The Gentleman’s Game

For the topic of wild sports, I wanted to talk about Cricket, which I grew up with. Cricket is like a souped up version of baseball that goes on for longer and is much more physically taxing. It’s a bat and ball game where one team gets to bat and score as many runs as they can without getting ‘out’ while the bowling team throws the ball at the batsman in hopes of hitting the wicket behind him and getting the player ‘out’. The teams consist of 11 players on each side and the roles are decided by a coin toss. In addition, there are commentators and  an umpire in the field who works as a mediator between the teams and gives the green signal on whether the batsman was ‘out’ or not. The amazing thing about cricket is that it isn’t divided based on socio-economic backgrounds at all. That means the game is unanimously enjoyed by everyone. The roots of cricket though, have been defined by male dominance. Called the ‘Gentleman’s Game’, cricket is heavily saturated by male players and even though women’s leagues exist, they are often overshadowed by men’s cricket. Regarding my chosen video that highlights a male player, Yuvraj Singh, scores six sixes in an over, even though everyone playing in the field is a man, the crowd is a mix of all kinds of people – men and women. My view about playing sports and gender in cricket is that even though women’s cricket may not be enjoyed by the masses, atleast men’s cricket isn’t undergoing gatekeeping and is enjoyed by men and women alike. In my opinion, cricket is literally the definition of the phrase ‘crowd going wild’. As you can see from the clip, cricket isn’t a contact sport like football so wild encounters among players are rare. But the crowds watching the big cricket matches are some of the loudest, craziest, and yes ‘wildest’ people I have been around. I think that the wildness in cricket doesn’t come from the players but from the cheers of the crowd itself.