Playing cricket...is just so English/Australian

Most of you won't know what i'm talking about when i say this - or you'll have to put the kettle on when i talk about it - because it has become so boring - i used to love to play a game of cricket. There's nothing i know that is anything like it. What a lovely way of spending the day. When the sun shone: you got plenty to eat. plenty of food half-way through the game, and plenty to drink down the pub after the match had finished. Saturdays were hectic for me: it was rare for the team to finish drinking before midnight. Committing myself to playing every Saturday wasn't fair on Mandy. I can see that now. I played it, all the same.

We, the fleur de lys, were so serious about the game that It was almost an insult to call it just 'a game'. We all had our heroes. We didn't talk about them a lot, though. Mine was Jeff Thomson, the great Australian fast bowler, who you watched from behind the settee, he was so quick at bowling. You had the feeling he wouldn't fight just one bloke. He'd fight the whole pub. And win. Then he'd have buttered scones for tea. Nah, he'd have to drink a six pack. Then feast on two zebras. Uncooked.

How the batsmen could only wear a floppy cap when the ball flew past their heads like a bullet is the stuff of nightmares. If it hit - sometimes it would - if they didn't get back up quickly enough they were weaklings. In reality they often needed intensive care, if they were lucky.
Sometimes a batsman would get hit painfully on the chest. The sound of a ribcage breaking would fill your eardrums,and you'd turn to whoever was sitting next to you, grimace and say "He must be from Yorkshire!, him".

i wondered why i played the game at the risk of being badly injured. I don't really know the answer to that question. I'm not from Yorkshire, you see.
Men are men, though. As long as you didn't have Jeff Thomson bowling at you you'd survive. There was always the sandwiches to look forward to. And the beer. And taking the wife shopping.