Can someone explain the basic rules and goals of Cricket?
 

Hi
I'm tired of having no idea of how the game works, and why it takes so long.

All I know is, someone in the center throws
the ball (he's a "bowler"?) at someone else holding a cricket bat, the batter hits the ball and then appears to run back and forth in the same circuit several times. They are all wearing cream-colored clothing including long pants. The field they're playing on is called a "pitch"? And important games are held at "Lords"?

Can someone give me a basic glossary, and a summary of the game? Not the nuances that an expert would know, just so that I'll understand what the heck they're trying to do and why it takes hours to do it. I know I could Google this, but you all would be so much more entertaining.

This site should do it for you. I used to have a book with an entire chapter on Cricket for Americans, but I can't find it. Sorry.

I think the book is Susan Allen Toth's "My Love Affair wtih England," which is a great read.

Ohh! You know, somehow, I just KNEW that question was going to be asked, sooner or later! I can remember being "forced" to watch certain matches up around Fettes College in Edinburgh, as well in East Sussex-I've only slightly more knowledge then as now-the main thing is, a match can go on for DAYS and WEEKS!

There used to be a thing you got on tea towels, as a joke, about this. and thanks to google I can reproduce it for you here:-

The Rules of Cricket

You have two sides, one out in the field and one in.

Each man that's in the side that's in goes out, and when he's out he comes in and the next man goes in until he's out.

When they are all out, the side that's out comes in and the side thats been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out.

Sometimes you get men still in and not out.

When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in.

There are two men called umpires who stay out all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out.

When both sides have been in and all the men have out, and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game!

That's cute, Sheila, I liked that!

Two books:

"What Is A Googly?", by Rob Eastaway
"Playing Hardball", by E. T. Smith

The first has an extensive glossary, while the second compares cricket with baseball, thereby giving many of us in the US an instant frame of reference.

It's been my experience that the British always get upset if you "compare" cricket to American baseball-(I have a feeling flanneruk will weigh in on this) but the comparison remains, nonetheless.

I hated all ball games as a child and am still hopeless at them, but as I understand it, cricket takes a long time because there are 11 batsmen in each team (two playing at the same time, one at each end), and each team has two innings. The permutations and combinations of bowling, batting and fielding tactics - bearing in mind considerations like the skills and personalities of the individual players, the weather, how the condition of the pitch affects the ball, and so on, are very nearly endless. So it becomes a combination of chess and an artillery bombardment (it's a very hard ball), with as much waiting around as real warfare. At any moment, something can turn the game around. Way back in the coldest winter we've ever had, with transport disrupted and fuel deliveries running short, England's Test series in sunny Australia (for the 'virtual' trophy called the Ashes, don't ask) came down to the last innings of the last game - indeed the last few balls bowled. The England captain had to decide whether to go all out for a win in the game, thus risking the possibility of losing it, or play safe for a draw in the game, thus avoiding defeat, but ensuring that England could not win the Ashes. He chose to play safe. There was much discussion, and I well remember a TV street interview asking someone what they thought about the Ashes: "Don't talk to me about Ashes, I haven't had any ***!!!??!! coal for seven ***!!!??? weeks".

They keep experimenting with new forms of the game to take up less time, and it seems the latest version is attracting more and younger people, but of course it puts off the die-hard purists.

It won't help, elaine.

It's like trying to pronounce the Danish Ø sound.

You have to grow up with it. :)

Loved it Sheila!! =D>

We watched a Cricket game in the sun on Bermuda one summer.
While we almost died of sun stroke, I never did figure out what in the world the goal of the game was...and it was all about In or Out~

There are three non-cute (and grossly over-simplified)answers:

1. Two teams of eleven men send each team member (as batsman) to stand with a bat in front of a wicket, to try to hit balls from the opposing team's ("the bowling team") bowler. The batsman hits the ball: members of the bowling tram retrieve the ball and throw it back to the bowler. The batsman runs between the wickets. If the bowled ball hits the wicket, is caught without hitting the ground by a member of the bowling team, or is successfully thrown at the wicket while he's running, the batsman is out. The game is won by the team that amasses the greater number of runs at the end of the game. Real cricket requires each team (all 11 of them)to bat twice: Lite versions require each team to bat once.
If - as frequently happens - the team batting last hasn't overtaken the other team's total at the end of the allocated period, the match is a draw.

2. There is - and has been for at least 200 years - fundamental disagreement about the purpose of the game. One view is that it's to win (= avoid both losing and being forced into a draw). The other is that it's to show sportsmanship.

3. It takes that long because that's the real point. A first class, professional, international match takes more than five days to get both teams out twice. Such a game (a "test" match) is limited to five days partly because in the 19th century the boat taking one side home to the other side of the world would leave, and partly - and this is the whole point - because it forced the captains of each side to make difficult and counter-intuitive strategy decisions. Lower-status games naturally take less time, since the better the players, the longer the match will naturally last.
Almost always, a team cannot win if it plays until its last man has been bowled out. So, almost always, a team needs to decide to stop its innings ("declare") Also, since the game is originally English (though now it's really an Asian game), the weather will change frequently during the game, transforming the tendency of the ball, when bowled, to behave in a way that favours the batter or the bowler. So the right strategy on day 1 will be different on day 2.
Cricket is a game of strategy. Like real-world battles, it needs to be drawn out to ensure its participants' exhaustion is among the factors strategists have to consider.

Incidentally, your question is partly misguided. Cricket is the world's most watched game: its most heavily viewed regular fixture (India vs Pakistan) gets TV audiences that show up parochial trivia like the Oscars and the "World" (!!!) Series - or even widely-watched events like the World Cup Final - as the small-town marginalities they are. The real question is why regional oddities like baseball and American "football" are the way they are - and why they bore the other 95% of the world so spectacularly

Ha! Ha! I knew you wouldn't disappoint, flanneruk! Honestly, listening to you, is like, well, listening to my ex- and he did have the power to amuse me greatly with his ahem, "observations" about American culture!

Baseball is the adult version of the English children's game of rounders and American football is a sissy version of rugby.
Now, that is a really boring game, five minutes shoving and then everyone stops for five minutes.

Sheila - I have that very same tea towel! It was one of the first things I bought waaaaaaay back in the '70s when I first moved to England. I even framed it. At that time I didn't have the tiniest clue about Cricket and even though I watched many matches on the telly it was still Greek to me.

But I did eventually catch on, and my ex even joined the village side so now I actually understand (and enjoy) cricket.

Whenever reading/listening to any explanation about criket, I get totally,hopelessly lost after the third sentence.

Egg-I'm actually going to agree with you there-American football IS a sissy version of rugby! (although I like American football very much, since I grew up in an all-male family with a sports-mad father). And contrary to what Flanneruk might think-WE know there are those closet Amer. football fans lurking in the U.K.-why they even have their own league (yesss, poorly attended, I know!)

Unless you grow up with cricket it can be difficult. Each team has 11 players and the object is to get at least 10 players out. There are up to 10 ways to dismiss a player. They can be caught, bowled,stumped,run out,LBW on and on. Teams comprise bowlers and batsmen, everybody must bat but not everybody bowls.
Test matchs can go for 5 days without a result. It is played almost everywhere (that was british) and there are about 8 nations that are really good at the game.
Scoring is in singles, two, threes (rare) four is ball hits the fence and six if the ball clears the fence without landing.
There are books for Americans about cricket, and these should be read as aguide.
One of the first Test Matches was between Canada and USA.
Often on ESPN so tune in and catch up with cricket

Spygirl, if an American football player showed up at your house I somehow doubt you'd be blabbing on and on about the "sissies"...

Yes, Spygirl, and rugby is to Australian Rules football what a tractor is to a Rolls-Royce.

Harzer