I should have known Charles would be a cricket fan. You know, there are two Pakistans, and the cricketers are the ones who don't want to bomb us (or England). Actually it looks like England doing the bombing right now, 305 for 4, Eoin Morgan just scored his hundredth.
@1, Cricket is this "sport" where people with funny accents hit a ball with a funny stick called a "bat" to try and knock over some other funny sticks called "pins", which is usually followed by long breaks for tea and cucumber sandwiches, which generally leads to endless "matches", without any clear winners.
Never attend a cricket match, you will be stuck there for hours if you hope to see it played to resolution.
Instead get drunk and watch highlights, if you must see people with funny accents play with funny sticks and eat cucumber sandwiches.
@4, erm, no one ever calls either the wickets or the bails "pins", and the fellow with the bat is trying to keep them from getting knocked over, not knock them over himself. It's not a whole lot different than baseball, once you understand it.
@5, Forgive me, I've only ever had its mysterious workings described to me by wasted Scots whilst wasted myself. Frankly I find even baseball impenetrable, and what could possibly attract me to take the time to learn how an infinitely longer version of the sport works.
Never attend a cricket match, you will be stuck there for hours if you hope to see it played to resolution.
Instead get drunk and watch highlights, if you must see people with funny accents play with funny sticks and eat cucumber sandwiches.