The Born Loser by Art and Chip Sansom for July 19, 2014

A play like that should not go unrewarded.Can you carry those two extra outs over to the next inning?

The more I read the rules of cricket, the less I understand them.

The more I read the rules of cricket, the less I understand them.

I have a friend from England and because of that I tried to learn a bit about cricket. The more I learned the less I knew. The game makes no sense. But it was a tricky wicket.

That exact thing happened to me long ago in a recess game in grade school! Only in my case I was playing the added position of “short fielder” behind second base and there was already one out.

He was the second baseman, the batter hit the ball directly to him (the “line drive”) & he caught it (as long as it didn’t bounce first that counted as 1 out, or first “play” in the “triple play”). Right after the batter hit the ball the man from his team that was on second base ran for third base & because the batter was out due to the catch (line drive to the second baseman) he was required to run back to second base before the base was stepped on by the second baseman or before he was tagged (touched) by the second baseman with the ball, or the glove holding the ball, (he didn’t get there in time = the second out, or play, by Wilberforce). At the same time the runner who was on first base was in the process of running to second when Wilberforce caught the ball, after Wilberforce tagged (stepped on while holding the ball) second base (taking out the guy coming back) he proceeded to run up to the man coming from first base & tagged him (the third out of the triple play). Normally that kind of play takes at least 2 people (the second baseman would normally throw the ball to either third or first base after making the catch & possibly one of the tags), then if the second baseman only made the catch & then threw the ball to one of the other bases, that baseman would throw to the final baseman for the third out. Since there are only 3 outs in each team’s turn at bat, & there were already 2 outs, only the line drive catch was an official out. But as comicsssfan said, it was still impressive that he was able to pull it off by himself even if the last 2 outs/plays didn’t count.

Cricket? I thought that was an insect. ;)