Monday, January 26, 2009

Australia Day sports wrap

On Wednesday evening at Little Athletics, Michael won his second toddler race. This time it was a large and more experienced field, but he rose to the challenge and flew home in style. Marcus also had a good night, with personal bests in 3 of his 4 events.

Today is the last day of my very long holiday break, stretching back to Dec 24th. One thing I will miss is the daily cricket match on the deck with Marcus. Michael usually gets on with his important quarrying work and experiments with dirt. If the ball goes his way he's happy to field it. Today he decided to umpire, and in fact was umpiring from Silly Mid Off. You could call his style "consensus umpiring" - as he has no idea about the rules he asks both of us "is that out?" after every ball.

Both have been watching a lot of cricket on TV for the first time this summer. Marcus is soaking up cricket jargon like a sponge. For overseas readers, the most important fact to know about cricket is that everything has a picturesque name. There really is a fielding position called Silly Mid Off. On the radio they run through the fielding positions as set by the captain - he can move them around any time. This will sound something like "There's a Deep Third Man just moving a bit squarer now, Extra Cover, Cover Point, Gully, Silly Mid Off, Mid On, Short Midwicket, Deep Backward Square, and a Fine Leg.

Kids hear the term "versus" and assume it is an adjective in present tense - they then extrapolate that one team is "versing" another. This still isn't mashed into shape enough for Michael, who likes to say that South Africa is "bursting" Australia in the cricket. He's quite right in fact - they have handed us a cricket lesson this summer, and its not over yet.

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