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Measurements of Pitch, Stumps and Creases |
 Hello
friends, welcome to the Cricket Coaching Section
of CricketFundas.com. I am M.R.Baig, Senior
Cricket Coach of the M.L.Jaisimha Cricket
Academy, Hyderabad, India. In this episode, I
would be talking about the measurements of the
Pitch, Stumps and Creases. Most of you might be
knowing all these, but this episode is primarily
for the people who do not have the opportunity
of knowing about these things, in particular for
people who want to learn cricket in the
non-cricket playing countries. Feel free to drop
in your queries, feedback about the lessons, I
will try my best to answer all of these.
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 Stumps
or Wickets : There are two set of
stumps/wickets placed on a cricket ground. Each
set consists of three wickets - off stump,
middle stump and leg stump. On top of these
three wickets, usually two bails are placed in
the grooves of the wickets depending on their
availability. The stumps and bails are made from
willow. The height a stump according to the
official regulations is 28 inches or 71.12 cms.
The distance between the starting point of the
off stump to the ending point of the leg stump
should be 9 inches or 22.86 cms.
---> Three stumps of standard sizes along
with bails
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 The
Pitch : This is the area where much of the
action takes place in a cricket match. This is
the centre of action where there is a contest
between the bat and the ball, or in other words,
the batsman gets to face the bowler in this
region of the cricket ground. The Pitch is a
rectangular area of 22 yards or 66 feet length
and 10 feet in width. Test and ODI Cricket along
with First Class Matches are played on Turf
wickets. Other levels of Cricket are played not
only on turf but also on matting, astro turf,
cement and other artificial surfaces. There have
been instances of Test Matches played on matting
wickets but that was only long way before. The
Pitch can also be defined as the distance
between one set of stumps at one end to the
stumps at the other end.
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 Creases
: Four white lines are drawn at the each end
of the pitch. They include one popping crease or
the batting crease, one bowling crease and two
return creases.
--->Seen are three creases - Bowling
crease, then batting crease in front of it and
then in the sides, the return creases.
Bowling Crease : A bowling crease is 8
feet 8 inches wide which is equally divided
along each side of the middle stump. The bowling
crease stretches to the return crease. No
fielders are allowed to encroach this area when
a ball is being bowled to the batsman. In
previous times, if a bowler's back foot had
crossed this crease, then a no-ball was declared
for overstepping. In modern cricket, no-ball for
overstepping is declared when the bowler doesn't
have any part of his foot behind the popping
crease.
 Batting
Crease or Popping Crease : This crease is
drawn parallel to the bowling crease at a
distance of 4 feet or 10.16 cms. A run is
completed each time the two batsmen cross this
crease at their opposite ends. As mentioned
above for a Bowling Crease, if a bowler
oversteps this crease in his delivery stride
then the delivery is declared as a no-ball. This
crease comes into picture during the ruling of
run outs and stump outs. A batsman has a choice
of standing outside the batting crease. He can
be stumped out by the wicket keeper if he is out
of this crease or on it after playing a delivery
as long as the ball is in play.
Return Crease : The return creases end
the bowling crease at right angles on either
side of the middle stump at a distance of 4 feet
4 inches. A no-ball can be declared if the
bowler's back foot is touching or outside the
return crease.
Queries on Cricket Coaching can
be sent to
bvswagath@cricketfundas.com. Please mention
your name, age and your location along with your
Query.
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