A young Indiana Jones playing cricket in India.
- "The pitcher is called the bowler, and a curveball's called a googly."
- ―Indiana Jones[src]
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams. It originated in England in the 1500s and later spread across the British Empire, where it became culturally established in various regions including India, Australia, the West Indies, South Africa and New Zealand.
History[]
Indiana Jones learned of cricket in Benares, India in 1910, when he came across a match being played by Jiddu Krishnamurti. Curious, Jones joined in—though unfamiliar with cricket, he mistook it for "Indian rules" baseball. The boys ended up having a "cultural exchange" as they taught each other the rules of their respective sports. Helen Margaret Seymour was initially unimpressed when she found her young student neglecting and schoolwork to play baseball, dismissing Indy's explanation by stating that "flogging a small sphere with a bat is not a cultural exchange". However, when Jones revealed he had also learned about cricket and knew such terms as "bowler" and "googly", his tutor, a proud Englishwoman, conceded, "well, you did learn some cricket. Perhaps the afternoon wasn't a waste after all".[1]
