Why I am no longer a real cricket fan.

When I first came to live in England I found one of the most difficult adjustments to make was the lack of baseball. Oh sure, I missed my family and the food was different, but it was baseball that really hurt. It was not that baseball was inaccessible. I could get scores and even radio commentary from the newly emergent Internet. I could also stay up late and watch ESPN broadcasts on Channel 5 (although they did finish at about 4am). The problem was, though, after staggering into work with bloodshot eyes after staying up to 4am, I HAD to talk about it. Like an amputee who's missing leg still itched, I would reflexively start telling someone about the great double play, or squeeze bunt or something had happened on TV the night before and then realise, slowly, that they had no idea what I was talking about. Unless I was really lucky, they really didn't want to know either. Sometimes I would meet someone who was interested, and would humour me while I explained the infield fly rule to them. You can only get so much pleasure from talking to people who ignorant of the basic rules of the game, though. It was a great shock to me to realise it, but being a fan is a social experience. Following a baseball team had no joy if done in isolation.

And so, I turned to Cricket. The 1999 Cricket World Cup had just finished, and although the sport was a complete mystery to me, I was able to determine that cricket fans and baseball fans have a lot of similarities. Both sports are full of statistics, records, complicated rules, obscure strategies, history and tradition. Once I started to learn the rules, I found I really liked cricket. One morning I got up, as usual, at 6 am to eat my cornflakes. It was cold and miserable outside. Rain was beating against the kitchen windows. I turned on the radio and, to my utter joy, was able to hear the commentary of England playing Sri Lanka in a beautiful tropical setting. I listened every morning of that test match. By the end I was hooked.

Soon I had a shelf full of Wisden's Cricketers Almanacks and a new radio that with a long wave band so that I could listen to Test Match Special. I went to any match I could anywhere, from villiage teams to an England vs Australia One Day International. I went to two matches at Lords (the home of cricket) and once at one of these matches explained the Duckworth - Lewis scoring method to an English person. During the 2002-03 Ashes series in Australia I listened through the night to every test match. I would stagger into work each morning after with bloodshot eyes, of course, but I was not the only one.

Cricket itself is a fantastic sport, and I still retain my fascination with the intricacies of the game, but.............. being a cricket fan is not easy.

I do not mean the sort of 'not easy' you run into as a non-league football supporter. I'm not talking about hardship. I am talking about logistical difficulty.

There is precious little cricket on television unless you subscribe to Sky. When I first began to follow cricket most home England test matches were on Channel 4, and some domestic one-day matches were as well. So, I did at least get to see cricket played in the summer months. Going to matches was not easy though. At the time, the shortest version of Cricket was the 50 over match. This was short compared to the five day test match, but it still would take six to seven hours. Once I had children convincing the wife that I should miss an entire day's childcare to see some cricket was hard to do. I did not want to just follow England, so I adopted Goucestershire as my county club. I soon learned, though, that in order to follow them with any regularity I was going to need to become unemployed. I got to a couple matches, but mostly I had to just read about my team in short articles in the paper each morning. Even radio coverage of domestic cricket is hard to get. Although I loved Cricket there were times when my status as a 'fan' seemed mostly theoretical.

Then, a few years ago, the English Cricket Board signed a very lucritive television deal with Sky Sports. I do not have a subscription to Sky. In order to get Sky and feel like I was getting good value from it I would need to watch a lot more television than I do now. I am not going to subscribe just to get Cricket. Slowly, over time, my attatchement to even the England team became more and more tenuous. One night, while listening to the Test Match Special commentary, I realised I no longer even knew what several of the players looked like. I knew their names, but they could have passed me in the street without me even realising I had missed an autograph opportunity. I did not mean for it to happen, but my love for cricket began to wither. I do not feel guilty about it. I feel like cricket gave up on me, actually.

I have not given up on cricket entirely, though. I still follow it from a distance. I have so far listened to both of the Ashes tests so far this summer and am enjoying seeing Australia come unstuck. But, so far, I have only been reading the paper and listening on the radio.

After a short period in the sporting wilderness I discovered Bath City. I didn't think I liked football before I went to my first Bath City match. I thought it was crass and ruined by too much money. I know now that only the Premiership is crass and ruined by too much money (but like Dallas, can be fun to watch from the distance). I have never looked back.

The Neverending Season

The football season never really ends. This has taken some adjusting to in my second year as a football supporter. Growing up as a sports fan in America meant changing sports every few months as one season ended and another one began. Oh sure, they sometimes overlap, but no season lasts more than seven months. Baseball begins in Spring and finishes in Autumn, (American) Football begins in early Autumn and finishes in late Winter, and Basketball begins in late Autumn and finishes in early Summer. Die hard baseball fans will still follow football and basketball, even if their level of interest does not match that of their favourite sport. What else are they going to do for five months of the year? As a result, most sports fans are just that: sports fans. They might have one sport they prefer over others, they might follow college basketball but not really take much interest in the NBA. It is rare, though, to meet someone who only watches one sport. I'm sure there are some people out there like that, but to spurn one of the major sports entirely would come across as peculiar, and perhaps anti-social. [Please note: I cannot speak for hockey. I would not be surprised if most hockey fans only follow hockey as in order to follow hockey you need to be either a bit strange, Canadian, or perhaps, both.]

Not so in Britain! It took eight years of living in Britain before I finally got the football bug. A lot of things put me off, which I will discuss another time, but once you have it you can gorge yourself virtually without a break year round. My team, Bath City, finished its season in late April. Bath City play in the lower English leagues (six levels down from the top) and the season finishes earlier than for the top leagues. The Premiership season finished a month later, with the FA Cup, the traditional end of season fixture, taking place on 30 May. A mere 39 days later, Bath City had their first pre-season friendly against Cirencester Town (they lost - but pre-season friendlies don't really matter).

39 days without football?! You might wonder how a dedicated football fan can survive such sensory deprivation for so long, but if you wonder that then you really have never experienced the English 'closed' season. Nothing closes for real. First of all, the player transfer market gets as much or more coverage as the regular season of most other sports. Unless something really remarkable is happening (like England beating Australia in a cricket test) the back page of your favourite newspaper is more likely to feature an article about whether John Terry will move to Manchester City or who will be shoring up the defence at Spurs. And wait! There is still a lot of football played in this supposedly 'closed' season. South Africa has hosted a two-week tournament called the 'Confederations Cup' (the USA made the finals) and England have played two World Cup qualifiers. And speaking of the World Cup, next year the entire 'closed' season will be taken up with that, so there really will be no stop to football at all. If anything the excitement and coverage will be at its peak after this year's season finishes. Two years after that there will be the European championships (almost as big as the World Cup) that will also fill the gap that summer, so in actual fact there is only a 39 day gap every other year. And that 39 day gap, when it does come, is full of football anyway.

Football never stops. In fact, if FIFA had any control over the matter, I'm sure they would like to add an extra month or two to the twelve standard calandar months we have now just to fit in a few more fixtures.

This creates a real dichotomy in the world of British sports fans. There are football fans, who have very little time for anything else, and then there are the people at the margins who follow other sports. Oh sure, there are a very few people who follow all sports. I know some Bath City fans who stroll down to the Rec when City are away to watch Bath Rugby, and who can speak intelligently about cricket and Formula 1, but these are rare beasts. You would not feel comfortable in a conversation switching subjects from Bath City football to Somerset cricket without checking first to see if the person you were speaking to followed cricket. In America, if you were discussing the merits of the Dodgers starting pitching rotation with someone, you would not inquire if they knew much about basketball before talking about the Lakers. It would be insulting. It would be like asking someone if they could read before you discussed a book you had recently enjoyed.

Speaking of reading, if you have read thus far then maybe you might want to look out for further posts. I will be talking about my experiences as a Bath City fan in the upcoming season and explaining the differences between British and American sports. Stick around!