Posted by England lost again. According to Cricinfo, the weather was ‘smoke’ and then ‘fog’.
Now, onto the important stuff: encouraging cricket to invade other sports. We’ve just learnt about Twenty20 cricket darts and we heartily approve of it. If we had any kind of memory for this sort of stuff, we’d memorise the rules and play it the very next time we were in a pub with a dartboard which no-one was using and where no-one could see us.
Basically, one of you throws darts to score runs and the other goes for the bullseye in order to take wickets. Then you swap. The entertaining part is that lower order and tail-end batting are simulated by having to throw wrong-handed with one, two or all three darts.
Winning despite rank incompetence is cricket at its best.
I hole-heartedly approve. Bring on the Hero-Honda Bull’s eye Dhamakaa.
Let’s see what you would have won sahib……oooooh it’s a boat.
Oh, it’s a Mini Metro…
Cricket darts was one of my favourite rainy day pastimes as a kid; I had a (rather mangy, old) dart board in my bedroom.
We played test matches and (once it had been invented) the cricket world cup. I seem to recall outer ring being one wicket and inner ring being two wickets until you got to or past six down, when it became two and four respectively.
Scores above 400 were not uncommon, even in the one-day matches, because I (and my cricket darts playing friends) were gash at getting bullseyes and I think we treated three darts as an over, not one dart as an over. So we pretty much never used up all the overs.
I like the sound of this T20 version but would anticipate some pretty low scores if it was me and my mates playing. We weren’t so good at doubles and trebles either. 120-2 plays 114-1 perhaps.
But still, sounds good. I’m up for it. Any takers?
OK.
30 – your go.
Pfft, Bert and his silly real numbers play.
8+14 i
Your turn, whoever “you” might be.
188* declared.
I was thinking more in terms of a real pub with a real darts board.
But perhaps such places don’t exist any more…
…very rare now this side of the Watford Gap anyways.
The thing is Ged, since I live in t’oop north and you live in darn sarf, I felt the best we could hope to manage was correspondence darts. I took the liberty of batting first, and threw a passably decent 20 – 5 – 5.
Clearly this match requires a degree of trust, but you seem a decent sort from your photo, so I’ve no reason not to trust you implicitly. Of course, should you report anything other than a blank throw with no wickets taken, I will assume you are a cheating cad with the morals of a hyena and challenge you to a duel. Given the locality problems described above this will naturally have to be a correspondence duel, in which you chalk an outline of me on your wall and fire at that, while I hire a professional assassin in your area.
Your throw.
I’m reading this in a cafe and Bert’s post made me laugh so much someone came over to ask if I was ok
And were you?
The lack of a reply indicates not.
Yup, blank throw with no wickets taken, Bert.
How did you guess?
Next time I venture ooop north (which, frankly, might be some years away) this virtual game simply must become oh so real.
I used to play cricket archery quite a lot. I don’t think it would work in a pub very well.
Could try it directly after a pub for some added spice I suppose.
Should work well at Lord’s though, Collywobble, since the summer of 2012 interlude.
That’s true. You could get extra runs for hitting the helicopters of eccentric American millionaires too.