Cricket?

So, I was standing guard today at the intersection of Stadium and Ellis, fiercely being the gatekeeper to the Gage Compound and watching as various Vikings drove their cars away for the weekend back to the Cities for the game tonight, when an MNSU higher-up (possibly the Director of Campus Recreation) happened by with some random guy and mentioned that they were going back to look at the softball field.

"I want to show him the surface," he said. "We're thinking we're going to put in a cricket pitch back there."

I instantly slapped on my best poker face and made a non-committal response of 'ok' before they went on their way. This, despite the fact that the word 'a cricket pitch?' were echoing in my head with levels of incredulity that would have done Lady Bracknell proud.

A cricket pitch. Seriously? I sometimes wonder about MNSU, I really do. My lovely fianceé Allison got a degree in Interior Design from MNSU- and if you're looking to do the same, don't break a sweat trying to find it on their website. They cut the program. For some reason it ended up in the Construction Management Department (the theory probably being that if students were going to learn how to build the outside of a house, they should probably have the option of work on the inside too) and over the course of Allison's tenure with the program, it went from something like 50 to close to 200 students.

Now if that's not a barometer for a successful academic program, please tell me what is. Yet despite that and because of it's unfortunate placement with Construction Management, the school, in its wisdom, decided to cut the program. Then they, to follow up, tried to con the students into approving a $14 million renovation of the recreation fields.

Because, apparently, there's a high demand for cricket here in Mankato. Don't get me wrong: I'm fully aware we have an active South Asian student body on campus, but I don't for the life of me see why money needs to be spent on creating a specific pitch solely for cricket. Give me a wicket, a stump, a mallet and a tape measure along with a fairly decent sized, open green area and I can create a cricket pitch in about five minutes flat. If that. (And anyone who plays it on a regular basis will agree with me on this one- you probably don't even need the tape measure.) So why does it need it's own damn field? WHY?

It's an unbelievable waste of money and if this turns out to be true, it'll annoy me even more. Cricket and Americans just don't mix. In much the same way as the rest of the world (and more than a few Americans) find baseball to be long, boring and incomprehensible- Americans find cricket to be exactly the same way, though longer and if it's possible, more boring. I give kudos to the local gym classes down at the high school for attempting to try it, (along with the cheerfully sadistic snowshoe softball in the dead of winter) but I've watched them: they hold the bat like it's baseball with 2 bases instead of 4.

Americans just don't get it- and who can blame them? Keep in mind that I say this as a distant ancestor of the first man to score a century in cricket (really it's true. And I'm pretty sure that means 100 runs.)- but just keep your money. Really. Spend it on something like academics. There's a concept.

It's one of my life goals to sit through a test match, understand what's going on and enjoy it a little bit. So far, I'm nowhere to close to fulfilling it.