- Reggie Palmer: I'm afraid I don't awfully like cricket.
- Alexander Whitehead: Don't you really? I have heard of such people.
- Reggie Palmer: Whatever you think about the game, it does resolve itself into banging a bit of red leather about a field with a piece of wood.
- Alexander Whitehead: Why don't you like cricket?
- Reggie Palmer: Well the fact of the matter is I find it so frightfully dull.
- Alexander Whitehead: Frightfully dull? Well of course it's frightfully dull - that's the whole point. Any game can be exciting - football, dirt-track racing, roulette. The measure of the vast superiority of cricket over any other game is that it steadfastly refuses to cater to this boorish craving for excitement.
- Alexander Whitehead: Chekhov and cricket - great similarity you know. Same sense of shape and pattern, form and design. Each done with that superbly satisfying art which conceals art. The same passion for the beautifully inconclusive.
- Senator: Ought to be a exciting day?
- Cricket Fan in the Stand.: I hope not. All I want is to see the boys piling up the runs quietly and not getting out. Don't want any excitement, thanks
- Senator: Pardon me sir, but as a stranger in these parts, may I ask a question?
- Cricket Fan in the Stand.: Go ahead.
- Senator: This, I gather, is the fourth day of this particular game. I also gather that during the past few weeks, there have been four other games, each of five days, between these same teams.
- Cricket Fan in the Stand.: Correct.
- Senator: I also gather that this particular game cannot possible decide anything, whichever team wins.
- Cricket Fan in the Stand.: That's right.
- Senator: It's also I'm told very possible that neither side will in fact win this game.
- Cricket Fan in the Stand.: Well, let's hope so.