People often say that cricket is the biggest religion in India. Watching cricket matches in India is usually a family affair. In workplaces or at social gatherings, one often finds conversations about the last cricket match. To help you engage in such conversations, we bring you the basic cricket rules and regulations of cricket and how cricket scoring works.
Basic Cricket Rules of the game of cricket
- Cricket Rules are not that complicated to understand. There are five basic tackles in cricket: the ball, bat, wickets, stumps, and balls. This is the ABC of cricket and will help you understand the rest of the rules.
- Cricket is a team game played between two teams of 11 players each. The 11 players form batsmen, bowlers, and a wicketkeeper.
- The game is usually played on a large round or oval ground. There is also a smaller inner oval with a 22-yard box in the middle. At each end of the field is a set of three wooden stumps attached.
- The game is divided into separate sections called balls. This is a delivery of the ball thrown by a bowler to a batsman. Six of these balls form an over.
- An innings consists of a certain number of overs or a certain time. A one-day international game consists of 50 overs per innings, a twenty-twenty international game consists of 20 overs per innings, while a test game is limited to a certain number of days, namely 5 of 90 overs each day.
- During the innings, the batting team has two batsmen on the field, while the opposing team’s 11 players who make up the bowling team have their players on different parts of the field as fielders. One of them will roll the ball and another will be a wicketkeeper and will be placed behind the wicket.
- The game will also have two umpires on the field who will make the decisions of the game. There is also a third umpire who monitors play via a screen and helps with uncertain or close decisions.
The Cricket Pitch
First, cricket is played on a round or oval field, with the field marked by a boundary rope. According to International Cricket Council (ICC) standards, these boundary lines must be at least 65 to 90 meters from the field of play. The field is a rectangular area in the center of the field that is 22 meters long. All important events take place here. At either end of the field, you’ll find three wooden stumps, and there are two brackets at the top. This is what batsmen should try to protect, but more on that later. In front of the stumps is a white line known as the flap crease. The batsman must be behind this crease or he risks being fired. The crease also serves to help the umpires, of which there are two, decide whether or not a ball is the legal playing field.
How are runs scored?
The basic idea of cricket is to score more runs (beginners call them points, but that’s the wrong term) than your opponents, but what are the different ways a batsman can score? Well, in cricket there must be a batsman at each end of the field, so teams are eliminated when they lose ten batsmen, even though eleven players make up a cricket team.
The forward on strike, i.e. the one facing the bowler, can score runs as follows:
- If he hits the ball in a hole, he and his partner can run to the other side. They are rewarded with a run for each time they successfully do this.
- If the batting player hits the ball well and makes it across the turf to the boundary rope, their team gets 4 runs as a reward.
- If the batsman then plays a shot that flies over the boundary line without touching the field of play, the team is awarded 6 runs.
Batsmen hold their bats in front of the crowd when they reach half a century or a century. These are milestones for batsmen and at the end of their careers; they are often judged on how many centuries they have achieved. Runs can also be scored by a bowler who makes a mistake. For example, if he doesn’t have any part of his foot behind the crease when he releases the ball, the umpire will call a no-ball. This means that a run is added to the total and the ball must be thrown again.
Also, if the bowler throws the ball too far or too high, the whistle will be wide. This in turn results in the batting side being awarded a run and the bowler throwing an extra ball. If the bowler runs up and aborts his delivery, the umpire signals a dead ball and the bowler throws the ball again. Penalty runs may also be awarded to the batting side if the fielding side grows too mature or if the ball hits a stray cricket set lying on the outfield.
How do outfield players prevent scores?
The main goal of the field team is to limit their opponents to as few runs as possible. This is where the bowlers come in, but the fielders are just as important. There are different types of bowlers in cricket, the two main categories being pace bowlers and spin bowlers. The former try to intimidate their opponents by bowling with extreme speed and skill; while the latter tries to trick batsmen with intricate spins. The best way to stop a team from scoring runs is to knock out their batsmen; which is known as picking up a wicket. There are several ways bowlers can concede a wicket.
We will now look at these methods.
- Bowled: If the batter misses the ball and it goes through his defense and hits the stumps, he’s out.
- Caught: If the batsman bats the ball in the air and it is caught by one of the fielders before it hits the turf, it is out.
- Leg Before Wicket: This is commonly abbreviated to LBW and is when the umpire believes the ball would have gone through to knock over the stumps had the batsman not got in their way.
- Stumped: A batsman can be stumped if he comes out of his crease towards the bowler (usually to try to knock the bowler off), misses the ball and the wicketkeeper (the fielder standing behind the stumps) knocks off the stumps before the Batsman manages to ground any part of his body or bat across the crease.
- Run out: If the batting side starts to run and the fielding side manages to hit the bails before either batsman reaches the crease, the fielding side has taken a wicket.
Conclusion – Cricket Rules
These are the most common ways for players to come out in cricket. There are also some other methods, but they are quite rare, so it’s not worth worrying about at the moment. You already have a lot of work to do, so we won’t burden you with more complicated matters. Each side receives different ratings when they score. When batting, a batsman may use a DRS if he feels the umpires are wrong in passing him out. To request a score, the batsman must make a T-sign within 15 seconds of the decision being made.
The footage is then viewed by the Television Match Official (TMO) and technology is used to determine whether or not it is off. If the captain does not agree to a batsman not being handed out by the umpires during fielding, he may also send him to the TMO. In many clubs matches the TMO is not available, so players have to be content with the umpires’ decisions
