I’m not a hard-core sports guy, but I would think that I would know the answer to this one, but I did not. The Seattle Orcas are a cricket team. Yeah, that’s right, cricket. A uniquely British game that spread across the world along with British colonialism, and it is here in Seattle.
According to axios.com,
‘With cricket returning to the Olympics in Los Angeles in 2028, the Seattle Orcas see a rare chance to introduce the sport to a new generation of American fans.
More than 2.5 billion people follow cricket worldwide, making it the world’s second-most-popular sport after soccer. Yet for many Seattleites, it’s still a mystery.
The season for the Orcas ended this month and unfortunately, they did not make the playoffs, but they’re still excited because they feel like it’s their mission to introduce the Game of cricket to Washington State.
Full disclaimer. I find soccer boring; I know it feels wrong for me to say that. When I first looked at rugby, I found it incomprehensible. (Rugby sevens changed all that.) Cricket? You gotta be kidding me. I’m totally clueless about cricket. Here’s the best description I’ve seen.
What is Cricket?
Think baseball, but with 11 players a side, no foul territory and 360 degrees to hit the ball.
One team bats while the other fields and bowls.
Instead of running around four bases, batters run back and forth between two sets of wooden stumps, called wickets, while the fielding team tries to catch the ball in the air or throw the ball to the wicket ahead of the runner.
To make the game a little more confusing for Americans, the average cricket match lasts several days. Happily, the Seattle Orcas play a much quicker form of the game called T20. The average game takes about 3 hours, which for cricket is very fast.
Cricket in the 2028 Olympics.
The Seattle Orcas cricket’s coach, Adam Voges told axios.com,
“No other game combines the home run power and acrobatic catches of baseball, explosive sprinting of soccer, imaginative shots of tennis and the white-knuckle drama of clutch-time basketball,”
You’re probably not going to see the Seattle Orcas on TV anytime soon. But you may see members of the Orcas team when cricket comes to the Olympics in 2028.
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