A corner of a familiar playing field

Two Americans watched India play Pakistan in the 2011 World Cup and came up with a fabulously interesting and hilarious diary of the day's action. Very revealing and surprisingly insightful, too.

Some samples:

We are further told it's a perfect day for cricket, though we are not told what a perfect day for cricket is. Looks kind of sunny. Sunny is usually good for sports.


We are told that in ODI (One-Day International) tournaments, the team that bats first wins 72 percent of the time. This whole thing is basically NFL overtime. So when India wins the toss and elects to hit first, it strikes us as odd that the announcers would bother to discuss whether that decision is wise, but they do. They then do an interview with the Pakistani captain who does an admirable job of pretending that if he'd won the toss he would probably have just chosen to bat second anyway, but you can clearly tell he just died a little inside. Then they head over to the Indian captain who is handsome and oozes team leader. He is Steve Garvey-esque, and his interview is straight from the Nuke Laloosh school of sports clichés. Nate finds this vaguely disappointing, as he always wants foreign things to be more foreign than they usually are.

Thus enter the apparently-great Virender Sehwag, as well as Sachin Tendulkar, whose genius as a batter is put into words by the announcer thus: "Words cannot describe his genius."

The announcer now says, in re: Tendulkar's back-to-back luck-outs: "I can't think of another moment in cricket where more people had their hearts in their mouths on consecutive balls." Which is the dirtiest non-dirty thing ever said.

The graphics on this broadcast continue to be phenomenal. They have a thing called the "Wagon Wheel" — an overhead view of the circular pitch, which shows where the batted balls have gone. Their colored-line trajectories look like spokes on a (very poorly-made) wagon wheel, which show you just how many different directions these guys hit the ball. Sachin Tendulkar's wagon wheel's spokes would provide adequate structural integrity for an actual functioning wagon wheel.

The dropped ball has infuriated the emerging man-crush, Afridi. The commentators are tearing into the fielder for dropping a rocket line drive that he was trying to field, 15 yards away, with his bare hands. Dunno. Seems understandable to us. But we feel for Afridi.

A Pakistani fielder boots a batted ball and turns what would've been two runs into four. Afridi throws up his arms in disgust. Seriously, Afridi, don't ever play American sports. Your teammates would reward this behavior by filling a tube sock with oranges and beating you senseless.

The announcers are absolutely ripping these fielders for dropping wicked line drives. (Again, they are not wearing gloves. Not even, like, wide-receiver gloves.) Speaking of ripping, Umar Gul, who isn't even bowling anymore (bowlers are limited in how many total overs they can bowl, but can be brought in and out multiple times) is still getting ripped for wilting under pressure. Mike feels bad for Umar Gul. Failure on a big stage is an aspect of sports that transcends international borders.

Sachin Tendulkar, for all the drama, is still in there, hacking away. We are beginning to understand how good he actually is.

It hardly seems fair that one team gets to bat in the day time, while the other team has to bat in twilight and then nighttime, which it strikes us now might account for that 72 percent-of-teams-batting-first-end-up-winning phenomenon.

When Tendulkar plays in the field, he wears a large, khaki-colored, floppy hat. Like, that a lady would wear while gardening. This is apparently legal.

"The key for the Indian side is to take wickets," says one of the announcers, a Dan Fouts-level obvious observation that completely obliterates any romantic notions Mike had about poetic color guys in other countries.

In stark contrast to their opposite numbers, the Indian fielders look super strong. While Pakistan several times either booted balls, allowing India to pick up extra runs, or botched them so severely that they scooted right past and rolled all the way to the boundary, India is grabbing everything cleanly. It's also doing something called "crowding," which is exactly what it sounds like — essentially playing the infield in, all the way around, confident that players can snag the little grounders that sometimes lead to single runs, forcing Pakistan to either gamble recklessly or remain scoreless.