Robert McCrum, writing about the relationship between cricket and literature, records a couple of nice observations pertinent to the relationship between cricket and time:
AG Macdonnell, in England, Their England, was famously successful, but misleading. His account is thrilling, and hilarious but it's the intermittent tedium of the game that makes it true to experience. A memorable Observer account of the batsman Chris Tavare noted that watching him bat was "a bit like waiting to die".
Macdonnell wrote about village cricket, but the apotheosis of the game is the test match, especially an Ashes test. Tom Stoppard once said, of this supreme contest, "I don't think I could take seriously any game which takes less than three days to reach its conclusion".