Cruckut, Lovely Cruckut

The delights of the cricket season. A couple of times I’ve had a yen to pop over and see a live Test Match, something I haven’t done for years due to living abroad. But I always end up thinking of the horribly early starts (I thought of going to Nottingham for the fourth day today; it would have been a two-and-a-half hour drive in each direction, and as things fell out there was only an hour’s play.) And you can’t see what’s happening on the close lbw shouts, it costs thirty-five quid, and you can’t even bring any booze in, only buy it at a tenner a glug.

So it’s the armchair and the remote control and the direct debit to Rupert Murdoch. Also the ancient English custom of having the radio on (in the kitchen) while the TV’s on in the living room. The reason for this is that one is always supposed to be doing domestic things while watching the cricket, to appease one’s conscience and one’s wife, assuming for the purposes of argument that the two can be distinguished. For some reason the radio commentary runs about one second ahead of the TV, which means that, if you leave the door open, you can hear of a stirring occurrence in the kitchen and be in the living room in time to see it happen. Alternatively, you can see a bowler running up to bowl while hearing that the outside edge has already been snapped up by second slip.

This being an England-New Zealand series, one is always delighted by the Kiwi commentators. New Zealanders only seem to use one vowel sound, the sort of flat “u” found in “uh-huh” and represented in Korean by a horizontal line; linguists call it a “schwa”. So people are described as taking wuckuts, getting caught in the slups and occasionally huttung the ball for sucks.