Cricket is an odd game. Lasting five days (in the test match variant) and including five full meal breaks and a sundry other stoppages for tea or drinks, it is a specially acquired taste. Even more dedicated are those who quietly follow the matches on the radio.

For them here is a little treat, it is Bill Bryson’s account of driving across Australia in his book In a Sunburned Country though I seem to remember it being called “Down Under” and finding a cricket match commentary on the radio.

“As if to emphasize the isolation, all the area radio stations began to abandon me…Eventually the radio dial presented only an interrupted cat’s hiss of static, but for one clear spot near the end of the dial. At first I thought that’s all it was – just an empty clear spot-but then I realized I could hear the faint shiftings and stirrings of seated people, and after a quiet pause a voice, calm and reflective said:

‘Plichard begins his long run in from short stump. He bowls and . . . oh, he’s out! Yes, he’s got him. Longwilley is caught leg-before in middle slops by Grattan. Well, now what do you make of that, Neville?’

‘That’s definitely one for the books, Bruce. I don’t think I’ve seen offside medium slow fast pace bowling to match it since Baden-Powell took Rangachangabanga for a maiden ovary at Bangalore in 1948.’

I had stumbled into the surreal and rewarding world of cricket on the radio” (pp.144-145).

“Imagine a form of baseball in which the pitcher, after each delivery, collects the ball from the catcher and walks slowly with it out to centre field; and that there, after a minute’s pause to collect himself, he turns and runs full tilt towards the pitchers mound before hurling the ball at the ankles of a man who stands before him wearing a riding hat, heavy gloves of the sort used to handle radioactive isotopes and a mattress strapped to each leg”(pg.145).

“Listening to cricket on the radio is like listening to two men sitting in a rowing boat on a large, placid lake on a day when the fish aren’t biting”(pg.146)

“‘So here comes Stovepipe to bowl on this glorious summer’s afternoon at the MCG,’ one of the commentators was saying now. ‘I wonder if he’ll chance an offside drop scone here or go for the quick legover. Stovepipe has an unusual delivery in that he actually leaves the grounds and starts his run just outside the Carlton & United Brewery at Kooyong.’

‘That’s right, Clive. I haven’t known anyone start his delivery that far back since Stopcock caught his sleeve on the reversing mirror of number 11 bus during the third test at Brisbane in 1957 and ended up at Goondiwindi four days later owing to some frightful confusion over a changed timetable at Toowoomba Junction.’

After a very long silence while they absorbed this thought, and possibly stepped out to transact some small errands, they resumed with a leisurely discussion of the English fielding. Neasden, it appeared, was turning a solid performance at square bowel, while Packet has been stalwart in the dribbles, when set beside the outstanding play of young Hugh Twain-Buttocks at middle nipple. The commentators were in calm agreement that they had not seen anyone caught behind with such panache since Tandoori took Rogan Josh for a stiffy at Vindaloo in ’61. At last Stovepipe, having found his way over the railway line at Flinders street – the footbridge was evidently closed for painting-returned to the stadium and bowled to Hasty, who deftly turned the ball away for a corner…

‘So as we break for second luncheon, and with 11,200 balls remaining, Australia are 962 for two not half and England are four for a duck and hoping for rain.’

I may not have all the terminology exactly right, but I believe I have caught the flavour of it.”(pp146-147).

“…the mystery of cricket is…that [Australians] play [cricket] at all. It has always seemed to me a game much too restrained for the rough-and-tumble Australian temperament. Australians much prefer games in which brawny men in scanty clothing bloody each other’s noses. I am quite certain that if the rest of the world vanished overnight and the development of cricket was left in Australian hands, within a generation the players would be wearing shorts and using the bats to hit each other.

And the thing is, it would be a much better game for it” (pg.148).

Pakistan’s humbling one-day defeat in Perth on Friday night seems to have been the last straw for the fans back home, who took to the streets in their hundreds to burn bats, stumps and an effigy of PCB Chairman Ijaz Butt in protest.

Mohammad Yousuf’s team play their last game of a disastrous tour at the WACA Ground today, trailing the series 4-0 and facing the prospect of a one-day whitewash to follow the 3-0 defeat in the Test series.

After witnessing the 135-run massacre in WA, furious fans and around 250 young cricketers from various academies in Karachi chanted slogans against the team and the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) during the hour-long protest under the banner of the “Save Pakistan cricket campaign.”

The protesters chanted “Go, Butt, Go!”, “President Zardari, save Pakistan cricket”, and “Goodbye Pakistan cricket” as they burnt dozens of cricket bats, stumps and an effigy of PCB chairman Ijaz Butt.

Amir Akram, chairman of the recently-formed campaign, said President Asif Ali Zardari must remove Butt, blaming him for destroying the game.

“Cricket is our love and the recent defeats have disheartened millions of fans across the country, so we demand President Asif Zardari to remove Butt, who is too old to run the board,” Akram said of the 71-year-old PCB chairman.

Zardari is the patron of the PCB and appointed Butt in October 2008.

Butt has also come under pressure from the National Assembly’s standing committee on sports, which has been demanding his removal since last year.

Of course, we’ve seen this all before.

Meanwhile, am I the only one who noticed the unfortunate name of the PCB Chairman?

Update: What is it with Pakistan cricket stories, and lower parts of the human anatomy? Here, we have butt, and my last Pakistan cricket-related blog post dealt with genital warts.

Pakistan pulled fast bowler Shoaib Akhtar out of next month’s World Twenty20 tournament in England due to him suffering from genital warts, the Pakistan Cricket Board said Thursday.

“We have pulled him out of the World Twenty20 on the basis of a medical report given by our doctor which said that Akhtar needs 10 days to recover from groin wounds,” the PCB said.

“The medical board has reported that Akhtar was suffering from genital viral warts.”

Akhtar becomes the first casualty of the 12-team event for which final 15-man squads were announced on May 5.

[Enter obvious bowl a maiden over/crack one through the covers/middle stump cricket joke here].

By the way, here’s a picture of our little Porkastani cricket lothario in action off the pitch, possibly in pre-genital wart days.

Imran would be proud.