I think that there are a lot of people from places around the world that have been influenced by England culture that could say that they feel the same way about baseball or perhaps American football and I would agree with them. We are all products of our environments and if you were raised on a particular sport, you are going to probably enjoy that sport for the rest of your life and also understand it a great deal better than someone who has had nothing to do with is for all of their childhood.
not long ago a friend of mine tried to explain cricket to me and I was watching some event with him that was really important, internationally speaking, to fans of cricket. Now, while I was watching the game with someone helping me along the way, which he was very patient and not at all patronizing about while it was going on, kind of made sense to me. I started to understand a bit of the terminology and the different types of games that there are. Then he started speaking to me about certain games that are capable of going on for nearly a week (or perhaps more) and it is possible although very unlikely, for the game to end in a tie..... after a week of playing.
Now to me that sounds crazy but to non-Americans perhaps a sport that I love like American football doesn't make a lot of sense because if you look at it based on the basic parts it is a bit silly that a big part of the game is how one team is capable of wasting the clock rather than actually playing for more points.
Many years ago my team, in an office sense, needed to work with a visiting team from South Africa. We thought it would be fun for us to go out and play some sort of team-building sports so we played baseball and we also played cricket. As you might imagine the people from the countries that don't really play these sports were terrible at it.
I was told that I was a decent bowler for someone that had never played the game before but I was a terrible batsman. This is because of the way that someone who plays baseball is always going to stand in a different stance. It was also difficult for me, as someone who grew up playing baseball, to not feel as though I needed to try to knock every single ball out of the park. I could be wrong about this but to me it seems as though the batsman's primary job is to protect the wickets, not necessarily to be trying to crush the ball every time it heads your way. This is why in that one and only day that I played cricket, I did quite poorly. To be fair, the South Africans did very badly at baseball for similar, but opposite reasons. They were not accustomed to holding a bat in that way and were way too conservative about when they would swing and even though we were being nice, they struck out a lot.
I find it interesting that different countries enjoy different sports and honestly, if you don't understand cricket or baseball or any sport, I encourage you to find someone that does and watch it with them. I believe that all sports can be very interesting if you have someone to coach you through the nuances that makes sports great.
But now I have the problem that when I try to watch cricket without my buddy, I am completely lost. I suppose that I could do some research but honestly, I think I will just wait for my friend to invite me to another event. Since he is European I would image that he isn't really going to watch baseball or American football either, but I think it is great that he can appreciate the game when he is watching it with me. Sport kind of brings us together, and i think that is great.