Sports Talk

How to follow a five-day match without losing your mind (or your job)

I see a few people here are curious about five-day cricket, so here is how I follow it as an Aussie with a day job.

1. Know the shape of a day. Three sessions of roughly two hours, with lunch and tea in between. Most of the drama tends to cluster around the new ball and the last hour of the day.

2. Don't watch every ball. Have a live text commentary open in a tab. Check it every 20 minutes. When it suddenly gets long and full of exclamation marks, switch on the TV.

3. Learn three numbers: the lead, the wickets in hand, and the overs left in the day. That tells you almost everything about who is winning.

4. Accept the draw. It's not a cop-out. Watching a side bat out a day to save a match can be the best cricket you'll ever see.

Happy to answer questions. I'm an accountant, so I enjoy the numbers more than is healthy.