World’s popular sport: Cricket

Cricket is an exceptionally well-known spectator sport world widely. Although Volleyball is the National Sport in Sri Lanka; Cricket is at present very famed among Sri Lanka. Nowadays this is enlightening by several communication media in the country.

Here the bowler bowling to a batsman. The paler strip is the cricket pitch. The two sets of three wooden stumps on the pitch are the wickets. The two white lines are the creases. The highest governing body is International Cricket Council (ICC) and Cricket was played in 16th century.

Separately there is Male and Female team with 11 players on a field at the centre of which is rectangular 22-yard long pitch. The required equipments are Cricket Ball and Bat, Wicket: Stumps, Bails. One team bats and trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the runs scored by the batting team.  A run is scored by the striking batsman hitting the ball with his bat, running to the opposite end of the pitch and touching the crease there without being dismissed. The teams switch between batting and fielding at the end of an innings.

In professional cricket, the length of a game ranges from 20 over of six bowling deliveries per side. The Laws of Cricket are maintained by the International Cricket Council (ICC) and the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) with additional Standard Playing Conditions for Test matches and One Day Internationals.

Cricket was first played in Southern England in 16th century and by the end of the 18th century, it had developed into the National Sport of England.

A cricket match is divided into periods called innings. During an innings one team fields and the other team bats. The two teams switch between fielding and batting after each innings. All eleven members of the fielding team take the field, but only two members of the batting team are on the field at any given time.

Behind each and every batsman there is an objective called a wicket. One nominated affiliate of the fielding team, called the bowler, is given a ball, and makes attempts to bowl the ball from one end of the pitch to the wicket behind the batsman on the other side of the pitch. The batsman undertakes to prevent the ball from hitting the wicket by striking the ball with a bat. If the bowler succeeds in hitting the wicket, or if the ball, after being struck by the batsman, is immovable by the fielding team before it touches the ground, the batsman is dismissed. A dismissed batsman must leave the field, to be replaced by another batsman from the batting team.

The innings is complete when 10 of the 11 members of the batting team have been dismissed, one always remaining "not out", or when a set number of over has been played. The number of innings and the number of over per innings vary depending on the match.