The Rules of Cricket

Over the years, cricket has become one of the biggest crowd pullers in world sports. In the Asian subcontinent for example, support is so fanatical that people have been known to be hurt for supporting the wrong team in the wrong neighbourhood.

Cricket is played by two teams, with one team batting and another team fielding. The batting team has two players in the field playing within a rectangle known as the crease and stands in front of the wicket. The wicket refers to the wooden structure that must be hit by the fielding team. The fielding team has a bowler whose job it is to try and hit the wooden structure before the batter scores many points that are called runs.

Cricket seems complicated to understand, however knowing the following rules of cricket will help you enjoy this great game

1. Scoring in Cricket

Every ball game has a score and in cricket you earn points by

a) When the batter or batsman hit’s a ball, he will score one point if he runs from his end of the crease to the other end and his fellow batsman does the same. He may run as many times as possible from one end to another. It is the fielder’s team which has to stop him by knocking off the wicket stumps.

b) If the batter hit’s the ball so that it reaches the border of the field, he scores 4 points without running. If he hit’s the ball so hard that it crosses the border without touching the ground, he scores six points.

The batter must touch the ground beyond the crease between each run. Failing to do the umpire will reduce the number of runs by one.

2. Getting Out

a) Bowling

When the ball is thrown, the batter must attempt to hit it. If he fails to hit it the following penalties will occur

1. The first miss is called a maiden and the ball is passed to the bowler to try again.
2. The second miss is called an over
3. If the batsman misses the third time, it’s called a bye and the player must leave.

b) If a batsman hit’s the ball in the air and the fielding team catches it before it hit’s the ground, the batsman must leave to be replaced by another player. The ball must have touched any part of the batsman excluding his legs

c) The batsman may not hit the ball twice unless protecting himself.

d) When the ball after being bowled hit’s the wicket and it is knocked over. The batsman is also not allowed to hit the wicket after attempting to hit the ball.

e) Leg before wicket. This is the one of the most complicated rules in cricket and basically means that the batsman attempted to hit the ball with anything other than his bat. The umpire has a very difficult job interpreting this rule.

There are very many more rules of cricket including how the bowlers should bowl, the number of players in a game, the course of action with bad weather etc. All these make cricket one of the most entertaining games to watch.

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