I love hearing the cricket scores on the BBC world service in the evenings on MPR.

This is an actual cricket score report:
"New Zealand 150-5 (20 overs) beat India 149-6 (20 overs) by five wickets
New Zealand completed a 2-0 Twenty20 series victory against India after winning a superb match by five wickets.

India were put in and Virender Sehwag made 24 from 11 balls, before Yuvraj Singh smashed three fours and four sixes in 50 from only 34 deliveries.

Chasing 150, Jesse Ryder hit the first ball for six in an opening stand of 53 within five overs with Brendon McCullum but 12 were needed off the last over.
McCullum was dropped off the final ball and finished unbeaten on 69."

I know somebody here understands cricket and thinks I'm dense for finding this amusing. But I spent about four hours once trying to have a Sri Lankan explain cricket to me, and not even Wikipedia can really enlighten me.

Someday I'll get it, but in the meantime I'll enjoy the funny phrasing and random strings of input.

Dear God, that's a relief... for a second there I thought you were presenting a story problem which we'd be expected to solve.

PS - I'm driving the bus.

PPS - ...to Saint Ives.

I was in England for a month, and had cricket explained to me no less than 5 times to no avail. I liken it to Calvinball. Each game just makes up the rules as it goes.

It is a damn good excuse to sit in a pub and drink though.

It looks like someone else had frustration issues w/ Cricket scoring:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7920260.stm

-Dave

it's *not* a drinking game?

at some point in a very drunk state a tipsy royal shakespeare co actor explained it to me in a few minutes, and it made sense. of course after sobering up it made none.

i'll ask around i'm sure someone has a clue what it's about.....

curling scoring is also non intuitive, but not nearly as complicated.

i think i get it.

you've got a guy at each end with a lil stand of sticks.

someone throws a ball at their sticks, and they try to protect the sticks by batting it away.

if they bat the ball away, the guys at each end try to switch places. if they do it scores, and if they hit the ball really far they get a bonus.

every 6 balls the pitcher switches which set of sticks he's pitching at.

batters can get out, and then a new person from their team bats. once 10 of 11 batters on a team are out the other team takes a turn batting.

you're out if your sticks get knocked over, your hit is caught, or you're naughty.

cricket scoring is the only thing that i can think of that's more convoluted than the SuDoc system (which i'm pretty sure that it was conceived by drunken government publication librarians).

naw, my friend marc and i used to keep score for cricket (the darts game) with one in bin and one in hex. we'd alternate who was each every game.

that makes for sum fun.