Caught in the act on a drive-by

The boys wanted to train for their track and field events today. So we went in search of a track where I could time them and exhort them onto deeds my tired old body could never manage just by being the stern voice of authority. There was a meet at the first track we went to. So we drove to a second neighborhood park. A cricket match was being played there. The boys ran around for a bit and I took photographs.

Being an astute observer of life, I quickly realized these guys were pretty good. It's the trained journalist in me, I guess. Even though this was in a neighborhood park, with about 50 people watching, it turns out this was a first class cricket match between Wellington and Central Districts. I don't know why they were playing in Karori on a public park, perhaps it has something to do with the main stand at the Basin Reserve being declared "earthquake prone."

As Morgan ran around the track - he later said he "ran circles around the cricketers" - I continued to take pictures. I was surprised when the Wellington batsman S.J. Murdoch was caught by wicketkeeper Jim How off the bowling of R.F. Bradenhurst. It's actually a lot cooler than it looks: to capture the wicket of a first class cricket player on a drive-by doesn't happen often.

If that paragraph didn't make any sense to you, let me pass on a brilliant description of how cricket is played:

"You have 2 sides; a team that's in and a team that's out. Two men in the team that's in go out and when one of the men who's in is out the next man goes in until he's out. When they are all out; the side that's out comes in and the side that's been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out.

"When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out are trying to get him out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in. There are two men called umpires who stay out all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out. When both sides have been in and all the men have been out and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game."

That's the wonderful game of cricket

But the boys didn't want to stick around, so we headed off before I had the chance to explain the game further to them.