An idiot's guide to understanding cricket

The beautiful game of cricket was believed to be invented in the 13th century in the English countryside. The game is widely considered the country’s summer sport when the weather is most conducive to outdoor activities.

Cricket is played with a bat made from willow wood and a ball made from cork covered with leather. The ‘hard ball’, as it is commonly called, can be used as a weapon and has inflicted some serious damage to the head, forearms, fingers, and real pain in the groin area - yet they say it’s a ‘gentleman’s game’. You will require (if you love yourself) pads to cover your legs, gloves to cover your fingers and a helmet to preserve your face as it is now.

There are basically three versions of the game. These are, namely, Test cricket (which takes place over five days and can be a trifle boring at times), One Day cricket (which involves fifty overs a side) and T20 cricket (twenty overs a side). The cricket purist usually goes for Test cricket, whilst those who like quick action prefer T20 and One Day cricket.

Cricket is played on an oval field with a rectangular playing surface, called a pitch or wicket, in its centre. There are creases that are white lined and are roughly twenty yards apart. Then, there are six cylindrical wooden poles called stumps or wickets, which have four small cylindrical grooved pieces of wood called bails placed on top of them. Three stumps and two bails are placed opposite each other 22 yards apart. The batsmen reside at either end of the pitch or wicket, and one bowler bowls an over at a time, whilst another bowls from the other end.

So, what’s an ‘over’? An over has six bowls in it, provided the bowler has not offended the rules of bowling with a ‘noball’ or a ‘wide’ - very technical terms.

Each team has eleven players, not including substitutions in case of injury.

What is the object of the game? The fielding or bowling side must ‘get out’ or dismiss the batting side for as few runs as possible. Then, the side that was previously bowling will become the side that is batting to score the runs by the first batting side - confused yet?

How do we get out the batting side? We must get ten wickets or get out ten batsmen of the batting team - easy to understand. But how do we score runs? First, the batsman must hit the bowl and attempt to make a run depending on where it goes. The two batsmen must cross each other and ground their bat or person behind the crease (white lines on the opposite side of the pitch or wicket) to score or make a run.

By now, you may have realised that some words in cricket have a duality of names and meaning. You can run between the wickets or stumps for as long as the fielder has not thrown the ball back in to break the stumps or the wickets. Confused now?

There are boundaries that act as limits to the playing field, and if the ball bounces before crossing the boundary, you will automatically get four runs. If the ball goes over the boundary, you get six runs automatically - a type of bonus score.

There are several ways to get out a batsman. Firstly, you can bowl them by hitting their stumps. Or, if they hit the ball in the air, you can catch it before it hits the ground. You can ‘run them out’ by throwing the bowl at the stumps while they are running between the stumps. Another way is ‘LBW’, which is purposely preventing the ball from hitting the wicket or the stumps with your leg (covered with pads, hopefully). Or finally, a batsman can be struck and made to retire injured, although he can come back later and resume his innings.

In a nutshell, if my team scores one hundred runs and your team scores a hundred and one runs, you win the game!

By Patterson Thompson, Chairman, West Indies Retired Players Foundation