f13.net

Basics
Cricket involves a kind of swashbuckling swordplay against incoming rock-hard missiles.

The batsman wields the bat in defence of a fragile object behind him: three vertical sticks ("stumps") with two small sticks balanced on top ("bails"), which must not fall. If one or both bails are knocked off, the batsman is defeated ("out").

The batsman can't just put his body in front of the ball to protect the stumps. He has to do it by wielding the bat. So he needs to be a master of various strokes of the bat, to parry or thrust or feint or slash as needed.

He must also be given a sporting chance. So there are rules about how the ball may be sent at the batsman. It cannot be launched by throwing or pitching, meaning the elbow must not be bent when releasing it. The ball cannot be sent too wide or high for the batsman to reach. And it must be released from overhead, not swung underarm. It also has to be launched from a set minimum distance away (marked by a line) and the batsman must be considered ready.

Aside from that, it's open warfare. The ball can be delivered fast, slow, spinning, aimed at the batsman, aimed at the stumps, rising up dangerously at his head, or cunningly delivered to fool the batsman into a fatal error. Bowlers shine the ball on one side of the seam by rubbing it against their clothes, keeping it dull on the other, to give it dangerous aerodynamics they can use.

The batsman also has territory to protect. There's a "line in the sand" behind which to fight the battle (a white line called a "crease"). If he is not behind his line, the stumps are fair game for any opponent to hit with the ball in any manner. They can throw/pitch the ball at the stumps as hard and fast as possible, if he is not back behind his line.

Scoring
If you are a good enough swordsman/batsman to defend the stumps, you can then set about trying to score. Again, it's about skilful wielding of the bat and some daring. As you remain at the stumps longer, your confidence grows and you can take some risks.

You see, there are two territories to protect, facing each other, each with a set of stumps, meaning two batsmen from a team are present on the field. One point is gained for each time they swap ends, passing each other by running between their two lines of defence. They do this by turning the incoming missile into an outgoing missile, fending or slashing the ball out of their opponents' reach, buying themselves time to run to their ally's position, before the fielders can get the ball back to the stumps. So the points are called "runs" and if you don't get out, you can keep scoring more and more runs for your team.

A bowler bowls six times to one end, then a different bowler bowls six times to the other, and so on. Six balls is called an "over". With the batsmen crossing to either end as they make runs, you get different combinations of batsman versus bowler.

This leads to the following possibilities, or a mixture of them at either end:
-- A nervous stalemate: The batsmen are successfully protecting the stumps, but struggling to score runs.
-- An exciting display: The batsmen are in full control and keep swatting away the ball for runs, and the bowlers can't seem to stop them.
-- A batsman is out/defeated: Two are needed on the field in order to play, so a team is dismissed when 10 of the 11 are gone.

Basic rules
Ways a batsman can be out, credited to the bowler:
-- Bowled: the batsman missed or mis-hit the ball, and it hits the stumps, knocking the bails off.
-- Caught: the ball comes off the bat (or gloves, which are considered part of the bat) and is successfully caught by a fielder before it lands.
-- Stumped: while trying to hit the ball, the batsman steps outside his territory, misses the ball and the fielder behind the stumps (called the wicket keeper) grabs the ball and knocks the bails off before the batsman can get back.
-- Leg before wicket (LBW): the batsman prevented the ball hitting the stumps with his body instead of the bat AND the ball was definitely going to hit the stumps. Not out if the ball was going wide.

Other ways a batsman can be out:
-- Run out: during an attempted run, the fielders knocked the bails off the stumps with the ball, before the batsman got back to his territory.
-- Hit wicket: while trying to hit the ball, the batsman hit the stumps with his bat, knocking the bails off.
-- Handled ball, and various other rule breaches: e.g. batsman did something silly like protecting stumps by catching/picking up the ball.

Interesting ways to score:
-- Four: ball is hit to the edge of the field, bouncing at least once first.
-- Six: ball is hit over the edge of the field on the full.
-- Byes: ball was missed by everyone, missed the stumps, and went far enough that the batsmen were able to get runs.
-- Leg byes: ball that was not going to hit the stumps, accidentally came off the batsman's body instead of the bat, and the batsmen were able to run.
-- Overthrows: fielder tries to throw the ball back to the stumps and throws it too far or wide for his teammates, and the batsmen get more runs while the ball is away.
-- No ball: Bowler stepped over the line signifying he was too close to the batsman when the ball was released. One run awarded and the bowl doesn't count.
-- Wide: Ball is delivered far too wide or high for the batsman to hit. One run awarded and the bowl doesn't count.

Types of matches:
-- Test Match: Traditional cricket for purists. A drawn-out test of tactics and endurance. Each team can bat through twice and five days are available to bring it to a result. The batsmen can take it slow until they get comfortable, then set about scoring carefully. The bowlers and fielders can do the same, trying all sorts of mind games and tricks to get through the batsman's defences. One team will usually end up with a deficit after batting worse the first time, and be trying to catch up on their second go.
-- One-Day Match: Faster paced, do-or-die. Each team can bat once, and has a limit of 50 overs to score from, i.e. they are bowled to 300 times (plus any penalty deliveries) and must score as much as possible, while the bowling side must prevent scoring as much as possible.
-- Twenty20: New concept, very fast paced and just for entertainment. Players go by nicknames and wear microphones on the field. Each team bats once and has only 20 overs to score from. Very little tactics except "try to score really fast, right now".

Videos
Genius bowlng:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mESB4zb3Wg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlvPS0SL-nA

Genius batting:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4Z-amwj6SE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNggUD_MrNY

A batting training video, showing how the bat is used:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JipHEn63bWs

Now go watch the Cricket World Cup (http://www.cricinfo.com/worldcup2007/) (one-day match tournament) currently reaching the semi-finals in the West Indies. Now that they're done with the murders, match-fixing and freaky wins by unknown teams like Ireland, it will get good ...

_{This long post brought to you by a hangover.}

omg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GGtnukbjBM

 :-P

I have a sudden need to sip black tea while wearing a monocle.

Only the English would have the atrocious taste to try to make a sport out of killer robots tossing red explosive balls into suns.

You gotta know what a crumpet is to know about cricket.

Ironwood wins the thread.  Man I need to watch that movie again.

I've never really gone and looked for the rules to cricket.  I guess I've always just tried to figure out what was going on by watching the game.  Needless to say, I was highly confused as the game makes apparently no sense at all.

Thanks for the break down, next time it's on and I am hanging out with some friends I'll amaze them all by knowing what the hell is going on.

What exactly caused this thread to be spawned?


Oh, and Baseball > Cricket  :-P

I once tried to figure out cricket. I was in England and I missed a bus or something and the only thing I could do all day was watch tv all day. The only thing that was on was cricket and latino soap operas. So I went for cricket. I watched for like 5 or 6 hours and had no fucking idea what the fuck was going on. I still don't. I like it this way... so... tl;dr?

I'm not a huge fan of cricket, but I do prefer it to rounders.

Watching Paint Dry(tm) > Cricket

However, any sport that can cause someone to murder another person has to be fun, right?

http://news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=613692007 (http://news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=613692007)

I don't know shit about Cricket, but that motherfucker was EN FUEGO.

Holy shit. You actually made the game comprehensible.

A friend in some of my business classes is from Jamaica and is absolutely in love with Cricket. He has a subscription to some online site that lets him stream all of the cricket games being played in the world and they're usually on every day. The minute he told me the games can go from 10 AM to 6 PM in LENGTH I couldn't believe the sport still existed. All in all, we'll be playing it over the summer in our gym.

He's one of the best today. How about this incredible feat however:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dk_smnDHoE

No only are they mighty hits, but the positioning of the body is so much better than most contemporary players. Like Ian Botham and Kapil Dev, Garry Sobers was one of the finest all-rounders the game ever saw. Unlike them, he was never sloppy at the crease.

I need Wii cricket.

Everything I know about cricket I learned from Lagaan (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0169102/).

Wii cricket would to so cool.  We could even have a Wii tea break! 

Cricket is actually pretty damn fun to play. 

Local USCG had detained a ship I was agent for for about 4 months.  The owners pretty much abandoned the ship and crew, the crew didn't have visas and were restricted to the ship.  They weren't even supposed to step a toe off the gangway unless it was to do a quick draft check or whatever around the ship.  Anyway, about 1 month into the detainment I put forth the argument to Customs, INS, USCG, and Border Patrol (this was before 9/11 and formation of DHS) that if they were going to jump ship, they would already do so.  So, in an effort to be somewhat accomodating they started allowing the crew to get a little further from the ship, and in tokens of good faith, started allowing them to go ashore with a Christian Seamans Mission group. 

Anyway, since I was spending about 2 hrs a day on this hunk of shit, I got to know all the crew pretty well.  They pooled together a little scratch, and I ordered them some Cricket gear, and eventually started playing pretty much everyday with them.  Hell, before it was all said and done, several of the Border Patrol and INS guys started playing after the daily crew muster.  After two months of playing I still didn't fully grasp the rules, I just kept swinging until they told me to stop. 

Good fun though.

If you compare the face of my father in law, who very nearly became a professional cricket player, and my face at his annual reunion match, you'll instantly realise that cricket is MUCH more fun to play than to watch.

Wow, didn't realize all that happened in such a small space.  That's kind of crazy to have somebody running full tilt towards you to throw a small hard ball at your shins.  The fact that you can throw it off the ground makes hitting the ball somewhat a crap shoot I would guess.

Also, I wouldn't be able to throw anything like that.  What the hell?

Fun fact: They can aim for the face too.

Also the testicles. The following protective cricketing gear is called a "box".

(http://www.newitts.com/images/products/200x200/ct82.jpg) (http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/b/ba/150px-Cricket-Abdominal-Guard.png) (http://www.owzat-cricket.co.uk/acatalog/ABDOGUARDth.jpg)

Some people getting hit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUug4say8k0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=te7vv9GiETs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y09xlFu3V0M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CLJH85vdmI

There was a funny incident with an umpire getting hit last summer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFCxIy1EAVs

The fuck?

Probably not again unless you wear your box.

Wowbagger the infinitely prolonged agrees. They're all complete knee biters.

Despite my indifference to cricket, that turgid Wii baseball really made me want a Wii cricket game.

Buy Geoff Boycott's Masterclass book on cricket or the MCC masterclass.

Two things for Americans to remember about cricket: you cant argue and you must drink tea.

The Soul of the game can only be understood when wearing a baggy cap and a cravat while against someone bowling at 90mph.

Come back when you've learned the difference between Test Cricket and One day cricket.

zzzzzzz... *snortkle**z*., eh? huh?

Oh, sorry, someone mentioned baseball and cricket in the same sentence and I promptly fell asleep.

I find it rather odd that people are suddenly replying to my post about a month after I actually made it.

And just to add into the festive mood of showing pain and suffering in sports, it is good to remember that throwing at the face can also be a viable strategy in baseball, though your suppose to just brush the batter back from the plate:
(http://reds.enquirer.com/2003/04/21/sosa_zoom.jpg)



Protecting your vital spots is also an important part of baseball. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UT8EYtjMh_c)



Has anything like this happened in a Cricket match yet? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqXjs_7tfaU)

Yes, if you go to the MCC Museum at Lords you can see both the stuffed sparrow killed by a Jehangir Kahn delivery in 1936, and the ball that killed it.

(http://www.lords.org/data/images/width150/sparrow-1-c-graham-morris-36744.jpg)

Haha, that is hilarious.  It's made all the more better by the fact the bird was killed by a man named Jehangir Kahn.

Well played nerd.

I avoided message boards while doing my boss's job for a month, then saw your post and replied. Then I took a month's holiday and rode a bicycle 1200km across France and Switzerland. Now I'm wide awake with jet lag at the wrong end of an Australian day and I've just seen your May post and replied. Talk to you next month.