Beating India like a red-headed stepchild

For the last two weeks, India's national cricket team has been down here on "tour." I love that term, cricket is so proper. Anyway, they've been squaring off against the South African national team at various venues across the country every half week or so in one-day matches. One day cricket matches are a lot more fun to watch (and I realize I'm the only one that understands anything that's being said here) because they have limited overs of 50. That means you have to be more aggresive to score runs, since you only have a limited opportunity to do so. It's faster and it's more entertaining. The cricket that Americans know is the interminable 4 or 5 day matches where overs are unlimited and people will take an hour defensively batting balls away from the wicket before taking a real cut. That sucks.

But thank god we don't have that going on here. Instead it's limited overs! And South Africa has been kicking India's ass, which is surprising to a degree I guess, since the only thing Indians like better than Bollywood movies is cricket. Already in a best of 5 showdown, South Africa is up 3-0. Which effectively means they can take a piss the last two matches and no one will care. India has been so pathetic that in one of the matches they scored only 91 runs. One guy on South Africa scored more runs than that by himself in the same match.

Now despite the fact that South Africa has been killing the Indians, for the one person still left reading this, there is still trouble for South Africa. Their captain, Graeme Smith, is awful. He is the leadoff batsman for South Africa and in the first 3 matches he has produced run totals of 0:1:0. They even have rules in one day matches so that the first 2 batsmen have an easier time scoring! And I also can't stress how bad it is to lose a wicket that quickly.

I don't know what the American sports equivalent of this is, but it's like if Albert Pujols went 0-20 in the NLCS with 10 strikeouts or Michael Jordan going 0-20 in a playoff game. It just doesn't happen to a player who is on a national team. Hell, if you're reading this blog and you've ever played softball or baseball or beat your annoying neighbor's dog with a stick, than you could have done better than Smith over the last 2 weeks. Plus he doesn't bowl (i.e. pitch) for South Africa so he's essentially worthless. I could have captained South Africa for the first 3 matches and I don't think they would have done any worse. What's weird is although the sports media cares about this down here, he doesn't get a lot of shit, which I find surprising.

I haven't been watching cricket for long, but I do have the advantage of being an impartial observor, sort of like an alien coming down from Mars. And as a Mars alien watching cricket I can tell you one thing - Graeme Smith sucks.