Square leg fever: West Indies invade the US

Soccer they can accept, because it is relatively simple to follow and only lasts 90 minutes but the sport that gave us the grace of Clive Lloyd, the fire of Viv Richards and the relentless onslaught of the four-man pace attack is a mystery to the casual observer and too complicated for them to bother with.

I once tried to explain the game to an American woman and got as far as telling her that one batsman was at one end of the pitch and the other was 22 yards away at the other end.

“You mean there are two batters?” she said with a disdainful laugh that was a substitute for something like “You freakin’ idiot.” I gave up.

It’s hard enough getting an English woman interested in the noble sport unless she happens to fancy one of the players, so I wasn’t going to get anywhere with this particular Yankess, an infamous know-all and spoiler of other people’s fun.

There is a widespread belief that cricket and baseball are related in some way and that one grew out of the other, like man standing up and walking on two feet while his slower peers remained on all fours, but although the basic principle is the same, the origins are not so clear cut.

However, the latest attempt to educate the mighty US came in the form of the drastically reduced form of the game, T20, in which long drawn out subtlety is replaced by rampant hitting, which might be okay if it’s all you know, but fails to satisfy those of us who prefer a three-course restaurant meal to a takeaway box of fried chicken.

Because that is exactly what T20 offers you: wham bam thank you Ma’am. It’s an approach that has long since been discredited in the sexual arena, but cricket crowds have largely embraced it to the point that in India, of all places, the attendance is much higher at the wham bam games than at test matches.

A week or two ago, with the West Indies hosting a series against India, they all popped over to Florida to show them how it’s done, and boy did they give the peasants something to think about. They served up a thriller, with Evin Lewis smashing a high-intensity century, even if Dwayne Bravo’s match-winning contribution in the form of defensive bowling at the end was probably not appreciated.

The opportunity to build on the success of that first match was lost because the second one was washed out by rain – an unfortunately typical outcome, because wet grass halts a cricket match, while in many other sports the players would battle on to the bitter end. But the Americans can’t complain about that. After all, they came up with the expression to “take a rain check”, meaning play was stopped by the weather but those who had paid for their ticket could come back and watch for free when the game was restaged.

Cricket is the one that got away, a potential global sport that somehow failed to ignite outside the English- speaking world. And in the early days, people certainly tried. A BBC commentator during the recent one-day series between England and Pakistan informed us that the Italian football club AC Milan was founded by two Englishmen and was originally Milan Cricket and Football Club.

That’s another thing about cricket: the relatively leisurely pace leaves time for thought, conversation and whimsy.

In a proper international family kind of way, players, umpires and commentators follow the action around the globe. Jamaican fast bowling legend Michael Holding, long since retired as a player, is now an integral part of the English commentating community, spending his summers dodging the showers in London and Manchester.

There was a time when all you heard on the radio and television cricket coverage over there were English voices, but then came the avuncular Australian Richie Benaud and the calm, knowledgeable Barbadian Tony Cozier, who sadly passed away this year. The Trinidadian link between England and the USA this summer has been Joel Wilson, the umpire, who went from officiating at Edgbaston, Birmingham to that exhibition in Lauderhill, Florida. Nice work if you can get it, not only following the sport you love but being an ambassador, almost a missionary for it.