For those of us that are cricket-ignorant, I am going to attempt to provide a brief explanation of this foreign sport. Cricket is played between two teams, with 11 players per team. The teams either assume the role of the batting team and the non-batting team. The batting team has two batters at any given time. The batter only has two objectives: Protect the wicket (pillars of sticks behind him), and try to hit the ball in strategic places so that the other team will have a difficult time catching the ball. Once the hitter has hit the ball, he and the other hitter (who is located at the wicket by the pitcher, called a bowler) run back and forth between the two wickets in order to score a run. The more times the two batters run between the two wickets, the more points they score. If a batter manages to hit the ball out of the playing field, without rolling or bouncing, then their team earns an automatic six runs. If the batter hits the ball out of the playing field, but it rolls or bounces, then they earn four runs.
A batter is out if the other team manages to catch a hit ball that hasn’t bounced or rolled (like in baseball), or if the bowler manages to hit the wicket behind the batter. Once the batter has hit the ball, it’s the job of the other team to stop the ball as soon as possible and throw it back to the wicket keeper. The wicket keeper is situated behind the hitter and attempts to catch any missed hits. If the wicket keeper receives the ball from a fielder and manages to destroy the wicket before the batter makes it back to that wicket, then the batter is also out. A batter can never hit by himself, so if the other team manages to get 10 of the batting team’s players out, then it is their turn to bat.
The main goal of the non-hitting team is to make scoring as difficult as possible for the hitting team. Bowlers often use two tactics in order to make hitting the ball more difficult: throwing the ball as fast as possible so the batter can’t react and throwing trick balls to confuse the batter. If the bowler hits the wicket behind the batter, then the batter is automatically out. If the batter manages to hit the ball, then the fielding team must stop the ball as soon as possible and throw it back to the wicket keeper. If they do so before the batter makes it back to the wicket, then they are out. The most important field position would have to be the wicket keeper, whose goal is to catch any missed hits, and to try to destroy the wicket before the batter makes it back.
Once the fielding team manages to out 10 of the other team’s batters, then it’s their turn to bat and earn points. Once both teams have batted and fielded, then the match is over and the team with the most points wins.
If all of that sounds interesting to you, the 2011 ICC Cricket World Cup schedule is linked below.
Website: http://cricket.yahoo.com/series/icc-cricket-world-cup_1241/schedule