Cricket Commentary: Game fundamentals after USA win against Pakistan

The United States’ stunning Cricket World Cup victory over Pakistan on Thursday has raised interest in cricket in the United States more than ever before, but it also highlighted just how little people in the country understand about the sport.

The overwhelming majority of comments on my article about the US victory were of the opinion that people had no idea about cricket terminology or context and therefore could not enjoy the victory. I have been writing about cricket here at SB Nation for nearly a decade and have always understood that most people reading about the sport are foreigners from cricket-playing countries or come from immigrant families who grew up watching cricket.

So, let’s clear this doubt for the majority of people who don’t know anything about cricket. Here, we will only focus on the rules of the T20 format in which the World Cup is played.

What are the basic rules of cricket?

The match consists of two teams of 11 players, each with a specialist role. Typically, a team has four dedicated batsmen (the main batsmen and scorers), four dedicated bowlers (the equivalent of a baseball pitcher), two all-rounders (players who can both bat and bowl), and a wicket-keeper (positioned behind the stumps, like a baseball catcher).

Each team is given one innings in which to score as many runs as they can. Two batters stand at either end of the pitch (a rectangular piece of dead grass in the middle of the field) and try to score runs until they are out or the inning ends.

Points are scored in a number of ways:

• Hit the ball onto the field and take turns with other batsmen as you run around the pitch, each substitution earning you a point and allowing you to take as many risks as you like in an attempt to score runs.
• Hitting the ball with enough force to make it roll into the boundary line surrounding the field is called a “four” and is worth four points.
• Hit the ball with enough force so that it goes over the boundary line in the air. This is called a “six” and is worth six points.
• A point is also awarded if the bowler bowls the ball out of the field (known as a wide) or if the ball crosses the line where it must be released (known as a no-ball). In either case, the batting team is given one free run and must bowl the ball again.

An innings in the T20 World Cup consists of 20 “overs”. An over is a sequence of six balls bowled consecutively by a bowler. At the end of an over, a new bowler must be substituted.

So, in the case of the World Cup, it is best to think of it as a game in which two teams try to score as many runs as possible by bowling 120 balls. However, if 10 players are out before the 120 balls are bowled and there is only one batsman remaining, that team is considered “all out” and must stop the other team from scoring more runs than they do.

How do I get out?

The essence of the sport is for batsmen to score runs while defending the “wicket” – three vertical sticks behind the batsman with two smaller sticks (called bails) on top. The most common ways for a player to be out are:

• A bowler hitting the wicket with a ball.
• A player hits the ball into the air and a fielder catches it.
• Hitting a wicket with a ball caught by a fielder while two batsmen are running (run out)
• If the ball right When the ball hits the batsman’s leg and he fails to touch the ball with the bat. This is the most complicated to explain, but it’s called a “leg before wicket” (LBW) and basically means that he’s out because he blocked the wicket with his leg and not with his bat.

What is Bowling?

Similar to pitching in baseball, a cricket bowler has a variety of balls available to them to beat the batsman, the only rule being that the ball must be bowled with an overarm motion and released from a fully extended arm.

Throwing the ball is prohibited.

There is dozens There are many different types of bowling, but they can be broadly divided into two categories: pace and spin. Pace bowlers aim to bowl the ball as quickly as possible so that it is difficult to hit, while spin bowlers bowl more slowly but aim to deceive the batsman by allowing the ball to spin in different directions as it bounces on the pitch.

Usually, a pace bowler starts the match, but as the match progresses the leather of the cricket ball becomes increasingly rough and worn down, and then a spin bowler comes on board and uses the friction of the worn ball to give the ball more movement.

In the T20 format of the World Cup, each bowler can only bowl four overs (24 deliveries) and no more, meaning that each team must use a minimum of five different bowlers to complete an innings and no team can rely on one or two aces throughout the entire innings.

What is considered a good score?

The World Cup’s fast-paced T20 format requires players to try to score as many runs as possible in a very limited time, which typically means batsmen take significantly greater risks than in other forms of cricket.

Think of it as literally trying to swing for a home run every chance you get. You have to balance that with the risk of getting out, and this is where a lot of batting strategy comes into play.

Statistically speaking, the average innings in T20 cricket is 166 runs. It is average for a player to score between 15 and 25 runs, anything over 30 is a good innings, and the best players in the world routinely average over 40 runs per match.

How do you read cricket scores?

Watching cricket scores on TV can sometimes feel like you’re speaking a different language, so let’s take a look at what it looks like in these screenshots from Thursday’s match.

The score shows USA 155-3, which means that at this point USA has scored 155 runs and three batsmen are out.

19.5 over refers to the current over (19) and the number of bowls completed (5), i.e. it was the sixth ball of the over (final ball) at this point.

The “Needed” section is always visible. “1 to 5” means that in this case, the US needed 5 runs to win with one ball. We know what happened: the US hit 4 runs and took the game into a “super over,” or extra time. Basically, you try to score as many runs as possible in one over.

Other terms include Run Rate (RR), which indicates how many runs a team is scoring per over, and Required Run Rate (RRR), which indicates the number of runs they must score to win the match.

These are the basics you need

Like any sport, cricket is incredibly complex and deep, but with the USA facing India next Wednesday in perhaps the biggest cricket match in the country’s history, you should now have at least a basic understanding of World Cup cricket.

There’s no better time to enjoy cricket than right now. Major League Cricket kicks off its second season in the United States in July. Cricket is a global sport, so matches are played all over the world during the summer. Even during winter in the United States, matches are being played in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.

The sport is fun, and the American team is incredibly fun, so it’s definitely worth giving the sport a try.