We're gutted about England's last ball defeat yesterday. We sometimes forget how much we really care. We were actually watching the denouement on Sky Sports News in the bar after having played an inferior sport and the tension was killing us. It was also killing a few strangers who clearly weren't full-bore cricket fans.This is great, we thought. England will win this off the final ball and all these random people will have happy memories of cricket. They'll encourage their kids to play and England will rule the cricketing world for decades. Then England lost.
It was all the more painful for the manner in which we'd had to hear about it. Sky Sports News, as most of you will be aware, is a kind of textual challenge for the viewer. Stuff scrolls across the bottom. Stuff appears on the right. Stuff flashes on screen. The presenter talks about none of these things. It's very disorienting, particularly when you're trying to follow one particular thread.
We were keeping our eyes peeled for where the England score might be likely to flash up next. For some reason, even though it was a nailbiter and there were only four balls to go, Sky still weren't keeping the score in constant view. In fact, they even went to an ad break.
Thankfully, with just two balls remaining, the presenter attempted to describe what was happening. The penultimate ball passed and we had a fair idea what had happened. The final ball was about to take place. The presenter said: "Dihara Fernando runs in and..."
At this point, he left a good 20 second pause. Those of you who watched the match will know that Fernando didn't release the ball. We had no idea.
It was even worse for me -- I'd also been playing some vastly inferior sport (badminton), and ended up down the pub (The Victoria, in Withingon)...where they had the football on. No cricket.
ReplyDeleteSo there we are, clustered around a table getting Cricinfo ball-by-ball updates on my phone.
The tension mounts, just like when you had to watch matches on Teletext when you were younger...and mounts...and mounts some more.
Four of my five mates were supporting England. The other was rampantly Welsh, and still is.
17 off 12 (or something like that)...WICKET! Runs! 5 off 3. Oh. My. God.
4 required from 2 balls.
Cricinfo goes down. I fire up an alternative browser, and try frantically to get the BBC, then Grauniad. Nothing.
Finally, the Guardian comes up trumps. Sri Lanka had won. GET IN!
Phew.
To be honest, I knew we'd won anyway, as I wasn't being txted abuse from all over the country.
Unless football's your thing, Sky Sports "News" is the pantsiest of the pants.