Guest Post: The Ins and Outs of Cricket – Guide to Cricket for Americans

Editor’s Note: The following is a guest post from Phil Nash, who runs the excellent Walk Talk Tours – a company that offers downloadable audio tours of many cities in the UK. Check out their website here.

George Washington apparently used to play cricket and the American Cricket Association estimate that 15,000 people still do in the USA. But how much do you know – or want to know – about cricket?

The known history of cricket dates back to the early seventeenth century, but a game similar to cricket may well have been played some four hundred years before in Kent and Surrey in South East England.

The object of the game is to hit the ball with a wooden bat and score runs, while the opposing or fielding team tries to hit the wicket with the ball – or catch the ball (without it bouncing like in baseball), when it has been struck by the batsman. A batsman can also be bowled out Leg Before Wicket; that is the Umpire deems that the ball would have gone on to hit the stumps had it not struck hit the batsman’s padded leg first.

The laws of the game were first issued back in 1744.

Each team is composed of eleven players. All eleven players on the fielding team will take to the field at one time. Two batsmen will attempt to score runs. One batsman will face deliveries of the ball from the bowler, while the other waits at the ‘non-strikers end’.

Cricket is a sport which is rich in terminology. Here are a few examples.

Duck – A batsmen is out for a duck when he ‘fails to trouble the scorers’. A Golden Duck refers to a batsman who is out to the very first ball he faces.

Stumps – Each wicket is composed of three stumps with two wooden bails on top. The stump nearest to the batsman’s legs is referred to as ‘leg stump’ and the stump nearest to the batsman’s bat is called ‘off stump’.

Each bowler bowls six deliveries to a batsman in one over. Bowler bowl the ball overarm. It is said that the practice of bowling overarm, which dates back to the early nineteenth century, was first invented by a woman called Christina Willes who used to play cricket with her brother. Christina struggled to bowl underarm because of the large skirts she used to wear, so switched to bowling the ball overarm.

The Popping crease – or simply ‘crease’ is the odd name that refers to the line four feet (1.22m) in front of the stumps. A batsman will stand behind this line when facing a delivery. A batsman can be ‘stumped’ by a wicket keeper who has the ball when the batsman is out of his crease, or ‘out of his ground’.

The word umpire originates from the old French ‘Nompere’ meaning not equal or not a participant on one of the teams.

A run is scored if a batsman makes contact with the ball and succeeds in reaching the other wicket before a fielder returns the ball to either wicket. A six is scored if the batsman succeeds in hitting the ball to – or beyond – the boundary without the ball hitting the ground. A four is scored if the ball arrives at the boundary but hits the ground at any point en route.

The various fielding positions have rich names too. My favourite name is ‘silly mid-off’ which refers to a fielder who stands close to the batsman, on the off side, looking to take a catch from a miscued shot. Fielders only stand in this precarious position when a slow bowler is bowling.

Forms of the game

Test matches are played over up to five days of two innings a side. Limited over cricket of one inning per side was introduced in the 1960s. An even more truncated version of the game designed to appeal to global television audiences consisting of twenty overs a side is increasingly popular.

The author of this piece is Phil Nash the co-founder of walktalktour.com a website that sells heritage audio tours of London, Audio Tours of Edinburgh, Audio Tours of York, Audio Tours of Manchester and Audio Tours of Chester. Simply download and away you go.