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- BV Swagath (Published on Apr 28, 2008)
 Cricket,
which has a history of more than 400 years is
traditionally an outdoor sport that is played
between two teams. Each team consists of 11
players and the sport is all about the contest
between a bat and a ball on the centre of a
ground which is called as the ‘pitch’. The
actual action is a one-on-one contest at a time
that is between a batsman and a bowler. The
bowler’s job is to release the ball (running in
from a distance and hurling the ball without
bending his bowling arm) with an objective of
either restricting the batsman from hitting it
efficiently or getting him ‘out’. At a time,
there are two batsmen in the centre with each
other changing strike after every odd run (a run
around the pitch) scored or after the end of
every over (which consists of a specific number
of balls).
Apart from the bowler, there are 10 more players
called as the ‘fielders’ on the ground that
belong to the bowling side. These 10 players
look out to stop the ball from getting past them
(within the boundaries of the ground) and to
limit the scoring as much as possible. The
fielders also attempt to take ‘catches’ which
are to catch the ball with their hands. For this
the ball should travel full into their hands
without landing on the ground. This accounts for
a dismissal of the batsman. There are also other
forms of ‘dismissals’ that the fielders can
affect.
By the end of the match,
each team gets a fair opportunity to have their
share of batting and bowling against each other.
And its all about which team scores more runs to
decide the winner of the contest or a match.
They are of course specific rules for each match
which may last from one day to five days.
Basically, a batting
team will be having only two batsmen in the
middle at a time. Once a batsman gets dismissed,
he gets replaced with another one and so on till
10 such events have happened or in case the team
has run out of their limited overs. A dismissal
of a batsman from the middle is termed as a
‘wicket’. So although there are 11 players who
can bat for a team in a match, the number of
wickets that they have is 10. This means that at
no time, there will be a single batsman playing
all alone.
The event of a batting
side playing out till its 10th wicket has fallen
or till they have run out of the overs is called
as an ‘innings’. A Cricket Match can consists of
one innings per a team or two innings per a
team. In a match consisting of two innings per
each team, the end result could be a win, loss
or even a draw for either team. While the win
and loss are straighforward to understand, a
‘draw’ in Cricket means that both sides fell
short of time in forcing a win in the match.
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