A beginner might find cricket hard to understand because of the strange words used and the fact that games can last five days and still end in a tie. Whether you want to watch a live match or play cricket yourself, our beginner’s guide will teach you all you need to know.
Aside from the silly names of the field positions, cricket is an easy game. The goal is to score more runs (or points) than the other team. Whether it’s a Test Match (which lasts five days) or a one-day (which has limited overs), each team will have 11 players who will take turns batting and bowling to try to score more runs than the other team. Let’s dig a bit deeper.
How Long Do Games Last?
‘Overs’ are used to keep track of games. A batter tries to score runs from six balls in a row that are bowled by the same bowler. This is called an “over.” Most games played at the beginner level are limited over games. The number of overs per side can be anywhere from 15 to 50, depending on the level of play. If you want to watch professional cricket, you can choose from the following variants:
- A test match lasts for five days and has two games for each team.
- Cricket is played over one day, with 50 overs (300 balls) for each team during one game.
- Twenty20 cricket, which is 20 overs (120 balls) of hard work for each team.
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Overview of Cricket Rules
Cricket has a set of rules that have grown over the years. Some of these rules can make the game seem harder to understand than it really is for someone who is new to it. It’s pretty easy for almost anyone to play and enjoy cricket once they know the rule book.
The judges, two of whom will be on the field of play, make sure that the rules of this game are followed. A third judge, who is not on the field, makes some of the tough calls, like whether a catch was made properly or whether a ball went over the line. In professional cricket, this is often done by watching videos on TV.
There is a wicketkeeper, several batters, and bowlers who specialize in different skills, and some players who can do both (all-rounders). Some of the best cricket players of all time, like Ian Botham, Jacques Kallis, Kapil Dev, and Gary Sobers, were all-rounders because they could hit and bowl very well. You could easily bet on any event on https://india.1xbet.com/line/cricket/988155-india-premier-league and make money online.
A chalk line or ‘crease’ is placed in front of each set of stumps to indicate the area that ‘belongs’ to the batter. It is impossible to “run out” a batter as long as he stays in his lane or at least keeps his bat firmly in place.
One team flips a coin to see who hits first, and then the other team bowls to them. Each batsman has a bat, and they play in pairs, with one at each end of the pitch. The bowlers then hit the batter one over at a time to try to get them “out.”
There are several ways to get rid of the batters, but the most popular ones are:
- Bowled — the hitter is out if one can’t keep the ball from hitting the sticks;
- Caught — The hitter is out if the ball is caught by a fielder before it bounces;
- Stumped — If a hitter gets “stumped,” the wicketkeeper, who stands behind the sticks and the batter, can also do it. They can remove the bails with the ball if they leave no part of their body or bat behind when they step out of their lane.
- LBW — A hitter is also out “leg before wicket,” or “lbw,” if the judge says the ball hit their protective leg pad instead of the stumps, where it should have hit if their leg wasn’t there. (A hitter would not be given out in a number of situations.)
Some other ways a batter could be out are by stepping on their own stumps or touching the ball, but these don’t happen very often and aren’t important for beginners to think about. As many runs as possible must be scored by the batting team before they lose 10 of their 11 wickets. The bowling team’s goal is to limit the number of runs scored and get the other team out.