Unveiling the mysteries of cricket
On weekend afternoons, students may notice classmates involved in an odd-looking sports activity on the Quad. What they may not know is that the members of the Aggie Cricket Club are practicing one of the most well-known sports in the world.
“[Cricket] is a great game. In fact, it’s the second most popular sport in the world next to soccer,” Steven Hooper, president of the Utah Cricket Association, said.
According to the Web site usa.cricinfo.com, Hooper has developed the UCA as a basis to teach elementary school-aged children a new sport. He is also actively involved in promoting the sport of cricket to university students.
Cricket, a leisurely sport developed in Britain, has been around for several hundred years, but with the enormity of baseball, it isn’t currently very popular in the United States.
As for teaching new players the sport, Sanjib Sarker, a third-year doctoral student in economics and club member, said, “Cricket is hard to describe. You need to come out and watch to really understand.”
Although the game play and rules are very different, the basic concept of cricket is similar to that of baseball.
Teams of 11 bat in successive innings and attempt to score runs. After each team has batted an equal number of times, the team with the most runs wins.
Cricket takes place on a large oval field with a small pitch in the center where most of the action takes place.
The pitch is marked with two creases, about 58 feet apart and facing each other, where batters hit and bowlers pitch.
The creases are marked by white lines and each houses a “wicket,” or a wooden structure made up of a set of three stumps topped by a pair of bails.
A “bowler,” or pitcher, takes a run up and bowls overhand from one crease to a batter in the other crease. The bowler’s objective is to hit or “break” the wicket – knock off one of the bails – to get the batter out. The batter tries to hit the ball to allow time to score runs.
Runs are scored by the batter running back and forth between the two creases before an opposing player breaks a wicket. If the wicket is broken before the player reaches a crease, that player is considered out or “run out,” and a new player comes up to bat.
Runs can also be scored in other ways, including hitting the ball out of the park, which results in six runs.
Batters can get out in any of 10 different ways, but they continue hitting until they are out.
Now multiply the batting action by two. There is one offensive player at each crease. When the ball is hit by a player, the two players run back and forth between the creases. Either of them can be run out by breaking a wicket.
Each bowler only bowls six times in a row, called an “over.” After each over, a new bowler from the other end of the pitch will bowl six times, allowing both batters a chance to hit.
Play continues until 10 of the batters on the offensive team are out. Then the teams switch and the defensive team gets to bat.
Cricket games can be very lengthy, with professional matches lasting several days. One-day matches have each team only bat once and usually cap playing time to a certain number of overs.
In addition to practicing and playing leisurely on the Quad, the Aggie cricket club also plays matches against other clubs in Utah, the nearest being teams from Davis and Salt Lake counties as well as a team in Provo. Matches are played with limited overs, usually capping at 15 to 20.
“Cricket is a fun game and a great past time,” Sarker said and calls for anyone who would like to learn more to come out and play. “Everyone is invited.”
The rules described here barely scratch the surface of what cricket is all about. For further information, a good explanation of cricket rules and strategies can be found at
http://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/hosking/cricket/explanation.htm.
-wheel@cc.usu.edu