Mikey wrote:First, you are someone who has grown accustomed to the Beeb. Much of the stoppage in play in American football stems from the need to be commercial-television friendly. Networks pay exorbitant sums for partial broadcast rights to the football season.
Same here - the rights to the Premier League games are owned by Sky.
Second, Pictish football seems to flow more because the clock continues to run even while there is no actual play occurring - the clock runs while the ball is being retrieved for a throw-in, set up for a corner kick or goalie kick, etc. - during which, by all rights, the clock should be stopped.
And times is added on at the end of each half to make up for it - usually three or four minutes, not an hour or more.
On a tangent, one of humanity's defining assetts is opposable thumbs. Why don't we make a game in which only two of the twenty-two players can use their hands?
Another reason to support cricket - footballers use their feet, handeggers stick the thing under their arm, cricketers actually use their thumbs.
No difference in purpose, maybe (except as described above for American spectator sports.) However, to say that there's "fundamentally no difference" still ignores the fact that for a working man to watch an entire test cricket match, he'd have to schedule vacation time from work.
It's worth it to watch us thump the Aussies.
Or, even better, draw due to the Bradmanesque batting of Monty Panesar.
