About Cricket | About Cricket
Cricket is a national sport which is played between two teams of eleven players each who score runs (points) by running between two sets of three small, wooden posts called wickets. Each of the wickets is at one end of a rectangle of flattened grass called the pitch. Around the pitch is a much larger oval of grass called the cricket ground.
The game started in England in the 16th century. The earliest definite reference to the sport is in a court case of 1598. The court in Guildfordheard a coroner, John Derrick, that when he was a scholar at the “Free School at Guildford”, fifty years earlier, “he and diverse of his fellows did run and play [on the common land] at cricket and other players”. Later, the game spread to countries of the British Empire in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Today, it is a popular sport in England, Australia, the Indian subcontinent (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh), South Africa, New Zealand, the West Indies and a few other countries such as Afghanistan, Nepal, United Arab Emirates, Oman, USA, Canada, Ireland, Kenya, Scotland, the Netherlands and Zimbabwe & so on.
FORMATS OF THE GAME
Cricket is played in many formats , but the most popular are TEST CRICKET, ONE DAY cricket and T20 CRICKET. In TEST cricket game goes on for 5 days, with each team batting twice – if time permits.
ONE DAY is the most popular format, with each team getting 300 balls to score runs. And the other team tries to outscore them within the same number of balls.
Twenty20 Cricket is the most popular format these days, with each team has opportunity to play 120 balls or 20 overs Only. This is the shorter format of Cricket.