A Day On the Cricket Pitch

If you Google “What to do in Melbourne?” you will get the The Melbourne Cricket Grounds as one of the top answers. This facility was built for the 1956 Melbourne Olympics and holds over 100,000 people. They can pack the place for international cricket so you can bet that cricket is a big thing here. We had never seen a game and had no clue what the rules were but this did not deter us from enjoying the sport. After a visit to the library to get kids books explaining cricket we were off to a national one day game. It’s important that it was a one day game because typical games can be about 5 days and I don’t think our enthusiasm would hold out that long. The game we attended was between Victoria and Tasmania. It was not an international game and so we did not get to see the place packed out. I’ll spare you the details on how it's played but we had a great time deciphering what was happening and cheering at all the appropriate times. We had some good laughs at the positions they play – silly mid off, long leg, gully, slip.

Three and a half hours and 290 runs later Tasmania’s inning was over and it was time for tea before Victoria came to bat. This was also our time to leave for dinner. We learned the next day that the Victoria Bushmen lost. Pity.