Cricket is a global passion, played everywhere from Test match arenas to village greens, tropical beaches. Cricket, England’s national summer sport, is now played throughout the world, particularly in Australia, India, Pakistan, the West Indies, and the British Isles.
History of Cricket
Cricket was first recorded in 16th-century England, and it was played in grammar schools, farm communities, and everywhere in between. But things really took off when 18th-century nobles realized. The oldest surviving set of cricket laws date from 1744 – printed on a handkerchief, naturally.
The oldest permanent fixture is the annual Eton v Harrow match, played since 1805. The first international match was in 1877 when Australia beat England in Melbourne. The match was dubbed a “Test” since the grueling nature of playing over five days was deemed the ultimate “test” for any side.
Cricket’s earliest star was WG Grace, who played 44 seasons from 1865 to 1908. The top batsman in history as India’s Sachin Tendulkar, who retired in 2013 after scoring 15,921 runs in 200 Tests and 18,426 in 463 one-day internationals. He is the only player to have made 100 international centuries, was the first batsman to score a double century in a one-day International and is the only player to amass more than 30,000 international runs.
Rules of Cricket Game
1. Cricket rules are not that complicated to understand. Cricket involves five basic equipment - the ball, the bat, the wickets, stumps, and the bails. These are the ABCs of cricket and will help you understand the rest of the rules.
2. Cricket is a team game played between two teams of 11 players each. The 11 players constitute batsmen, bowlers, and wicket keepers.
3. The match is usually played on a large circular or oval-shaped ground. The field is oval with a rectangular area in the middle, known as the pitch, that is 22 yards (20.12 meters) by 10 feet (3.04 meters) wide. At each end of the pitch is a set of three wickets with two wooden bails atop them.
4. The match is broken down into separate sections called balls, which is one delivery of the ball bowled by a bowler to a batsman. Six of these balls form an over. Across the top of each wicket lie horizontal pieces called bails.
5. An innings is made of a specific number of overs or a certain amount of time. A one-day international match consists of 50 overs per innings, a twenty international match consists of 20 overs per innings whereas a test match is limited to a certain number of days which is 5 with 90 overs to be played on each day.
6. During the innings, the batting team will have two batsmen on the pitch while the 11 players of the opposing team, who are the bowling team, will have their players at various parts of the field as fielders. One of them will be bowling the ball and another one will be a wicket-keeper and will be stationed behind the wicket.
7. The match will also have two on-field umpires that make the decisions of the game. There is also a third umpire that monitors the game through a screen and helps with uncertain or close decisions.
