Waking up the sleeping land: Lapta tournament

Sunday, September 22, 2013

Lapta tournament

My attempts at being involved in team sport in Russia have not been very successful. As I think of it, I feel guilty that I have not been in the pool much in months and not at all since getting back from Australia.

Anyway, we recently had a chance to play some Lapta. Lapta is a game invented by Russians. I have no doubt it has its roots in ancient bat and ball sports that probably existed across Europe in very rudimentary forms. Over the centuries it has been a game played by kids. When I told my English students recently that there is now a Russian Lapta Federation with codified rules and that adults played, they laughed!

I took a carload of Aussies out to a village to play in a three team tournament. We lost our first game without scoring. In our second game I told the team that we should just aim to get a score on the board. At half time we were 11-0 up, but sadly we lost 23-13 in the end.

It's only vaguely similar to cricket, rounders and baseball. There are six on a team. One of the batting team tosses the ball in the air for a batter to hit. People seem to miss the ball often enough, or certainly miss hit the ball. The bat is a little like a baseball bat, but narrower.

Once the ball has been hit the batter can run, so long as the ball has gone past the first 10 metres (or foul zone). The batter doesn't have to run, so runners can stack up to the side. If a fielder catches the ball, they get one point, but this does not stop the runner from running.

The runners try to run to the far end of the playing area and back again. Reaching the safety zone at the far end is worth one point. Getting back to the batting zone is worth two points.

If a fielder hits a runner with the tennis ball, then the fielding team quickly tries to run into the batting zone. If the whole team get in safely, it is their turn to bat. However, if the batting team turn around and hit the fielding team back with the tennis ball before the fielding team get home, then they can keep batting. This can go back and forth though, it's a bit crazy.

Our "Team Australia" messed up on the rules a few times, even to be laughed at by our Russian opponents. Still, we had a great time, and we should get to play again on November 1st, if the younger members of Team Australia are not too bruised emotionally by our losses.