For The Spanish, It's Just Not Cricket

Cricket is quite possibly the most stupid sport ever invented. It couldn't be anything other, given some of its arcane modes of batsman dismissal, arcane that is to all but the aficionado, and its archaic-sounding fielding positions. What is "silly mid-off" other than incredibly silly and indeed stupid, and you would need to be incredibly stupid to stand at silly mid-off as a hard round thing is being hit with tremendous force by someone with a hard wooden thing straight in your direction.

The Spanish have, in a rare act of historical sanity, managed to avoid cricket. Or had, until the MCC was formed in 1975. Not the MCC, but the Madrid Cricket Club. Legend has it that cricket has an altogether longer history in Spain - a "strong and rich history", according to the International Cricket Council, which dates back to the Peninsular War and British soldiers having a game or two to pass the time. The ICC is over-egging this history. Nothing much happened, cricket-wise, between 1809 and 1975, except possibly for a few beach games played by British tourists before they realised that most beaches in Spain, certainly in Mallorca, don't exactly lend themselves to playing cricket.

The development of cricket in Spain being relatively recent (and a recent history that includes the forming of the Mallorca Cricket Club in 1988), a national Spanish side has not exactly taken the sport by storm. Spain's most recent venture into the international arena (at least, the most recent I can unearth) was the European Division 2 Championship in 2011. Spain lost to Austria and Belgium, but beat Sweden and Greece and thrashed Malta, two bowlers with distinctly un-Spanish-sounding names, Talat Ali and Tanvir Iqbal, taking five and three wickets respectively.

It is the presence of non-Spanish names in Spanish national teams that gives the game away. It is hardly surprising that cricket is played at test level by countries where English is either the main language or one widely understood. You really can't expect countries with languages ill-equipped to define and translate concepts such as silly mid-off to truly get the point of the sport.

There is a Wikipedia page for "criquet" which lists "formas de hacer out", among which is leg before wicket. The Spanish explanation is basically correct, but it can't hope to do justice to the complexities of the LBW rule. It's the same in other languages. As a 14-year-old, I attempted the same explanation in German to the family I was staying with. And when it got to "bowl a maiden over", they had clearly come to the conclusion that cricket was a sport for lunatics. Mind you, I thought my improvisation of "ein Mädchen überzuwerfen" was a pretty decent attempt. Unfortunately, though, literally throwing a young girl over doesn't really get the point across.

A further reason, one imagines, for the stuttering development of cricket in Spain is a cultural one. How on earth would you explain the necessity to a Spaniard of "playing for tea"? And tea itself, as opposed to coffee, would not generally be high on the list of Spanish priorities in mid-afternoon, especially as the tea break is of only short duration and not the hour and a half normally required to take a cortado. There is another obvious cultural problem with this, which is that in mid-afternoon the Spanish would expect to be asleep and not expected to be standing around in the blazing sun, waiting to take evasive action as the hard round thing heads straight for them.

It is, therefore, no great surprise to learn that the qualifiers for the World T20 championship, currently taking place in the United Arab Emirates, do not include Spain. Mysteriously, they do include Italy; how they've managed to get into the group of sixteen non-test-playing countries, Lord alone knows. But if Spain were to break into the lower echelons of world cricket, then T20 might offer the opportunity. There is no need to worry about playing for tea in T20. Indeed, there is no need to worry about much of what cricket has traditionally placed as impenetrable obstacles. All that is required is to be able to hit the hard round thing with the hard wooden thing as hard and as often as possible. Even the Spanish should be able to figure this out.

But Spain will never be a world cricketing force. You have to have been born into the gloriously stupid culture of cricket to be so or to understand the sport. You'd never get a Spaniard to volunteer to field at silly mid-off. I would. And have. Ouch.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.