A super game, requiring brute strength, fearlessness, camaraderie and an encyclopaedic knowledge of constantly changing, stupid and arbitrary rules[1] thus making itself unusually capable of contributing rich metaphor to the world of finance — but not quite so capable as that magnificent analogue for our collected, desperate existence: cricket.

Also, New Zealanders are very good at it. Regrettably, this has rather tended to stymie New Zealand's excellence at anything else, a sentiment which, if uttered, brings out many New Zealanders in bouts of defensive hives.[2]

See also

References

  1. Exhibit A: the utterly impenetrable off-side rule, especially as it relates to joining the ruck.
  2. For those wishing to write in to protest the existence of Crowded House, Kiri Te Kanawa, Ernest Rutherford, Edmund Hillary, the Suffragettes, Keri Hulme, Katherine Mansfield, Peter Jackson, Ivan Mauger, Kangaroos, Middle Earth, the Datsuns, Hudson & Halls, Lorde, and the guy that does the business news on the Today programme, thanks.