Jumpin' Jiminy
Cricket fighting isn't cricket, according to the cops, who busted 115 men for illegal betting in Mong Kok.
More than 150 crickets were confiscated, along with a wooden bucket (the ring) and about $8,000 in cash. The crickets fought to the death as the men wagered on the outcome.
In a twist of coincidence, the match occurred in a building on Fife Street, home to the office of the Far East Friends of the Crickets association. The last arrests for cricket fighting took place more than 10 years ago. Illegal gambling carries up to a $10,000 fine and three months in the slam.
The Standard dug up some interesting history on the culture of cricket fighting:
A display at the Museum of Macao features a 1989 champion cricket's ribbon, a gambling ring, preserved crickets in jars, a cricket coffin and cricket tomb.
There are also photographs of champion crickets with their "trainers", plus a video of a fight.
Crickets that were reluctant to fight were tickled by a long thin paint brush.
A man running a souvenir shop at the base of the Ruins of St Paul's monument last year told this reporter he enjoyed cricket gambling when a boy.
But the popular past time was stopped after the handover from the Portuguese to China in 1999, he said.
According to a 1994 article by Jin Xingbao of the Shanghai Institute of Entomology and found on the website Cultural Entomology, cricket fighting was once as popular in China as football is now.
China appointed Jia Shidao as Cricket Minister (1213-1275), while Ming Xuanzhong (1427-1464) was known as the Cricket Emperor.
"Once the emperor favoured cricket fighting, crickets became the primary tribute for the palace," Jin wrote.
"Each year, thousands of carefully selected crickets were sent to the capital where many people's financial fate were placed in the mandibles of these insects."
It has also spread outside of China, to Chinese communities in New York and Philadelphia, Jin added.
The police believe five of the men arrested were the ringleaders.
Should they be sent to prison, they'll be short of crickets for a spell, but all is not lost.
They'll have plenty of cockroaches to train.
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