Cricket (Australia)

Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on an oval grass field. During innings, one team bats to score runs, while the other team fields in an attempt to dismiss all the batters and close the inning. The game's governing body is the International Cricket Council, which maintains the official rules, codified as the Laws of Cricket.

The game likely originated in south-eastern England and, via the British Empire, spread across the globe. Cricket is most popular in Great Britain and its former colonies, including India, South Africa, the West Indies, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. Cricket is among the most popular sports in the world, being played by both local clubs and national teams, with international adult competitions held every four years. Cricket has also influenced other sports including baseball.

Origins and History

Cricket originated as a children's game perhaps as recently as the sixteenth century in south-eastern England, with the first official mention of the game documented in a dictionary in 1598. The name of the sport derived from either the Old French word criquet for stick or the Middle Flemish word cricke, meaning a crutch or staff.

The first amateur leagues were organised in the seventeenth century, and cricket grew in popularity as a gambling sport. By the eighteenth century the sport had also caught on with the upper classes, with most members of the gentry distinguishing themselves from their working-class counterparts by designating themselves as "amateurs." By the 1750s cricket was regarded as England's national sport and consequently rules were rewritten and codified. In 1750 Hambledon Club, England's most prominent cricket club, was established and became the sport's focal point. Nearly forty years later, in 1787, the Marylebone Cricket Club was founded, becoming the sport's premier club and overseeing the writing and maintenance of the Laws of Cricket. In the nineteenth century underarm bowling, which had been the norm, was changed in favour of overarm bowling, and country clubs sprang up across Great Britain.

Thanks to the spread of the British Empire throughout this period, by the early twentieth century, cricket was being played internationally, with clubs established in Australia, New Zealand, India, North America, South Africa and the Caribbean. The first English-Australian competitions occurred in the 1860s, and Australia became a dominant power in the sport well into the twentieth century. Following World War I, cricket continued to expand across the globe, reaching deeper into Africa and Asia in particular.

The most important development to the sport in the modern era, however, was limited-overs cricket, which limits the length of a game to one day and one innings per team. By contrast, in test match cricket, the original form, matches run over five seven-hour days, with two innings per team. Limited-overs competition formats include One-Day International (ODI), introduced in 1971, and Twenty20, introduced in 2003.

Rules and Regulations

In cricket, two teams of eleven play on a large, oval grass field. Teams score runs by hitting a ball in defence of a target called the "wicket." During innings one team bats (hits the ball to score runs) and the other team fields (bowls, or throws the ball to knock down the wicket, while also guarding the field). Depending on the format, teams each get one or two innings, after which they swap roles. The team with the most runs at the end wins the game. Draws are possible in Test Match cricket, and ties can occur in ODI and Twenty20.

Each innings two batters of one team face the entire opposing team. Play begins when a bowler delivers the ball from one end of the twenty-two-yard-long pitch attempting to hit the wicket, which is guarded by a batter, known as a striker, at the other. Assisting the bowler are their wicket-keeper, positioned behind the wicket, and nine fielders positioned to catch or retrieve the ball. A second non-striker batter waits alongside the pitch at the bowler's end. The batters score runs by either hitting a ball beyond the field boundary, worth four to six runs, or hitting the balls such that the batters can swap ends of the pitch, for one run. The bowler seeks to dismiss the batter by one of eleven means. Among the most common are a batter missing or deflecting and the ball dislodging the wicket stumps and the bails ('bowled'), and the ball hitting the batter's leg instead of the stumps ('leg before wicket'). Fielders may catch the ball before it hits the ground. If a fielder retrieves the ball fast enough to put down the wicket before batters swap places, the batter is 'run out'. Each batter is replaced by another teammate, and innings usually end when every batter has been dismissed.

A set of six balls constitutes an 'over'. After every over, the direction of play switches and a different bowler bowls. In Test cricket, overs and bowls are unlimited. Because of their shorter duration, in ODI, bowling is limited to ten overs and batting to fifty, while in Twenty20, bowling is restricted to four overs and batting to twenty. Fielding positions are also restricted in limited-overs cricket to prevent purely defensive play.

The three formats of cricket also differ in clothing and ball colour as well as time of play. Test Match cricket has historically been played with white clothes and a red ball in day matches, while both ODI and Twenty20 feature coloured clothes and a white ball in day-night games.

Top Athletes

Australian star bowler Glenn McGrath was the highest wicket-taker of all time, with 563 wickets in 124 Tests, and helped Australia dominate the sport in the 1990s to late 2000s. Shane Warne, an expert spin bowler, took 708 wickets in 145 Tests. Allan Border, an Australia team captain and master batter during the 1980s, earned 11,174 runs in 156 Tests, or a 50.56 batting average. Ricky Ponting, another prolific batter scored 13,378 runs over 168 Tests, earning 257 runs in one game against India. Sir Donald Bradman, active in the 1930s and 1940s, scored 6,996 Test runs with an average of 99.94 with 13 fifties and 29 centuries.

Among New Zealand's top cricketers is Brendan McCullum, a wicketkeeper batter who scored 6,453 Test runs between 2004 and 2017, earning 302 in a single game. Martin Crowe, an expert batter and fast runner, scored 5,444 runs in 77 Tests, averaging 45.36. Stephen Fleming, another impressive batter active in the 1990s and 2000s, scored 7,172 Test and 8,037 ODI runs. Daniel Vettori, a versatile all-rounder and also a master spin bowler, scored 4,531 runs and took 362 wickets in 113 Tests. Sir Richard Hadlee, arguably New Zealand's best bowler and a great all-rounder, took 431 wickets in 86 Tests between 1973 and 1990.

Bibliography

Birley, Derek. A Social History of English Cricket. 1999. Aurum Press, 2013.

Guha, Ramachandra. A Corner of a Foreign Field—The Indian History of a British Sport. Picador, 2002.

Harte, Chris, and Bernard Whimpress. The History of Australian Cricket. Revised and updated ed., Carlton Books, 2009.

Major, John. More Than a Game: The Story of Cricket's Early Years. HarperCollins Publishers, 2007.

McCann, Tim. Sussex Cricket in the Eighteenth Century. Sussex Record Society, 2004.

Underdown, David. Start of Play: Cricket and Culture in Eighteenth-Century England. Allen Lane, 2000.

"What Is Cricket?" ICC, International Cricket Council, www.icc-cricket.com/about/development/what-is-cricket. Accessed 1 Dec. 2017.

Williams, Charles. Gentlemen & Players: The Death of Amateurism in Cricket. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2012.