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The Rules of Cricket

Author: Staff
Every time I visit Great Britain, I play this little game. Stroll into a pub when a cricket match is beamed in on the telly, slap a fiver down on the bar and say, "If anyone can explain the rules of that game to me in five minutes or less, it's yours!"

Haven't had to pay up yet.

But having now issued the challenge, what follows is an abbreviated explanation of the game for the cricket-ignorant.

1. Two teams of 11 players each compete on a roughly oval field between 100-160 yards long. Teams bat in successive innings and try to score more runs than the other team.

2. In the middle of the field is the "pitch," a rectangular area roughly 75 feet long. At either end, three wooden posts, or wickets, are set in the ground. Atop the wickets are bails, or light wooden sticks. The batting team tries to defend these wickets; the bowling team tries to knock the bails off the wickets to get a batter out.

3. The batting team sends two batters out onto the field, one at each end of the pitch. The bowling team spreads themselves out all over the field. (A batter can hit the ball in any direction, 360 degrees.)

4. The batter crouches in front of one wicket, preparing to hit. His partner stands at the opposite wicket, ready to run. The bowler can get a running start before delivering his ball at the opposite wicket, hurling the ball overhand with a straight arm (i.e., not actually thrown as in baseball). The bowler is trying to hit the wickets behind the batter and usually skips the ball off the ground in order to make it harder to hit. Some bowlers are akin to fast-ball pitchers, others like to utilize spin and bounce to make the ball dance just like a curve-ball pitcher in baseball.

5. The batsman tries to hit the ball, but even if he does, he doesn't have to run. He and his fellow batsman at the opposite end can stay in the crease near their wickets if the hit ball doesn't go very far, or if a nearby defender picks it up. But if he manages to hit the ball where they ain't, then he and his counterpart run back and forth the 66 feet between the wickets, each swapping of ends counting a run. If he can hit a ball on the ground beyond the boundary line, it counts for four runs. If he's a batsman on the order of Viv Richards and hits one in the air over the boundary line (the equivalent of a home run), it counts for six runs.

6. The defending (fielding) team tries to get the batsman out, and there are 10 different ways to accomplish this. The most common are catching a batted ball in the air, bowling a ball past a swinging batsman which knocks the bail off the wicket, catching the running batsmen out by throwing a ball at the wicket and knocking off the bail before the batsman gets back in his crease, and "leg before wicket" in which a batsman blocks with his padded legs a bowled ball which the umpire adjudges would have struck the wicket. Whenever a bowled ball is blocked this way, the members of the fielding team all yell "Howzat?" at the umpire.

7. How long does it last? Aye, there's the rub. When all the batsmen on one team are out, then teams switch and all the batsmen on the other team bat until they are out. That's an "innings." International test matches usually run two innings, and that can take up to five days. Other matches are played to a set number of "overs." Six balls delivered by a bowler constitute an over.

There are, of course, all kinds of stratagems, positional names and subtleties about the game, but those are the basics. Clear as mud? Try explaining baseball to someone who's never seen it.

Posted online 04/01/98.

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