How to Play Cricket
Cricket is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players. Each team has its own captain, multiple batsmen, multiple bowlers and other players acting as fielders. It is a bat-and-ball game played on a roughly elliptical grass field, in the centre of which is a flat strip, called a pitch.
Steps
- Choose the batsman and bowler. A team consists of eleven players. Depending on his or her skills, a player may be selected as batsman or bowler.
- Choose the wicket keeper. Teams nearly always include a specialist wicket-keeper because of the importance of this fielding position. A wicketkeeper is almost equivalent to a catcher in baseball without the fingering signals.
- Choose the umpire. Two on-field umpires preside over a match. One umpire will stand behind the wicket at the end from which the ball is bowled, and adjudicate on most decisions. The other will stand near the fielding position called "square leg", which offers a side view of the batsman, and assist on decisions for which he has a better view. When you choose the umpire, he or she should come from the players, who will be resting or waiting for his or her number to come and play. But try to select the person who knows the basic rules from all 42 Laws of Cricket.
- Choose your match type. There are 3 types of
matches:
- ODI (One-Day International); and
- Test Match - The most common one is ODI, because in this type of match, each team has to play 50 overs (6 Balls per over) and it is played for one-day only. Read more about test matches by clicking here.
- Twenty/20 matches are the same as ODI's but only contain 20 overs.
- Choose which team plays what. Selecting which team will play what (batting/bowling-fielding), is decided by making a coin toss between the captains of the two teams. The captain who wins decides which play to take whether batting or bowling-fielding.
- Start playing!
Cricket field positions
Tips
- Try to learn some of the main rules, which will prevent you from being "out".
- Read all the rules first throughout the link provided in "External Links", and then play, because this article hasn't explained about "runs" etc; to do this would make the article too long. This article is just an explanation of the procedure before starting playing the game.
Warnings
- Do not cheat in this game, for example, you have been selected as the umpire, so don't be showing favor for the opposing team only. Play fair and fair play!