The Sporting Life

Watching American TV, it's easy to fall into the notion that the only sports that matter to the world are football, baseball, basketball, and NASCAR. How interesting, then, to spend the last couple of weeks watching CNN International's half-hour "World Sport" broadcast, where references to the "Big Four" are few and far between. Football? No mention that I saw of the "historic" Ohio State/Michigan game, and about 15 seconds on the Monday night pro game. Basketball? Another 15 seconds, covering one game, with the emphasis on artistic dunks. NASCAR? Nada. I'll reserve comment on baseball until I travel abroad in-season, but I doubt it fares much better. What you do see is lots and lots of soccer. And then some more soccer. And then lots of cricket.

As a kid I played soccer, so I at least know the fundamentals and can appreciate a good corner kick. But cricket is just obtuse, as evidenced to me by this passage from the print edition:

Farhat (70 not out) shared substantial partnerships with Younis (56) and Yousuf (56 not out) to steer Pakistan to a comfortable 213 for two at the close on the fourth day, just 21 runs short of making West Indies bat again.

Now, obviously, somebody knows what this means, but for me, reading this is like reading a foreign language. And like most Americans, I barely speak our national dialect of English — anything else is just Greek to me.