Unlike just about every other subject in the world, the worst way to learn about cricket is reading about it.
Here's the Guardian's Andy Bull on Australian bowler Mitchell Starc: "[H]e cleaned up with 12 wickets at 16 runs each in five matches. Right now, he has the best strike rate – 25.5 – of any bowler with more than 50 wickets in the history of ODI cricket, and his career average is a mean 21.67."
That sounds impressive. I have very little idea what any of it means.
More to the point, I don't want to know. I worry that learning about the nuances of cricket will ruin cricket for me. I prefer to watch it intermittently, and in relative, blissful ignorance.
The 2015 ICC Cricket World Cup is now under way.
Here's what I know:
> Australia is playing host to the event, and is, by a small margin, the favourite to win.
> New Zealand is also playing host, and is, by a large margin, everyone's preferred dark horse.
> South Africa is probably better than both of them, but will find a way to blow it.
> Everyone else, including England, is trying to play it cool – "Hey, we're fine as outsiders. Sure, we taught everyone else here the game, but we're not, like, territorial about it." The player to watch is South Africa's AB de Villiers – the world's best batsman by a sizable margin.
> In this small, half-lit corner of the cricket universe, that's all I want to know.
After a lifetime spent consuming sports in more and more granular doses, it's soothing to watch something purely for spectacle. That hit me during the previous World Cup, in 2011 in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. I had no clue who was who, or who I was supposed to like or hate, and why, and what exactly was going on at any given time in terms of The Big Picture.
It was all small picture, but on a big stage. The real attraction to sport is the meta-narrative played out through the game – good guys versus bad guys; triumphs of the will; overcoming; failing. It's about Great Truths put into action by men wearing their pyjamas in public. It is, in some very fundamental way, perfect in its ridiculousness.
We need to know more and more about these people – not just their private selves, but an increasingly microscopic dissection of why they are good, usually expressed through statistics. If playing sports well is an art players possess for only a short time, never before in human history has so much science been applied to the explanation of something so ephemeral.
This unlikely fascination is the reason I have a job. So hooray for obsessives. It can also become exhausting. Once in a while, I'd like to ride a time machine back to the 1980s, when we used to argue about Bird versus Johnson without reference to PER, true shooting percentage or offensive efficiency. More and more, sports is becoming a papal conclave in the Middle Ages, where we all sit around in some grim Italian town for three years arguing about the meaning of the word "the."
The Cricket World Cup is a temporary escape from this. I have nothing wise to say about it (or much else), which Socrates might say makes me the wisest of them all. He'd be wrong, but I appreciate the solid.
It's all just unfolding in front of you. Unlike every North American sport, cricket has a wonderful, steady flow to it. The game never really stops. The bowler doesn't sit there for 10 minutes trying to rub the skin off the ball, or muttering to a coach, or staring off into the middle distance. He just bowls.
The batsman doesn't step out, or restrap his gloves 35 damned times, or dig in like he's trying to bury a bone. He waits to receive the ball. Cricket may go on a long time, but it goes. It isn't wasting your time – modern baseball's greatest sin.
The announcers don't feel the need to fill the silences like they're getting paid by the word. The crowd isn't up and down on a pogo. In baseball, they like to talk about the perfect season – "never too high, never too low." Cricket manages to wedge that philosophy into every single match.
You don't need to be nailed to a couch for eight hours. You can afford to wander in and out. When something really important happens, everyone yells, so you know to run back to the TV.
Another thing I like about cricket – it's not trying to sell you something. You come to cricket on its terms, not the other way round. Two billion people follow this game, and that seems to be more than enough for them. Nobody in cricket really cares if Americans embrace the sport. They're welcome to, but no one's going to beg for their attention.
It's reassuring to see a sport that hasn't become – at its core – a rapacious marketing exercise. Cricket is only slightly rapacious.
You can't say the same for the people putting it on. This tournament will only be broadcast on pay-per-view in Canada. Price tag to watch the final: an eye-watering, wallet-melting $99.99 (or $179.99 to watch the whole thing).
It's a shame, because you know so many people who might've wandered in for a little while and got to love the game, won't. They can't afford to.
Once again, I'll try my best. I don't feel at all qualified to call myself a fan of cricket. But I don't know the first thing about painting, and I still like going to museums. Sometimes, it's enough to be an admirer, never feeling the impulse to expertise.