Cricket is a team sport wherein two teams of eleven players each face each other on a cricket field. The duel between the two sides features a wooden bat and a cork ball as the primary equipment. The primary goal of this sport is to score more “runs” than the other side to win the match. Runs is the cricket equivalent of points.
Each of the eleven players have a designated role. Batters are good at scoring runs, whereas bowlers pick up wickets or restrict the flow of runs of the opposition with the aid of fielders. The centre of the cricket ground has a 22-yard rectangular cricket pitch. Each end of the pitch will see three wooden stumps and two bails on top of it. White lines are drawn in specified ends of the pitch. The most significant ones are called crease and wide lines. The external periphery of the circular ground (nearly 150 metres in diameter) is called the boundary.
The game begins with a coin toss. The captain who won the toss decides whether their team would bat or bowl first. Starting from this point, all references to the rules of cricket will be explained based on an example match between Team A and Team B.
Team A has won the toss and has put Team B to bowl first. Only two batters can take to the crease who position themselves at either end of the pitch. The first two batters are the openers. The one facing the bowler is called the strike batter whereas his/her partner at the other end is the non-striker.
The fielding side (in this case Team B) gives the ball to a player who shall be the bowler. The remaining ten players position themselves as fielders. These players will attempt to dismiss or restrict the batters from scoring runs. Only one fielder is allowed to wear gloves and this field positions behind the stumps of the strike batter. This fielder is called the wicket-keeper as stumps are also referred as wickets.
A bowler has to bowl six legal balls in a row. The set of six balls is called an over. A bowler cannot overstep the crease from the bowling or the non-striker’s end. Moreover, each bowl must be bowled within the wide-lines drawn at the batter’s end. The batting side will be rewarded one run should the bowler breach these couple of rules. These runs are called extras. Moreover, that particular ball conceding the extra run is illegal and hence needs to be re-bowled. One over hence, another player will replace the bowler and the bowler who bowled the previous over becomes the fielder.
The batter’s objective is to try to to hit the ball over or towards the boundary lines. This is because the contact of the ball with the boundary lines procures maximum runs. The batting team is awarded four runs, if the ball bounces before crossing the boundary line. Six runs are awarded if the ball directly crossed the boundary line.
Since it is nearly impossible to hit every ball to the boundary, the most common form of runs is scored by the batters by running between the wickets (changing ends on the pitch). Each time the batter change ends, a run is scored. The batter can score runs this way till the fielder collects the ball and hurls it at the stumps. If the batters do not reach the crease before the fielding side hits the stumps, then the batter is “run out” and hence cannot continue further.
The next batter from Team A will replace the dismissed batter. The batters’ goal is to score maximum runs for his team by not getting out. The goal of the bowlers is to restrict the number of runs and get the wickets of ten players of the opposition team.
The batting side continues to bat for a a specified number of overs. The batting side can either manage to protect their wickets and play all the overs or all their batters can end up getting out (aka “all-out”) even before the decided number of overs are bowled. The completion of batting of Team A by either means decides the end of an “innings”. Please note, professional cricket is played in four different formats where the number of innings varies. A cricket match with unlimited overs features two innings per side whereas a One Day International match, T20 match, T10 match will have 50, 20, and 10 overs respectively.
In the second innings Team B will try to score more runs than Team A to win the match. Let us assume that Team A scored 250 runs at the end of 50 overs (300 balls). This means that in the same number of overs, Team B needs to score 251 runs to win the match. If Team B successfully score 251 runs before the completion of their innings, they win the match based on the number of wickets that are yet to fall. However, if Team A restricts Team B to 230 runs and 50 overs are completed, then Team A score is said to win by 20 runs.
All the happenings in the match are supervised by on-field invigilators called umpires. There are two on-field umpires that ensure the smooth proceeding of a match, decide the outcome of various outcomes after a ball is bowled, and indicate what event took place after each delivery through specific hand signals. They also report any illegal or unsporting conduct committed by players.
There are various ways of getting a batman’s wicket, various other ways of getting extras, a number of ways to score runs. These, however, shall be explained in future articles of Sports Focus. Meanwhile, click here to see how a typical One Day International cricket match looks like.
