Americans thrown by world powers

It’s enough to strike fear into the heart of any Sri Lankan fan: a photo labelling one of their bowlers as a thrower. The Associated Press photo coverage of the New Zealand-Sri Lanka games in Florida featured this image with the caption “Nuwan Kulasekara throws against New Zealand”.

It seems some of the intricacies of the game are still lost on some of the Americans who saw the strange sport for the first time over the weekend. The Miami Herald reported that the matches were being played by “perennial world powers New Zealand and Sri Lanka”, which the teams in question were no doubt pleased to read.

The paper’s columnist Greg Cote, noted – though how seriously we’re not sure, that over the past week “everywhere you went, all you heard people talking about was cricket. That's right. I was in my local West Indies market (looking for some fruit bread in order to make bebele) and I actually did hear two people discussing cricket, although I wasn't sure if they were referring to the sport or an ingredient.”