This is Cricket

Also, how to we reconcile what was seen on that tape with the transcripts of announcers announcing games? Is there a cricket lexicon or something that can help us go from that (quite good!) video to understanding reports we hear of games?

@ howard:

1) when team A lose ten players, their turn is over and team B gets to bat. a batsman cannot bat alone. this applies to all versions of the game

2) this depends on the version of the game, which is where the confusion begins.

in short:

i)First-Class cricket: generally played for 3 days, each team gets 2 innings.

ii) Test Cricket: played for 5 days, teams get 2 innings each

iii) One Day Cricket: played over the course of a day, with each team getting one inning each. overs are limited to 50 a side.

iv) Twenty-20: each team gets one inning, lasting twenty overs with a time limit of 90 minutes per side.

3) as you may understand by the complications raised by your second question, it depends upon the version of the game. let us leave it at that, for your sanity and mine

howard… the complication here is that there are different cricket formats, which make for shorter or longer games. In all, however, all eleven players are available to bat, and if ten of them are out in the time available (i.e. leaving one batsman stranded, not out) then it is the other team’s turn to bat. In some formats, that time available is fairly limited, so not all the batsmen may have had a chance to bat.

In test cricket, there are two “iterations” (in cricket vocabulary, two innings for each side); in other formats, such as one-day cricket, there may be only one.

A team may typically be able to amass between 150 and 300 runs.

issa… A batsman is out “leg before wicket” when the ball strikes his leg when it would otherwise have gone on and struck the wicket. There are, however, various arcane complications to this law. It is the on-field umpire’s job to determine whether or not the batsman is out (in this as in all other situations); the opposing side “appeal” to the umpire when they believe that a batsman should be dismissed.

An over a number of balls bowled consecutively by the same bowler: typically six. The number of overs bowled in a match depends on the format. In test cricket the only restriction is time; in limited overs cricket, each team is restricted to (say) fifty or twenty overs per inning. A batsman is “not out” if, by the time the inning is finished, he has not been dismissed by the other side.

Beyond a Boundary is indeed the greatest sports book ever written, but it depends upon at least a passing knowledge of the game.

Someday I suppose I will break down and read something like that, but I know it will spoil the current pleasure I take from cricket — which is the pleasantly nonsensical, dadaesque property of the occasional BBC cricket report that I hear.

1. How many batters bat for team A before it is Team B’s turn to bat?

You keep going until there is only one batsman left not out (so he has no one to run with) – 10 in a standard 11 v 11 game.

2. How many iterations are there (team A followed by team B) before the game is over?

Test Cricket has 2 innings, 3/4 day games also have 2 innings, all other forms I can think of offhand have 1 inning.

3. What would a “typical” final score be?

Varies widely by form of the game (i.e. how many days they have to play, how many innings, how many overs, etc.) Twenty20 games might be less than 100 a side, or over 200. 40-50 over games can vary from about 100 to 300 typically. Test and other ‘unlimited’ overs games can easily be 600 per side between both innings.

Also, how to we reconcile what was seen on that tape with the transcripts of announcers announcing games?

Mostly it is understanding the names of fielding positions, as well as for commentating purposes a lot of terms are used to avoid repeating the same comments too often, and mix things up.

Is there a cricket lexicon or something that can help us go from that (quite good!) video to understanding reports we hear of games?

There is a BBC guide that covers a lot of the basics, or Wikipedia has a fairly comprehensive breakdown of course.

What exactly is LBW (leg before wicket) and how can you tell it has happened?

LBW is designed to avoid the batsman being able to block the wicket with his legs, and you can tell because the umpire gives the batter out. The basic things the umpire considers are whether the ball was going to hit the wicket, and whether the ball hit the pads first – if it hit the bat first, the batsman can’t be out LBW. There are a number of other factors that can disqualify a potential LBW decision, but it gets more complex that can fit in such a comment.

What is an over?

In the modern era, 6 balls bowled from the same end of the pitch by the same bowler (excepting injury).

How many are there?

20 in Twenty20, 40-50 in various levels of limited overs matches, and a minimum of 90-100 per day (weather/light/time permitting) in various forms of the longer formats of the game (Test, Country Championship, etc).

What is “not out”?

Variously a decision by an umpire that a player was not out, marking which two batters are currently still playing, or indicating a player that ended a day, game or inning without getting out (will always be one in each inning, and sometimes two if the team won, or are still playing).

Is CLR James’ Beyond a Boundary the greatest sports book ever written?

Never read it.

If I read that, how come I can’t remember how cricket is scored?

You probably haven’t watched enough cricket to remember it – isn’t there a chinese proverb about this?

What does the other batter do?

Runs when the current batter does (hopefully), and bats when it is his turn (after running an odd number of runs after a given ball, or at the end of each over – but not if both happen at once).

How many ‘outs’ are there before the teams switch roles? What the hell is an ‘over’?

See above.

I see.

It’s a primitive version of the One True Sport of Baseball.

@Bernard Yomtov

Baseball and cricket both come from Rounders. Baseball is a simplified version, cricket a more sophisticated version. The main point of baseball is to hit the ball as hard as you can; cricket requires much more strategic play, since ball placement is far more important, and you need to continue batting as long as possible.

@Randy Paul

Since a cricket match runs all day, it’s divided into three sessions. The first session ends with a lunch break, the second one with a “tea” break, and the third one ends when either enough overs have been bowled, or the light starts to fade (normally cricket isn’t played under lights, although there is “night cricket”, a relatively new development in One-Day Cricket).

And yes, CLR James’ Beyond the Boundary is, by definition, the greatest sports book ever written (at least if you’re a Trini).

Regarding scores, while 150-300 an innings is normal, they can be over 700 or under 50. The highest scores by a single batsman in a single innings is 400 (for Test cricket) and 501(for First Class cricket), both by Brian Lara.

Do cricket players use steroids?

David Fraser’s Cricket and the Law: The Man in White is Always Right includes, among many other fascinating socio-legal analyses of the world’s greatest sport, a chapter on the intricacies of the LBW rule and the meaning of “causation”.

Batting in baseball certainly has strategic elements. Does cricket have a concept that compares to a base on balls?

If the bowler bowls too high or too far left or right, the batsman gets free runs scored as ‘wides’, and the bowler has to bowl an extra ball to complete the over. But there is nothing special if a bowler does this too many times in a short period of time.

Do they trot back and forth, a la baseball, or just put up the score?

The score is added without requiring them to run it explicitly.

hitting the ball hard is a pretty good idea in cricket also

Actually most of the time batters are trying to play ‘ground balls’ – getting out is a very bad thing in cricket, where in baseball it is the normal case (about 2/3rds of the time from memory). You have to make good decisions as to when to play risky shots because of this.

BTW, why are they called “test matches?” is it simply because the length makes them testing?

There is no unambigious definition, it is one of those things that comes from the game before it was fully organised.

Fielding positions all explained here:

http://arunan.50webs.com/proj2.html

I almost batted a century once. Four runs short and getting greedy, I swung big at a yorker and got castled. Blimey.

The main point of baseball is to hit the ball as hard as you can; cricket requires much more strategic play, since ball placement is far more important

You seem to know a great deal more about cricket than baseball . . .

it’s the vocabulary (particularly fielding positions) that confuse me

What’s so confusing about “silly point” and “short square leg”?

No doubt there are complexities in cricket.

But my point was that the need to advance around the bases creates a whole host of complexities in baseball. These include, to begin with, stolen bases, sacrifices, choices between one-run and big-inning strategies, double plays, runners’ decisions about how far to try to advance, intentional walks, the sequencing of the batting order, the positioning of some of the fielders, and probably others.

It’s rare in baseball that you’ll get a pitcher pulled just by holding out for enough balls that the runs are walked home, or the pitch count gets too high. In cricket, you can get a captain to pull a bowler (temporarily) by playing aggressively enough to ratchet up the total, or by playing defensively enough to diminish the chance of losing your wicket. Etc.

Actually, forcing the pitcher, especially the starter, to throw lots of pitches is an element of batting. And the fact that players, including the pitcher, cannot re-enter after leaving adds another issue to deal with.

#28 A friend of mine who occasionally fielded there always claimed it wasn’t “silly point” it was “bloody stupid point”.