LIFE IN ADELAIDE II

IF ONE READ THE LOCAL NEWS, South Australia might seem quite a violent place. Since I have been here, there have been five or so murders, including a particularly vicious slaying of a family of three in a small town at the beginning of the Barossa Valley (where a lot of red wine is grown). It has more convicted serial killers (per million of population) than most places around the world. Just recently, in the early hours of the morning, an as yet identified person or persons set upon the Deputy Premier (second in charge of the governing party) giving him quite a pounding.

This last item has been noted in the press with a certain irony as the present government (Labour Party, somewhat akin to the Democratic Party in the US) has made much of ensuring public safety. After a long run in government at the state level, the Labour Party is reeling from another set of blows in the form of electoral voting going against them. This makes the local ruling party somewhat nervous and some folk are questioning whether such an important person (he is also the State Treasurer) showed good judgment by being out alone in the small hours in a distinctly shady part of town. On another front, both Melbourne and Adelaide, whose Universities depend a great deal on students from India, China, Malaya, and Indonesia, have been considerably dismayed by a sharp and sudden drop in enrollments as news of violence against foreign students late at night has gotten back to their homelands. A case of beating the geese that lay the golden eggs, one might say.

Having grown up here, I do not experience Adelaide as an unsafe place (I keep off the streets late at night, to be sure) unless I happen to be on the road, whether a pedestrian, a cyclist, or driving. Then one must look out for aggressive lane changing and a general disinclination to respect anyone not enclosed within motorized sheet metal. Perhaps the wide streets contribute to this, generating a false sense of safety. Even so, it is not all that bad, compared, say, to Rome on a Saturday night.

Violence of a different sort is coming to Adelaide this weekend, in the form of the Second Test cricket match, played between England and Australia. I mentioned in my email alerting you to my previous post, that cricket is played by very many countries (105, as a matter of fact) and is second only to soccer as a zone for international competition. Once again Wiki comes to the rescue with an excellent explanation of this "game". It is played at several levels but the 'cricket to end all cricket', ultimate cricket, is the International Test series, each match lasting up to five days, when the leading cricket nations play off against each other in a seemingly endless series of matches all around the world. Not a few are former British colonies and have an historic grudge against the "Mother Country" (England), with fervent intent to beat the English teams at cricket. This site will give you all the latest scores and, if you want to get the biased Aussie perspective, go here. Cricket followers experience incredible fervour, perhaps not quite as high as that engendered by World Soccer, marked by international rivalries, sometimes epitomized by riots at test matches.

Watching the First Test (played in Brisbane, Queensland), I was rewarded by, and thrilled to see, an extremely rare event at this level of the game, a "hat trick". This occurs when a bowler succeeds in dismissing three batsmen with three successive balls! What is more, it was the bowler's birthday...quite a birthday present.

Cricket tends to make baseball appear somewhat 'wimpish'. For example, apart from the two batsmen and the wicket keeper, fieldsmen do not use gloves; also, once each turn at bowling, the bowler may bowl right at the batsman, either full on or by bouncing the ball.

One has to pay to see Cricket on special channels in the US (everywhere else, on free-to-air TV) but you can get an idea of the game by going to the video section on the Australian site. English English is dotted with cricket metaphors and references that must seem mysterious to those unfamiliar with the game, such as "that is not cricket", "on a sticky wicket", or "caught on the back foot". If you know a few, why not drop them off as comments to this posting?