The Other World Cup

As I mentioned in the last post, India’s hosting the Cricket World Cup right now. This is held every 4 years, much like the other, more important World Cup, which features a sport played outside the Commonwealth. Several countries usually host together, as seen now, with India co-hosting alongside Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Pakistan was originally in on the gig, but was stripped of that right after the Sri Lankan team got attacked while on tour in Pakistan (a series of five-day matches takes long enough that it qualifies as a tour). The last World Cup was hosted by the West Indies, which not only shares hosting duties amongst the islands, but also fields one unified team. England also competes alongside Wales, but not Scotland, and the Ireland team combines Ireland and Northern Ireland, playing under a weird flag. No troubles there.

Anyway, India’s going nuts about this. Because the matches last all afternoon and evening, wherever you go, every TV is tuned to whatever match is on. There are Nike billboards everywhere with Indian cricket players on them, too, which featured them in full clothing before the Cup started, then were replaced with the same player, but shirtless, once it started. Lays has a series of promotional potato chip flavors out, representing stereotypes of the major countries (England Grilled Cheese, South Africa Peri Peri Chili, West Indies Hot n’ Sweet Chili, etc.).

The Cup hasn’t been without its problems, though, and India has once again shown that it really can’t put on an event like this and meet international standards. The first major problem was that Eden Gardens, India’s largest and most hallowed Cricket stadium, underwent renovations for the World Cup which were not finished in time, resulting in it being declared unsafe for play. The first match for there, India-England, was moved to a much smaller stadium in Bangalore, resulting in severe ticketing problems, as well as bigger issues for the England fans who now had to switch all of their plans to Bangalore, rather than Calcutta. This hugely compounded a ticketing scandal that saw the vast majority of tickets given away for free to anyone chummy with the cricket people, and resulting in fighting as regular fans scrambled to scoop up the handful of tickets put on sale to the general public. As is typical, the Indian press didn’t report much on this, and people here seem oblivious to the scandal. One of my friends got free tickets to the final in Mumbai (for which virtually no tickets are available to the public), and was bragging about how she didn’t have to pay anything. I had to explain to her that no one’s paying to see the matches–most every ticket is free.

This all has huge shades of the debacle that was the Commonwealth Games, another every-four-year knockoff that’s only played in the Commonwealth. India got to host that back in October, and because the Indian press was in the tank for it, everyone here was under the impression that it was wildly successful. In reality, everything was sloppily thrown together at the last minute, with venues surrounded by pools of stagnant water in the middle of Dengue season. A footbridge collapsed, killing 25 people. The Athlete’s Village was uninhabitably filthy, only remedied after teams arrived and complained. Many of the city-wide infrastructure improvements remained unfinished even months after the games had taken place. And they had the same ticketing problems, with most of the tickets being given away to anyone well-connected. The problem there was that most of those free tickets went unused, resulting in the same fighting to snap up what was available, but with the stadiums also being half-empty for the events. And like the World Cup, most of this bad news was swept under the rug. A Times of India poll showed that, after the Games, over 80% of Indians believed that India had "arrived as a sporting nation" and should bid for the Olympics. I guess none of these Indians know much about the Olympics’ standards, or that India has only won 20 Olympic medals ever, and that the IOC cares about that. I wonder whether they know that, while many were hoping for China’s Olympics to somehow crash and burn, they actually pulled it off without a hitch.

With the Commonwealth Games, the line in the face of criticism is "The events went flawlessly." Things may not have been pretty, there may have been a few deaths, and they may have thrown it all together at the last minute, but the Games themselves were smooth. Such could be the saving grace of the Cricket World Cup, too: the cricket itself has been stellar so far. The high point, by far, was the England-India match, the one moved from Calcutta to Bangalore. To skip to the end of the story, the match ended in a dead tie. 338-338. After 8 hours of pure batting and high tensions, England posted the exact same total as their former colony had put up before them. This is still the only match I’ve watched in full, as it was the best showcase the sport could have put forth. As England chased a total that the announcers described would require a "miracle," they slowly but surely found themselves slightly ahead of India’s run total for the bulk of the overs. Around #40, they choked. Hard. Their good batters started going down like flies, eventually leaving them at the bottom of their order, needing 28 runs from 2 overs (12 pitches). After a miraculous series of sixes, England pulled out exactly 28 runs, for a sky-high 14 run/over rate, tying the match. The best part was that, while everyone was a little dazed at India’s tie, everyone knew that they’d just seen one of the best one-day games ever.

Most matches seem to be decided halfway through the first team’s turn at-bat–you know what they’re going to get, and you know if the other team’s capable of chasing it. This one was good to the last at-bat, showing, I think, that a sporting event can last just as long as it stays exciting. You could play football for a week if it stayed close and you had an infinite supply of cortizone. The thing is, we don’t play our sports for more than a couple hours, because we know most of them would get out of hand, and although it’s a rare moment in cricket when it’s good to the last bowl, they play all day anyway. The tournament itself is still up for grabs, and there’s always the chance of another stellar game. But to be honest, I’ll still be very glad to get home and see some hockey. I can discuss the merits of cricket, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t really compete with the other major spots. I think there’s a reason it’s only played in the Commonwealth.

20 minutes of highlights of the India-England match. Note that the sport requires 20 minutes of highlights. But it does give you some video of a real cricket match, and you also get to see Stumpy, the World Cup's mascot, at the beginning. England's run starts at about 17:30.

Cricket: The Sport of Gentlemen With a Day to Blow

It was bound to happen. Eventually I’d have to learn cricket. It’s not only the national sport in India, it’s the ONLY sport in India. Seriously. They don’t play anything else. And right now India’s hosting the Cricket World Cup, AND they’re favored to win it. So this place has cricket fever, and unlike polio, I did not get any booster shots against that. So I’m starting to come down with it. Kinda.

At its heart, cricket is very similar to baseball, and not just in the bat + ball department. It’s a sport anybody can play, it’s steeped in history, and it bridges blue and white collars. It is, however, even more repetitive than baseball, it lacks the complex managerial strategies of baseball, and each match takes about 7 hours. 7. Freaking. Hours. Seriously. And for the World Cup they use a shortened version of the game. The real deal takes up to 5 days, and is often played in a best-of-five series to boot.

I’ll write a brief post later about the one good cricket match I saw (the rest have sucked), but for now, I’ve had so many requests to explain cricket that I’m going to give it a go here.

Concept: Cricket is best compared to a home run derby, rather than a real baseball game. You get a whole bunch of at-bats, and you try to rack up as many points as you can. One team takes its whole turn at bat, sets a score, and then the other team goes and "chases" that score.

Batting Flow: You have 10 people in your lineup. The lead-off guy starts and takes pitches until he gets out, then the next guy takes pitches until he’s out. This continues until either all ten people get out or you go through 300 pitches, whichever comes first. Batters can last hundreds of pitches (this takes hours) if they’re consistent and strong, or they can get out immediately if they suck. I’ve seen both.

Scoring: After you hit the ball, you run back and forth between home plate and the single base. If you get to the base, you score one run. If you get there and back, it’s two, and so forth. If the ball makes it all the way to the outfield wall, it’s worth four runs, and if it’s a home run, it’s worth six. You can choose not to run at all (see getting out, below). To do that, you just stay at home plate after you hit, and you score zero for that pitch.

Getting Out: There are two easy basebally ways of getting out. First is the pop-out. Any time you touch the ball with the bat and it’s caught before it hits the ground, you’re out. The second is the force-out. If you’re caught between bases when the ball gets back, you’re out. There’s no such thing as a strike-out. If you whiff, you just score a zero on that at-bat. However, if you whiff AND the ball hits the stumps, you’re out. When you’re batting, you’re basically protecting the stumps, and the pitcher is trying to hit them. If he hits them, you’re done. These stumps are actually the home plate equivalent. To get forced out, a fielder has to touch the ball to the stumps before you cross the safe line. This can be done by throwing the ball straight into the stumps or manually touching the ball to the stumps. Note, then, that you aren't really running to a base--you're running a shuttle between two lines, and you're safe once you pass the line, even if you overrun it. The final meaningful way of getting out is called "leg before wickets." This is basically where you use your legs to protect the stumps, rather than your bat (because you whiffed and it hit your legs). If the umpire determines that the ball would have hit the stumps had it not hit your legs first, you can be called out. They have a really neat review system for this called "Hawkeye" that’s very similar to tennis–it predicts where the ball would have gone based on its trajectory when it hit you.

A Nuance to Batting: To throw a wrench in things, there are actually two batters on the field at a time. One starts at first base, running the shuttle between bases opposite the batter. You only score when both players reach their base, and you can register the out by getting either runner out. These two batters form a "partnership" and actually trade off their at-bats. Every time the batter scores an odd number of runs, the other partner takes his place at bat. To illustrate: I hit a single and run to first while you run home. Now you’re the one at home plate, and you start batting again. I’m still in the game, not out, and will bat again as soon as you hit a single (or a triple). If my partner gets out, I stay in the game with the new guy and we form a new partnership. One consequence of this is that you try to have a right and left-handed batter in at the same time, forcing the pitcher to mix things up whenever the two switch places. Another consequence is that there are actually 11 people in your lineup (I lied earlier... sorry) because you have to have an extra guy to form the last partnership, otherwise you’d have only one guy on the field after 9 outs. That 11th guy usually REALLY sucks at batting.

A Nuance to Game Flow: Like I said, you bat until 10 outs or 300 pitches, whichever comes first. In fact, the game is divided into 50 "overs" of 6 pitches each, rather than just 300 pitches. After each over there’s a very short break and the fielding team is allowed to change pitchers/bowlers. "Runs per over" is the key statistic during a match. 6 is good (300 runs per game). 7 is very good (350). 5 is weakish. 4 or below is very weak.

Pitching/Bowling: The first thing you’d notice watching a game is that the pitches bounce before they reach the plate, meaning that spin becomes huge, and resulting in a wide variety of pitch types. Each bowler is allowed to pitch 10 overs, and they can only be switched between overs (you finish the over you start). The team captain picks who’s going to bowl each over, and there winds up being a lot of strategy in this, as every bowler is different.

Fielding: Everyone fields. All 11 of your guys are in the field at once. There’re like 100 different positions that fielders can assume, and you do a lot of shifting based on the batter. When you switch bowlers, you bring someone in from the field, and the old bowler goes back to his position, and people swap positions more to accommodate the switch. People, therefore, can typically play more than one position.

Lineup Composition: We’re getting more technical here. I think you could watch a match without really knowing this. You’ve got 11 guys in your lineup and in the field. Each bowler can only bowl 10 overs, so you need a minimum 5 who can bowl, and really you want six. So you wind up with 5 people who just bat, plus a couple who can bat and bowl, plus a few who’re bowling specialists but also have to bat. The major consequence here is that outs are really important, even if you don’t go all-out and don’t get to use up all 50 overs. In the first games I saw, I’d thought "Who cares that this guy’s out? He’ll get replaced by someone fresh, and there’s no chance of ending things because of the 10 outs–you’re pitching all 50 overs anyway." Outs are important because you want to get past the great batters at the top of the order. If you can spend your last 10 overs pitching to the schlub bowling specialists at the bottom of the order, you’re likely to give up far fewer runs, even if they don’t get out. The game may be about runs, not outs, but getting the right people out leads to less run production ability. Also, though, you do tend to mow these batters down. That is, once you get to the part of the lineup of mostly bowlers, they can start dropping like flies, and you can bring the game to a rapid conclusion.


I really think that if you read this and watch 15 minutes of cricket, you’ll have it down. I can’t say I particularly LIKE the sport, as it has severe limitations when it’s 7 hours long. It’s also, like I mentioned earlier, repetitive over those 7 hours and doesn't have baseball's managerial complexity. Further, while outs are important, they tend to come out of nowhere. All of a sudden, someone's out. Like a goal in soccer, but without the gradual buildup of tension before it. But while I’m here, cricket’s all I’ve got. Plus, the Indians have a really good chance of winning this thing. With the way the Illini are playing, I think this is my only hope.


Epilogue/HuffPo Dish: Are you wondering "how to watch cricket?" It's a common search query, as are "cricket how to," "cricket rules," "cricket for dummies," and "what are the rules of cricket?" It's easily answered, too: my blog post answers all of these queries.

This is Search Enginge Optimization, something that Content Farms like the Huffington Post do to attract people to their mass-produced, extremely low-grade writing. My writing, though, is impeccable :)

Agra: The Hatred is Probably Mutual

Agra is a total shithole. Don’t get me wrong: the Taj Mahal is magnificent, but God Damn the town ain’t. Agra’s well aware that every tourist will come to it regardless of what they charge, how dirty the place is, or how big of assholes they can be.

The Taj was Rs.750 each for tourists (about $17-18) with no free re-entry. Beyond that, though, you are not allowed to bring in ANY food. They frisk you and dig through your bags. Ostensibly, this is to keep the grounds clean, but the real reason is that they know all guidebooks tell you to see it during daylight and at sunset, and that without food, they know no one will last that long. And that every foreign tourist will grudgingly pay the extra $17 rather than take a moral stand. Note that fees for Indians were something like Rs. 25. Some nominal fee. They only screw the foreigners.

So that didn’t get us and Agra off to a good start. But the knowledge that this is a tourist trap pervades everything in town. You can’t drive straight up to the Taj. Rather, you get dropped off at the end of a long street leading up to it. This street happens to be lined with extremely aggressive shops selling absolute crap. I inspected a few things, and they were all of abysmal quality. I wanted some postcards, but even those were terrible.

There is no reliable food near the Taj, so you wind up having to just do the chips n’ biscuits lunch. Of course, all shopkeepers have smudged out the "maximum retail price" marking on all products and sell it for whatever they feel a foreigner will pay. In India, everything’s marked with an MRP, and while stores are allowed to sell for less than this (occasionally they do, but only by a little bit), they cannot charge more. In practice, this isn’t really enforced, and Agra seemed not to care a bit. Again, they know no one will visit India without visiting Agra, so they have absolutely no incentive to cater to tourists.

Enough bitching about Agra. The Taj itself was great. Apparently everybody says "oh, it’s so small," but neither Pete nor I found that to be true. It’s not some sprawling complex, to be sure. It’s just a mausoleum for a guy’s favorite wife (think about that one). So the inside is only a few rooms. The draw is that it’s a giant building entirely in white marble. The sun does amazing things with that, especially at sunset.



After begrudgingly forking over for our evening session (going in, we didn’t think we’d have to re-pay, and the guidebooks did not lead us to believe we would), we really were not in the mood for any more Agra. We just wanted some sunset Taj. This wasn’t meant to be, though, as we were instantly accosted by the hordes of "guides" inside the main gate. I don’t quite know how that racket works, but my guess is these guys pay the nominal Indians’ fee to enter, then charge a few hundred rupees to spout nonsense to foreigners as you walk around. We passed, but not just because this was a scam. The first guy who came up to us barely got two words out of his mouth before doing that ever-so-Indian custom of coughing out a gigantic heap of phlegm. It went something like this: "Excuse me.... acchhhh, HACK, HACKHACK, nchhhhh, THWOOP!" Why yes, sir, I would LOVE to walk around here with a tuberculitic pensioner. JUST how I want to experience the Taj! Next, as we sat at a bench inside, a guy came up behind us to ask for our photo. Pete and I simultaneously mistook him for a guide and rebuffed him. He was at a perfect height for both of us to just elbow him in the balls, and I must say, the temptation was there. Once we realized what was going on, though, we obliged. A few minutes later, a bizarrely sweet family came up to us just to say hi. The young son (10?) asked me "where are you from?" When Pete and I answered, the girl (sameish age) said "Welcome to India!" and the rest of the family then welcomed us. Then they left. I really was waiting for somebody to ask for change, but it never happened.

Not the family that approached us:


On our way out, we were quickly pounced on by a 14-15 year old boy who said, while barely looking up from his cell phone "Hey! I waited for you! I really did! Come check out my shop!" We had not seen this kid before, but this was his schtick to drag people to a particular shop, where he’d get a commission of some sort. Something about his ridiculous line, but equally ridiculous sincerity, convinced me to give this kid the commission on my purchase (some kid was going to get credit--might as well be him). Unfortunately, yeah, the post cards sucked, and without any more Taj to see, Pete and I knew it was time to bail. We just decided to wait out the evening at the train station, which actually had a decent restaurant. So chalk that up for Agra. Their train station doesn’t suck. That’s something.

Up next: that’s all for the cities. I’ll write a bit about train travel, and another post about general India-traveling tips

Jumping photos at the Taj:




Sadly, I didn’t get to use this as I’d hoped. Someday.

Amritsar: Down with the Sikhness

There’s this phenomenon called "Delhi Belly." Basically the Indian equivalent of Montezuma’s Revenge. I’d throw out Maharaja’s Revenge if you pick up the bug outside of Delhi, but as it turns out, Delhi Belly is actually distinct to Delhi. As in, Pete got sick in Amritsar, brought on by our first night in Delhi. I didn’t get sick until the day after we got back to Delhi. Tulsi recently visited Delhi and even she got sick. So travel tip number 1 would be, when in Delhi: Don’t. Touch. Anything.

But we didn’t hit either Sickness or Sikhness until the evening of our arrival in Amritsar. First we stopped off at the border with Pakistan (about a half hour from Amritsar) for their daily border-closing ceremony. The border’s open during the day and closed at night. The closing draws huge crowds of Indians on one side, and not so much from the Pakistanis on the other side (quite surprising considering that the nearby Pakistani city, Lahore, is much larger than Amritsar). As the soldiers did their marching around, a dude in a white track suit led the crowd in cheers, and none were lacking in enthusiasm. At several stops on this trip, Pete and I were stopped to have someone take their photo with us. I suspect this is mostly because of Pete’s long blondish hair (he said in Korea a guy did the same thing and said "you look like movie star!"), but here it was because we were the white dudes at this super anti-Pakistani event. Of course each group of people had to take TWO photos with us, too, so they could swap the photographer. We happily obliged at first, but this became pretty tiresome after the 6th photoshoot.



There were some other white guys:


Nationalist hoopla finished, we got back to the train station to find that our driver didn’t want to drive us into town, and the only ricks available were cycle shaws. No motor. With old dudes at the helm. Younger shawsters have a sense of shame, I suppose. This meant we were passed by regular shaws (one of whom matched our speed for a while and laughed at us) and that we had to get out and walk when we had to go over the overpass. At least it was cheap, and I guess I felt like we did a good turn. The cycle shawers really looked like they could use the business. Haggard comes to mind.

The main draw here is the Sikh Golden Temple, which I guess I could compare to the Golden Mosque, if not for the incredible animosity between the two religions. Also the fact that the Golden Temple is totally open to all, nearly 24 hours. We stopped by at 10:00pm for a ceremony where they move a holy book into storage for the night. We came back in the morning and got to see the place in a completely different light. Anyway, it’s a big square with a moat in the middle, and a bridge leading to an island. On that island is the temple itself, totally decked out in gold. A great site, and very welcoming. They also had the world’s most gruesome museum, with paintings of all of the horrible things Muslims had done to Sikhs over the years. This included: sawing people in two down the center, encaging children alive in bricks, and pouring burning hot sand over people. They also had like 100 death photos of martyrs dead bodies. Think when we put Uday and Qusay on display so clerics could verify their deaths. That sorta stuff. Sadly, no photos of the museum.





In Amritsar there are a bunch of places advertising "dry fruit." Sadly this is just the Indian term for nuts. And there weren’t even any good ones. I really had my heart set on some CostCo-style giant bags of mixed dried fruits, but it wasn’t meant to be. Instead we countered Pete’s Delhi Belly with Pizza Hut. Partly because we ordered interesting drinks and I downed some cheesecake for dessert, this actually became the single most expensive meal of our trip. Pizza Hut, in addition to being just as delicious in India as it is in the States, is a fairly classy joint. Clean, nice bathrooms, attentive staff, diverse menu.





Finally, the Temple provides accommodation for all travelers, Sikh or not. These are provided at a nominal fee, provided they aren’t full of course. And of course we showed up on some bizarre holiday called Lohri, which we deduced was a North Indian bonfire holiday judging from the smoke in the air. The next day, everything had cleared up, showing that it wasn’t pollution in the air. But yeah, we couldn’t sleep with the pilgrims and had to settle for a dive hotel. :(

Next: I covered both ends of Delhi on the last trip, so a brief post on our Agra excursion. After that, I’ve got a post in the works just about the trains, and I’ll do a compendium of travel tips after that. Then, I swear, no more travel blogging.

Delhi: Rickrolling the Rodeo

We didn’t really hit Delhi too hard. Mostly, this was a city for regrouping and absorbing. I guess I have some regrets on this, because Delhi definitely has some stuff to see, but at the same time, we’d already seen our share of forts, and taking this time to regroup definitely improved the quality of the trip as a whole.

Our first day in Delhi was just a day to crash. We arrived at about noon on the overnighter from Jodhpur, showed up at our hotel, and just slept until around dinner time. A week of walking around every day, sleeping every other night on the train, and then closing things with an all-day adventure in Jodhpur had taken its toll. It was at this point that I noticed my hair was falling out and my snot was gray, and Pete noticed that he had soot in his earwax. Perhaps a week in Rajasthan is approaching maximum western tolerance.

For dinner, we headed to a sort of fancy strip mall called Connaught Place. There, we gravitated to the KFC for food, then followed things up with a bar called "Rodeo," recommended by Fodor’s as trying way too hard to be American western-themed. The payoff was immense. Where to begin with this place? The employees were all in ridiculous cowboy costumes. The bar stools were saddles. Their tap wasn’t properly calibrated, resulting in mostly head on the beer. Their solution to that was to devote a bartender to pouring and spooning out head. This reminded me of the U of C’s dive, the Falcon Inn, where the bartender was perpetually drunk and, rather than give you a decent pour, would just give you two glasses of half head. Rodeo eventually had two Koreans singing karaoke (they were really good, actually), but when we arrived, they were playing the most spectacular 80s mix ever. Safety Dance, Just an Illusion, 867-5309, the works. And Never Gonna Give You Up.






For those unfamiliar, the music video to Never Gonna Give You Up is basically the worst major music video ever. Rick Astley can sing, but his dancing is just awful and the video is completely derivative. A solid internet meme is to trick someone into watching that music video. This is called "rickrolling." As in "I just rickrolled Phil. Pwnd." At its heart this consists of just sending someone a Youtube link and saying "you’ve gotta watch this!" but usually you try for something more elaborate than that. You can create a video that starts legitimately, then transitions to Rick Astley, for example. Or you can be like the Cartoon Network and rickroll the Macy’s Day Parade. The next time you’re at a juke box, scroll to Rick Astley and see if they’ve got it. Anyway, the beauty here was Rodeo had rickrolled itself.

When we got back to Delhi, we really only checked out two things. First, the Indian Rail museum, which we found fitting considering how much time we’d just spent on trains. After that, though, we went to Delhi’s Baha’i Temple. Baha’i is a religion that more or less combines all religions into one set of beliefs. They had a brief reading of scriptures while we were there, for example, and read from Christian, Buddhist, and Islamic texts. They are monotheistic, at least, so I don’t know how Hinduism would jive with that (or how any of these religions would jive with each other, really), but the upshot is that they’re just a really peaceful religion. Ultimately, they’re probably about as weird as Scientology, but the difference is that the Baha’is aren’t suing or fleecing anyone. Rather, they just build really awesome temples and invite anyone to come. And their celebrity corps is more two-bit, including Dwight Schrute, a shortstop for the Rangers, and a guy who played a recurring terrorist on 24.

The Baha’i have a temple on each continent, broadly speaking. The one in North America is actually in Wilmette, north of Chicago. Since it’s easily accessible off the Purple Line, I spent a few evenings during the Chicago Years hanging out there. It’s really well-maintained and just super peaceful. The inside features incredible acoustics, and is also very calming. The Delhi Temple may not be as calm, as it was actually quite crowded, but the building itself is just stunning. It’s shaped like a giant lotus flower in a pond, with enormous grounds around it. This was the only thing we saw in Delhi with that much open space. Everything else was wall-to-wall. And the interior, with silence, no photography, and restricted entry, kept the Indians from ruining it, too (note: whenever a tourist trap turned into a shitshow, it was always due to Indian tourists. Westerners have respect for their surroundings). If you’re ever in Delhi, do not miss this.







The skull of an elephant that got hit by an English train in 1894. The engineer got to keep one tusk, while the other went to the queen: