Australians and Their Strange Sport

cricket nettingAustralians are strange, I’ve concluded. I like the special kind of strange they are, but for my culture, some of the things they do are just really odd. I got here in December, so I was prepared for how much Christmas is a big deal over here. But having Christmas on the beach? Weird. I even saw some people setting up a Christmas tree ON the beach, as if they were totally proud that they were doing it wrong.

Sorry…doing it their way. Got to watch that. I was still warned about a lot of stuff though. Like the whole…sport thing. It’s not a 100% sport loving rate, but I’ve noticed that around the office, even people who wouldn’t usually talk about or show interest in sport will get all excited when there’s a game, or an intense discussion. It’s some serious business, especially around grand final day. There’s even a guy in the office who says he’s responsible for setting up the tennis nets at his local club, and he brings it up really often. Like, that’s fine. You need nets to play tennis; I know what the game involves. I didn’t even think that Australians were big into tennis, until I came to Melbourne and I realised they devote basically an entire month to it. Although…I don’t think they win very often. I guess it’s the joy of taking part!

But maybe that makes it important enough to mention the tennis nets a lot. Now, if you set up netting at the Australian Open…that’d be something. I bet even the ball boys and girls go back to their local clubs and brag about the one time they threw a ball to…Lleyton Hewitt, maybe? I don’t know who’s big at the moment. In fact, he’s the only Australian tennis player I could name. So, if you said you were a big deal in sports or cricket netting and you got to meet…some famous cricket person, I’d be pretty impressed, maybe. But no one else. Maybe I need to go out for more after-work drinks?

-Jei