Cricket is a team sport played between two teams of eleven players each.
It is a bat and ball game which is played on a roughly oval grass field, in the
centre of which is a flat strip of ground 20.12 m (22 yards) long, called a
pitch. At each end of the pitch is a set of wooden stumps, called a
wicket.
Note that, rather confusingly, the pitch itself is also often referred to as the
wicket. A player from the fielding team (the
bowler) propels a hard,
fist-sized cork-centred leather ball from one wicket towards the other. The ball
usually bounces once before reaching a player from the opposing team (the
batsman), who defends the wicket from the ball with a wooden cricket bat.
The batsman may then run between the wickets, exchanging ends with another
batsman (the "non-striker"), who has been standing in an inactive role near the
bowler's wicket, to score runs. The remainder of the bowlers' team stand in
various positions around the oval as
fielders.
Cricket has been an
established team sport for several centuries. It originated in its modern form
in England and is popular mainly in the present and former members of the
Commonwealth. In some countries in South Asia, including India, Pakistan,
Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, cricket is by far the most popular sport. Cricket is
also a major sport in England and Wales, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa,
Zimbabwe and the English-speaking countries of the Caribbean, which are
collectively known in cricketing parlance as the West Indies. There are also
well established amateur club competitions in countries as diverse as the
Netherlands, Kenya, Nepal, and Argentina (see also: International Cricket
Council).
The sport is followed with passion in many different parts of the world. It
has even occasionally given rise to diplomatic outrage, the most notorious being
the Basil D'Oliveira affair which led to the banning of South Africa from
sporting events. Other examples include the Bodyline series played between
England and Australia in the early 1930s, an event that almost meant diplomatic
ties were severed with England or the 1981 underarm bowling incident involving
Australia and New Zealand.
Summary
The aim of the batsmen is to score as many runs as possible. A run is
scored when both batsmen successfully move to their respective opposite ends of
the wicket (or the ball goes over the boundary rope). (The batsmen will usually
only attempt to score runs after the striker has hit the ball, but this is not
necessary). The aim of the bowler's team is to get each batsman out (this
is a wicket, or a dismissal). Dismissals are achieved in a variety
of ways. The most direct way is for the bowler to evade the batsman's guard and
successfully hit his stumps with the ball, dislodging the bails on top.
While the batsmen are attempting a run, the fielders will attempt to knock the
bails off either set of stumps with the ball before the batsman nearest to that
set of stumps passes the crease with his bat. Other ways for the fielding side
to dismiss a batsman include catching a struck ball before it touches the
ground. Once the batsmen are not attempting to score any more runs, the ball is
"dead" and is bowled again (each attempt at bowling the ball is a ball or
a delivery).
Once out, a batsman is replaced by the next batsman in the team's lineup. The
innings (singular) of the batting team will end when the tenth batsman is
given out, since there always must be two batsmen on the field. When this
happens, the team is said to be all out. At the end of an innings, the
two teams exchange roles, the fielding team becoming the batting team and vice
versa.
The game is divided into overs of six (legal) balls. At the end of an
over, the batting and bowling ends will be swapped, and the bowler replaced by
another member of the fielding side. The fielding positions (sometimes) and the
two umpires also change positions at this time.
The winning team will be the team that scores the most runs at the end of a
match. Different varieties of the game have different restrictions on the number
of overs, the number of innings, and the number of balls in each. A draw
is not an uncommon result and can occur if the team that is last to bat fails to
match the required total of runs, or the bowling team fails to take 10 wickets,
before a specified time limit.
