Basics of Cricket

Hey there! Welcome to my first-ever blog.

First of all, I am very grateful to have the opportunity to share with you all the sport of cricket. I love cricket and have been passionately following it for as long as I can remember. I thought it would be an enjoyable idea to create an informal document to explain a few simple rules in cricket. The aim is to make a person who has never played or watched the sport understand the rules a little more. Along with this, I will also share a few small anecdotes about the game. 

The game is played with two sides and each side has 11 players. One side does the batting and another side does the bowling. Before the start of each game, there is a coin toss. The winner of the coin toss decides whether to bat or ball.

Here is a picture of a coin toss between India and Pakistan in a championship final in 2017. We don’t speak about that game much in India. You know why 😅😜

The game is normally played on an oval/circular shaped ground with a small rectangular strip of land in the middle called the pitch.

 

This cricket pitch has six sticks (3 on each end) called wickets. The wickets have two small sticks on them called bails.

 

 From the bowling team, all 11 players are on the field playing. From the batting team, two batsmen are sent to play.

Cricket Facts: The first ever cricket game ever played was in the year 1844 between the two countries USA and Canada. Both of those countries barely play cricket now.

 There is a strange-looking line (see the picture below with the red arrow pointing at the line) next to the three sticks (wickets).

This line is known as the crease.

On the bowling side, one player throws the ball from one end of the pitch. He is the bowler. Then the line is referred to as the bowling crease. The batter hits the ball from the other end of the pitch. Then the line is referred to as the batting crease.

There is always one more player from the bowling side standing behind the batter and the wicket. He catches the ball when the batter does not hit the ball. 

He is the wicketkeeper. He wears gloves and sometimes a helmet.

The remaining 9 players(excluding the wicketkeeper and the bowler) on the bowling side, are all spread across the field. They are referred to as fielders. 

Cricket Facts: My favourite cricket player is Dhoni. He captained India and won the 2011 world cup. He also leads the Chennai Super Kings, my hometown. People call him Captain cool in India. He is also a wicketkeeper.

When one batter faces the ball, the other batter is next to the bowler. And when he hits the ball, both the batters run between the crease lines. Every time they run between the crease lines, it is considered as one run.

 

If they run once, touch the opposite crease line and then run back again, it is considered two runs. And so on and so forth. In the above picture, the orange arrow gives an indication of one run and the blue arrow gives an indication of two runs.

It’s not always that batters like to run. I mean, what happens to those players? Some just like to hit the ball really hard. Towards the circumference of the ground, there are these ropes called the boundary ropes. 

When the batter hits the ball and it bounces to these ropes or if it goes along the ground, it is considered as four runs. However, when the batter hits the ball and it goes directly over the boundary ropes. It is considered as six runs.

If you have come this far, you must really like the way I explain cricket 😜 

So far, we have seen that from the batting team, only two players were batting. What happens to the rest of the players?

In cricket, the batter has to leave once he is given out. This happens in any one of the following ways

1) Bowled: This happens when the ball hits the wickets. It is the responsibility of the batter to hit the ball and make sure it does not hit the wickets. 

2) Caught: It is when the ball is hit in the air and one of the 11 players from the bowling team catches the ball before it hits the ground.

3) Run Out: A run out happens when the two batsmen (also known as batters) are running between the crease. One player from the bowling team can throw the ball at the wickets when the batters are running. And if the wicket gets hit before the batter reaches the crease. He/she is given out.

There are more advanced forms of getting out like Leg Before Wicket (LBW), Hit Wicket, stumping and mankading. However, we stick only to the basics here. You can easily play a game of crickets with the basics.

When a batter is out, another batter walks in. This happens until the last two batters from the batting team remain. Every time a batter leaves, in cricket the term a “wicket has fallen is used”

So when four wickets have fallen, four batters have gotten out and the sixth batter is now called into the ground to bat along with the other batter still in the ground who has not gotten out.

In cricket, you can often find scoreboards like this:

In the above picture, the left side refers to the number of runs scored and the right side refers to the number of wickets fallen.

But what if the batters don’t get out? I mean the bowlers can’t keep bowling forever, right?

In the past that used to be the case. The longest game ever recorded went on for 12 days.

History’s Longest Cricket Match | Blog | The Sports Netting Company

Thankfully that is not the case any longer.

Here is where I introduce you to the concept of ‘overs’.

An over is a set of 6 balls thrown at the batsman. A bowler from the bowling team can bowl only one over consecutively after which he/she would have to be changed with another player to throw the ball. This also means that there is more than one player from the bowling team throwing the ball to the batter.

Cricket Formats

You may have already noticed. Sometimes the players wore coloured clothes, but sometimes they wore white clothes. This is because cricket is played multiple different formats. In total there are three formats. 

1) T20 Format

The T20 format. Here each team bowls a maximum of 20 overs. And the team that scores more runs in the 20 overs wins the game. T20 games generally last for a maximum of 3.5 to 4 hours. 

2) One-Day International (ODI) Format

Here, each team bowls a maximum of 50 overs. The team that scores more runs in the 50 overs wins the game.  

In both T20 and ODI formats, the players wear coloured clothes. For example, India wears blue, and Australia yellow. Pakistan wears green, and Sri Lanka wears purple. Once every few years a world cup is played in both formats. 

In both T20 and ODI cricket, if both the teams score the same number of runs, the game is decided in a super over, where both the teams play a one-over game. And the team that scores more in this one super over wins the game.

3) TEST MATCH/ TEST CRICKET

Here we get into a more advanced form of cricket, so, it's better to not go too deep into it for beginners.

This is the most traditional form of cricket. Here the players wear all white, and the match is restricted to time rather than overs. The game goes on for five days 90 overs bowled each day. So, a total of (90 x 5) 450 overs. Each team bowls and bats twice in a test match. So, you have in total four times where one of the team's bowls. Each time is called an ‘innings.’ 

In test cricket, you have three different results possible. – Team A winning, Team B winning or a draw.

 NO BALLS

When the bowler throws the ball from the bowling crease, his foot should be behind the bowling crease. If not, it is considered as a ‘No Ball’ and it would have to be repeated again. What’s worse for the bowler? The batter gets awarded a free run. 

There is another form of NO-BALL called a Waist-high no-ball, but that is more advanced.

WIDE

Another rule that is very important in cricket is how the bowler throws the ball to the batter. He has to bounce the ball. And he has to ball it in the hitting range of the batter. If it goes beyond the hitting range, it is called a ‘wide’

Umpires

To make sure, that the game is played fairly between the two teams. There are also two umpires on the field. They wear funny caps called umpire caps. The umpires monitor the runs scored the wides, the no-balls and the number of overs bowled. If players go against an umpire, they can pay a heavy penalty.

Bowlers

There are two types of bowlers in cricket. Fast and spin bowlers. Fast bowlers are those who run in and throw the ball fast at the batter. Spin bowlers bowl slowly and turn the ball when they throw the ball to the batter. They don’t run like fast bowlers. They stand much closer to the bowling crease.

Here is a picture of a fast bowler running in. 

For now, that’s it. With these basics, you can understand what is happening in cricket.

I can imagine this is a lot of information. It was really fun for me to write it. While writing, I also realized how challenging the sport is to explain to people who have never played it before. I hope you all enjoyed.