Skip to content

Almost all you need to know about cricket

If you’re a cricket fan in England, you’re a very happy person right now.

The English mens team is currently playing the Australians in the Ashes, the most-famous cricket competition in the world.

They will be playing five full ‘test’ matches, meaning each match can go for up to five days or until one team loses all its batters in two innings.

OK, for those unfamiliar with cricket, there are SOME similarities to baseball, but not a lot. One of the big differences is that each team has 11 batters, and they go into the field two at a time, one at each end of the ‘pitch’.

The pitch is 22 yards long and features the wickets at each end, three posts stuck into the ground with two ‘bails’ balanced on top of them. There are about 4,000 different ways for a batter to be ruled out, including having a hit being caught in the air by a member of the fielding team; being ‘bowled’, which means the bowler (pitcher) has knocked the wicket out of the ground with a pitch; and leg-before-wicket (lbw), which means the batsman has stepped in front the wickets and been struck by the ball.

But, this being cricket, it’s not that simple. The umpire has to rule that the pitch would have struck the wicket if the batter had not been struck, and these days that frequently means resorting to video replay.

There are two batsmen, as mentioned (if you were paying attention) and two bowlers, one also at each end of the pitch. The bowlers take it in turn to bowl an ‘over’, which consists of six legal deliveries. If the bowler makes an illegal delivery, it usually means they have to make another delivery. The batter can also take a swing at an illegal delivery, and if they hit it, they can score runs off it.

Oh yes, runs. The basic scoring unit in cricket. If the batter hits the ball and it is not caught, he and the other batter may attempt to score runs by exchanging ends of the pitch. If they are doing this and the fielding team manages to knock down a wicket, the batter who was trying to get to that end is out.

Two other methods of scoring don’t require any running. If the batter hits the ball over the boundary of the field in any direction, it’s six runs – just like that. If the batter hits the ball to the boundary, but it bounces or rolls to get there, it’s four runs.

There are 11 batters per team, as mentioned, but as soon as the 10th one is out, the innings is over, since there won’t be two batters to take the field.

Then the other team comes in and has their go at bat.

It gets a lot more complicated when you start talking about cow corner and googly, but that’s the basics.

Oh, I almost forgot, the Australian women are also in England right now for a series of games, just in case fans couldn’t get enough.

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *