and hit the sticks behind him instead.  Then he's out, and the fielders get very excited, and the  person who didn't hit the ball looks miserable and starts trudging back to where he came from.

There's quite a bit of excitement going on one way or another.

I don't see why they just can't throw the ball and have a dog bring it back to them.  It'd save an awful lot of running about in the heat.