CRICKET

CHARACTERISTICS

Cricket is a sport of English origen. You can play it outdoors between two teams of eleven players, with bats, balls and wickets.

The first Cricket oficial rules were made in 1744. In Great Britain, you can play in different categories as a regional, school and international.

CRICKET FIELD

Cricket is played on a large, oval-shaped field. The field has a rectangular strip in the center, which is called the pitch. A boundary line should be clearly marked all around the outside edge of the field. The pitch is where the bowler (pitcher) bowls the ball to the other team's striker (batter). Regulation play has the pitch at 22 yards (20.1 m) long by 10 feet (3.0 m) wide.

MATERIAL

Cricket requires a few pieces of specialized equipment to play properly. At the bare minimum, six stumps, four bails, two cricket bats and a ball are required. Most teams also have uniforms, and safety gear for the wicket-keeper.

•       Stumps and bails are wooden pieces that are assembled to create the wicket, one of the most important objects in cricket. Setting up wickets is described in greater detail at the end of this section.

•       The cricket bat is a large bat made of willow wood that is flat on one side and bulged on the other, for strength. The ball should be hit with the flat part of the bat for the best distance on a hit.

•       The cricket ball is similar to a baseball in size and composition, but is sewn in a straight line rather than a tennis ball pattern, creating two equal hemispheres separated by stitching. Cricket balls are traditionally red with white stitching; in modern times, white balls are sometimes used for better visibility during Limited Over games (which generally go into the night), where coloured uniforms are worn rather than the traditional white.

•       Cricket uniforms consist of long pants, a shirt (which may be long- or short-sleeved), and shoes. Most cricket players wear cleats (spike-tread shoes) for better grip on the field, but it isn't required. In games with a traditional red ball, outfits must always be white or off-white. Team colours may be used for games with white balls.

•       The wicket-keeper (a ball catcher) is allowed to wear safety equipment similar to that of a baseball catcher's: webbed mitts, shin guards, and a helmet. No other player is allowed to wear protective equipment in the field unless they are close to the batsmen in which case they get to wear a helmet and shin guards.

LEARN THE BASICS OF GAMEPLAY

Each team in cricket is comprised of 11 players.  At any given time, the fielding team has all 11 players on the field, whereas the batting team has two, called the batsmen. The batsmen try to hit the ball after it is bowled by the bowler for the fielding team, and then switch positions without getting an out to score points.

All of the positions on the pitch have official names. The person who bowls the ball is the bowler, and the batsman who is facing the bowler is called the striker. The other batsman, who stands near the bowler at the far side of the pitch from the striker, is called the non-striker. Finally, the fielding team member who stands behind the wickets at the striker's end of the field is called the wicket-keeper. 

Every time the bowler bowls the ball, whether or not it is hit by the striker, a tally is counted. Once a bowler has bowled the ball 6 times in one direction, an “over” is declared. At the over, the bowler must be replaced with a new bowler. Bowlers can't bowl consecutive overs, but they can rotate back in after at least one bowl from another bowler, so theoretically two bowlers could trade off bowling for the entire innings. When there's an over, the position of the bowler changes from one end of the pitch to the other.