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Comment by denton-scratch | Hacker News Reader

I regret the coming of short-format cricket. Cricket's not supposed to be a super-exciting riot of entertainment; i like that you can drop in for one day of a 5-day Test, and sit there catching some rays and reading a newspaper.

In general, I don't care much for the influence of TV on team sports. I played Rugby Union at school; Rugby League was invented to make the game more exciting for spectators, by eliminating loose rucks. For me, all these games are participant sports, and the spectators are incidental (I don't watch sports on TV).

Football (i.e. soccer) is a thug's game, played by gentlemen.

Cricket is a gentlemen's game, played by thugs.

Rugby is a game played by men with peculiar balls.

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Funny, I’d heard that football is a gentleman’s game played by thugs and rugby is the thug’s game played by gentlemen.

Could have got it wrong; but I'm sure about the "peculiar balls" bit.

In NZ, I heard it in the context of talking about the UK, and it was phrased. as "football is played by gentlemen and watched by thugs, rugby (union) is played by thugs and watched by gentlemen" as rugby union tends to be closely associated with public (that is, private) schools, who would often give rather large yet dumb students scholarships if they thought they'd help the First Fifteen beat their rival school.

> Cricket's not supposed to be a super-exciting riot of entertainment; i like that you can drop in for one day of a 5-day Test, and sit there catching some rays and reading a newspaper.

I feel like I'm missing the point, then. If your intention is to catch some rays and read a newspaper, can't you do that anywhere? What does a seemingly-ignored cricket match contribute to that recreation?

The story my dad used to tell us about the 5 day cricket games, is that they stem from the old colonial days where the soldiers where bored senseless and just need something to do.

5 day matches where a solution to that problem.

> Cricket's not supposed to be a super-exciting riot of entertainment

Perhaps that’s not what the creators of the game imagined. But it’s how society has progressed. Cricket should be what the masses want it to be.

I don't understand how soccer ayers qualify as gentlemen. Like not at all. It is fairly ... rude environment at minimum.

They're positively dandies compared to rugby players.

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