And it looks like Gregory’s judgement call was right on the money – the airbender was out!
The relevant rules are hard to find within the cricket rulebook (as everything), but they can be found (as everything)! According to the rules, pitching a human being is only allowable if the human in question is an airbender or a member of some other sect or religious order named after a type of baseball pitch. It is only allowable if the airbender is question is smol and has testicles. The latter being relevant for his interaction with the strike zone. For the ball to be a strike, the airbender’s balls have to be inside the strike zone. If one ball is outside and one inside, the larger ball is determinative. If the balls are of equal size, the higher-hanging ball counts. The rules have really thought of everything.
Fortunately for Aang, both of his balls were clearly outside of the strike window – that saves him the indignity of having the sizes and positions of his balls measured by the chief umpire while the whole stadium is looking on. That would definitely been more embarrassing than Snuka’s inadvertent exposure from earlier in the game…which is probably why the universe didn’t inflict it on Aang. It likes to reserve its worst for Snuka. It didn’t save him the indiginity of impacting on home base face first, or laying there with his butt sticking out…but these are minor things, hardly falling into the category the universe would consider for Snuka.
On another note…I’m really starting to develop very faint shadows of a doubt concerning the idea of equipping the umpires with frog-faced helmets…
More on Thursday.