Written by: Ansel Dhungana - 2022018, Grade XI
Posted on: 12 May, 2021
Cricket is a bat and ball game. Each team has 11 players but only 13 are at the field at any given playtime. One team is the fielding side and the other is the batting side. Two batsmen from the batting team come out to bat. Most of the cricket is played on the pitch. The pitch is a rectangular strip on the ground that is 22 yards long and 10 ft wide marked with a white line at both ends. There are three wooden sticks pushed into the ground at either end of the pitch called the stumps.
On the fielding side all the 11 players come out to play from which 1 becomes the bowler, the other becomes the wicket-keeper and the rest become the fielder. The bowler is the one who bowls the ball from one end of the pitch to the other where the batsman is ready to face the delivery. After an over, the bowler changes. An over is a set of 6 legal deliveries. The wicket-keeper’s job is to stay behind the stumps at the batting end and collect the ball if the batsman leaves the delivery alone or misses the ball. If the batsman hits the ball to any part of the circular field then the 9 fielders that are placed around the field collect the ball and throw it back to the wicket-keeper or the bowler.The striking batsman has to stand between the bowler and the stumps and protect his wicket while the non-striking batsman remains on the end from which the bowler bowls. The batsman can be dismissed in several ways such as the ball striking the stumps, the batsman hitting the ball into the air and a member of the fielding team catching the ball before it touches the ground, the batsman being out of the crease and the stumps being struck down by the keeper and the batsman being out of the crease when running between the stumps to score runs. The batsman can score runs using various methods like running between the wickets where the striking batsman and the non-striking batsman both run to the other side of the pitch. If they both succeed in doing so, a run is scored. Depending on the number of times run between the stumps, the non-striking batsman may become the striking batsman. The batsman can also score suns by making the ball reach the boundary. If the ball crosses the boundary without touching the ground before that then the batting team gets 6 runs and if the ball touches the ground they get 4 runs.
Once all the batsmen of the batting team get dismissed or the allocated number of overs gets completed, the first innings gets completed. With the roles reversed, the teams come to play the second innings. If the batting team of the second innings scores more than the runs scored in the first innings then that team wins else they lose.
