01. Let's learn Cricket - Sujith
What's Cricket?
Until unless you are in a soccer / hockey / rugby only craze world, I assume you have already heard the word CRICKET!
No, no we are not talking about the insect cricket, we are talking about the gentlemen's game Cricket.
Cricket is a sport followed by millions of people around the world. The tensed nail-biting finishes add that extra excitement to the game.
Fortunately or unfortunately, till today, Cricket remains popular only in the countries that were once part of the British Empire. Though the cricket's governing body, International Cricket Council (ICC) has put some valiant efforts to spread the game outside the actual land, it still remains unsuccessful.
So, at a higher level Cricket stands way behind the global favorite sport, Soccer. But in some of the countries that play Cricket like India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, it's the most popular sports!
What you need to play cricket?
To play cricket, at a minimum you need two players, a bat, a ball, stumps or something that can act as stumps and ofcourse some open space. So in short you can play Cricket in a traffic less street, a playground or a garden.
This informal environment is fun! Until unless you decide to play Professional Cricket this environment should suit you perfectly fine.
How do you play?
First you decide the batsman side and the bowler side. You draw lines for the batsman and the bowler.
Then you affix your stumps at the batsman end. (If you have one more set of stumps, you can use it in the bowler's end)
The bowler bowls the ball towards the batsman standing in his line. The batsman hits the ball and scores runs by running or by hitting boundaries.
What's a run?
If a batsman runs and touches the line in the bowler side, he scores a single run.
If he comes back and touches his batsman side line, before the ball is returned, he has scored two runs… And so on…
Here's few more basic terms for you!
Over – Six balls bowled by a bowler.
Maiden Over – Bowler bowling an over without the batsman scoring any run.
So that's it?
No no, this is just an introduction to Cricket. Cricket has its own set of rules and regulations! ICC conducts meetings regularly to review the game's laws!
But don't be disheartened, there's no need to know all those rules to play cricket for fun! Even as a fan you need not know all the rules. But as you start watching the game closely, you will start learning the rules automatically.
To be continued...