Don’t roll your eyes please! Even if you are not a lover of sports please read the first item because I’m sure you will be converted to cricket.
Cricket lovers in England claim the sport is the national game and actually they have a point as it was around hundreds of years before football. To most people though, cricket is an unfathomable game with strange rules played in games that last for days. It’s also one of those sports that’s actually fairly limited at world level with mainly just the British Commonwealth fielding teams – other than Holland, surprisingly. It’s a funny old game but I happen to love it so here are 7 points of cricket explained.
You have two sides, one out in the field and one in. Each man that's in the side that's in goes out, and when he's out he comes in and the next man goes in until he's out. When they are all out, the side that's out comes in and the side that’s been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out.
When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in. There are two men called umpires who stay all out all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out. When both sides have been in and all the men have out, and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game!
Understand?
The pitch is a large field and in the middle there’s the batting length. This has a set of stumps (wickets) at either end. A batsman stands at each set of stumps. Around the perimeter of the pitch there is some kind of boundary marker, most often a rope. If a ball hits the perimeter without being stopped by a fielder, the batsman has scored a, hmm, boundary.
This is the funny gate looking thing that the batsman stands in front of that the bowler has to aim at to get him out. It is a set of 3 wooden stakes with a grooved top on which two carved bits of wood sit, these are called the bails. The bails are there to be an indication that a ball has brushed the stumps as it passed. Even if there is no discernible sign that the stump has moved, if a bail falls off it is considered proof and the batsman is out.
So now you know, the batsman goes in and the other team try and get him out. It all starts with the bowler (kind of like a baseball pitcher) who bowls the ball at the stumps. The batsman has to hit the ball far enough to be able to score runs. The fielders have to chase or catch the ball to get it back to the stumps before the batsmen have finished the run. If the ball hits the stumps before the batman hits it, or it is caught by a fielder directly from the bat or the ball hits leg before wicket the batsman is out. A batsmen getting out is the cue for a new batsman to go in.
Like baseball there are many ways the bowler can aim the ball. He might be a fast bowler or he might be a spin (slow) bowler. There are different ways of bowling the ball and they all have names. He might choose a full toss, a yorker, an off break, a leg break, a grass cutter, a bouncer or a googly. He can also use his ball to bowl a no ball (overstepping the mark).
Once the bowler has bowled the ball and the batsman has hit it, the bowler’s team mates, known as the fielders have to chase the ball. If it has gone far enough the batsmen will attempt a run between the wickets (stumps) to create a score. The fielders are positioned according to how the captain believes the batsman will react to the way the bowler bowls. One man is placed behind the stumps – called the wicket keeper. The others are placed in positions known as long on, long off, third man, gully, slip, deep point, backward short leg, short leg, short mid on, mid off, deep mid wicket, deep fine leg, silly point, silly mid on …
Now that you are an expert you might like to become a cricket scorer (I started doing this when I was 8 years old). You sit in the pavilion and record the match in a specific type of book. Every single ball is recorded. A plain bowled ball without any scoring or getting out action is a recorded as a dot. Each run is recorded as the number of runs from that ball. Wickets are shown as a w and extras (no balls, byes, leg byes and wides) are also noted. If a whole over (6 balls) is completed without any action it’s called a maiden over and you have to join the dots to make an M.
Now that you’ve read cricket explained you are an expert. Do you need to know anything else?
Top Photo Credit: butlersphotography