CULTURAL MYSTERIES

Teaching my Thai partner to understand our culture has its amusing side, moreso given Thais innate politeness.

For example, about four years back she finally comprehended our British male legacy of relentless piss-taking, something we share with Arab males.

She’s not entirely stupid, evidenced by her possession of two law degrees and other academic credentials, but it was certainly a hurdle for her to stop recoiling when a mate arrived and I greeted him with say, “My God you’re ugly”, or whatever.

Recently I’ve been dealing with explaining the toughest cultural clash of all, namely comprehending test cricket.

Telling her it’s the most exciting of all sports, which it is by a country mile, when to her, nothing at all seems to be happening, was initially a hell of a task.

Last Sunday week, watching us playing Sri Lanka in the first test, I tried a different tack, this initially received with polite but plain scepticism.

This was something only old hands comprehend, namely that despite in this case we being about 6000 miles away, as spectators we can actually influence the game. For this there’s a tried and true method which I then demonstrated.

We were bogged down trying to get a fifth wicket in Sri Lanka’s second innings and seemingly getting nowhere after about 40 or more minutes of bowling. To much polite scepticism I declared I will now get a wicket.

Turn the TV off I said, and find something to do for 10 minutes while I’m in the library. 10 minutes not watching, I explained, should be about the right time for one wicket.

We duly did this then returned to the television room and no surprise to me but certainly to her, had, but only by not watching, secured the fifth wicket.

She politely put this to down to chance as once again our bowlers became bogged down.

“Bugger this”, I declared, “I’m taking three wickets so follow me” and we went out to the pool, stripped off and dived in. “20 laps each should do the trick for three wickets”, I declared.

We completed the laps, dried off, returned inside and to no surprise to me but to much astonishment to her, we’d secured the three wickets.

With eight now down there was no need for my further intervention, I being confident the bowlers could wrap up the tail which they duly did.

Last year we won a test in New Zealand by this technique.

The office television screen in my Wellington manager, Aaron’s office, is there solely for watching test cricket.

For 40 minutes we watched our bowlers labour away in vain, then, fed up, we intervened and wine glasses in hand, repaired to my adjacent office and chewed the fat. 10 minutes seemed about right and sure enough, when we returned to Aaron’s office, we’d got the first wicket.

We took a further seven wickets over the next couple of hours by this tried and true method of letting the bowlers have a go for about half an hour, always in vain, and then intervening and doing the job for them by retiring to my office for 10 minutes. Using this time-proven technique repeatedly for five days saw us duly secure the win.

Unfortunately the Sri Lankan first test lost a day off for their election and ran into Monday when I was tied up. Being unable to intervene, my unavailability resulted in us losing.

All of this left my partner plainly puzzled by this, to her, peculiar western cultural oddity.

So to drive its validity home I told her I wouldn’t watch the second test at all, and I didn’t.

For the intervention method to work one has to actually be watching the game, then walk out for the required period, as the case may be.

Well, as we all know the upshot has been a near record disaster.