VS Cricket

One of the purpose of this trip to Sydney was to watch an international cricket game; Australia vs England.
The game was the first cricket game I watched in my life.

Cricket is one of the sport Japanese are not familier with. I didn't know the rule, the palyer's name and the interesting point of the sport, before the game. I had no idea about it at all.
I tried to know the rule at least, before going to Austlaria. But it was impossible. I went to a bookstore in Japan (it's my company.) to buy a book about Cricket, but there were no Japanese book about it. I even searched for Cricket book in the database of book market, but there were no books I could get. Japanese don't have the chance to know about the sport. It's a shame.

I would have been a strange watcher in the cricket studium.
Australia vs England. The game was the important and high-quality game. I heard that the importance of the game was as same as the one of the world cup of soccer. The level of both countries was very high.
However, I didn't know the rule of the game. Imagine that the person who don't know the soccer rule comes to the game, Brazil vs Italy. The person must be strange.
So, in the studium, I was such a person.

The game started at 1:15 pm.
But I arrived at the studium at 11:00 am. That's why, I waited for the start of the game, with beer and humberger. I was so excited when waiting.
The ground was large and the turf was meintained beautiful.
I thought it's was very comfortable to play the game in such a good field.

At 1:15 pm, the game started with singing both countries' songs. As I imagined before, Cricket was a very strange sport for me. Historically, it seems to be the origine of baseball, but now they are utterly diffrent sports.
I saw cricket the combination of handball, hockey, golf and baseball. ( This must be the incorrect and misleading explanation of the sport. But, I thought so at the time.)

During the game, I sometimes went outside to eat, drink or have a break, because the game was very long! The game started at 1:30, and finished about 10:00. ( Actually, the end of the game was not normal. The game finished for the day's bad weather. So, it could be longer.)
It was very natural that we must sometimes take a rest during watching the game.

The game was often stopped due to the rainy weather. So, I didn't stay in the studium until the end of the game, to escape from traffic jam.
The rain was bad for the game, but would be good for Australia. Because the people in Australia suffer from the lack of water now.

It is often said that cricket is a gentlemen's sport. But, I knew it was not true in the game. Many supporters said to the going-out players "Fuck off! Go home baby!"
I heared that even the players wouldn't behave as gentlemen on the ground. Bad phrases like "You are dixx-hexx!" seemed to fly there. The ground looked very nice, but it was ertainly a battle field.
The players and the supporters were very energetic. For me, it was interesting to watch them, without enough knowledge of the sport.

I bought a cricket ball for official games, and brought it to Japan. It was a good souvenier for myself. Now, my mission is to make this sport more popular in Japan. I think it is fitted to Japanese people.