Chapter 1

Taking In the Joy of Cricket

IN THIS CHAPTER

Assessing the gulf between pros and amateurs

Looking at the battle between bowler and batter

Exploring the strange, strange world of cricket speak

Discovering what you need to be a cricket fan

Understanding the role of the umpires

Millions of people around the globe follow cricket. For many, cricket is the number one sport, offering a unique blend of physical strength, lightning reflexes, huge skill, and tactics galore. In fact there is a strong case for the game, which first spread through the British Empire in the 18th and 19th centuries, being the world's second most popular sport behind soccer.

When the best cricketers in the world do battle, you won't see anything like it for nail-biting tension and excitement!

So what is cricket, in a nutshell? A cricket match involves two teams of 11 players and two on-pitch umpires, each aiming to score more runs (points) than the opposition when batting the ball. The teams take it in turns to bowl and field against the other team batting, and this is known as an innings. An innings is completed when ten of a team's batters have been dismissed by the fielding side. Once the batting team's innings is complete, the fielding team takes their turn to bat. Therefore, the fielding team becomes the batting side and the batting side becomes the fielding team. The umpire's job is to interpret and apply the laws of the game to the match situation. Among other things, this means that the umpires get to decide whether a batter is out and whether a bowler has broken the game's laws. See Chapter 2 for a more detailed explanation of the game.

Understanding Cricket's Global Appeal

Cricket has spread around the globe on the back of the British Empire.

Despite the best efforts of cricket's global administrators - the International Cricket Council (ICC) - cricket is only now, after more than a century, managing to break out of this traditional heartland. Big investment in the U.S. promises much, but major parts of the world such as China and South America still barely register the sport.

But the British Empire - which at its height covered a third of the globe - isn't a bad heartland for a sport. India, Pakistan, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, West Indies, Zimbabwe, and Bangladesh all play test cricket (the top echelon of the game; see Chapter 3 for more on test cricket).

Doing a quick bit of math, that covers about 1.5 billion people - around a fifth of the world's population. Although not as big as soccer, this coverage dwarfs some other world sports such as rugby, field hockey, and international tiddlywinks! And cricket isn't a minority sport in the countries that play it: far from it.

In India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh, cricket is the number one sport; and in Britain, cricket is still one of the major national sports, along with soccer and rugby.

Buoyed by a recent World Cup triumph, cricket is going through a renaissance in England. Unlike premiership soccer, cricket has no seven-figure annual salaries or excessive swearing at the officials. And a good thing too, some would say. Hey, being a cricketer or a cricket fan may even be considered hip!

National teams compete against each other in both test and one-day international matches. Tests involve each side having two innings and can last up to five days. One-day internationals, as the name suggests, are completed in a single day. Each side gets just one innings which is limited to a set number of overs, say 50 of 20. See Chapter 3 for more on the differences between test and one-day international matches.

Gauging the Difference: Amateur and Professional Cricket

Cricket, like most major sports, is divided between the amateur and the professional game. The amateurs play for fun; the professionals play for pay.

The key differences between amateur and professional cricketers fall into four main areas:

• Fitness standards: Professional cricketers are fitter than amateurs. They are put on special diets and fitness regimes and have an army of coaches to tell them what to do to get the most from their bodies. Even the most committed amateur is unlikely to be able to approach the sheer athleticism of a professional player.
• Skill levels: Professional cricketers are way ahead when it comes to their skill levels. They get to practice most days and dedicate themselves to honing their talents.
• Commitment: Amateurs have jobs and can, usually, only play at weekends. They may only get to train once a week during the cricket season, and perhaps not at all in the winter. For professionals, on the other hand, cricket is what they do for a living. They play matches on most days during the summer and may even travel abroad to play during the winter months.
• Match length: Because the skill levels of professionals are so high, completing some games of cricket in a day can be difficult. Therefore, longer formats of the game have been devised; some games take up to five days to finish. See Chapter 3 for more on match formats. Amateurs only play one-day games, or very occasionally two-day games across weekends.

An estimated 300-400 professional cricketers earn their livings playing in Britain alone, whereas tens of thousands of amateur players play for fun each weekend during the summer months. In India, the new global powerhouse of cricket, there are hundreds of professionals but hundreds of thousands of amateur players. Even more play the occasional game of cricket - perhaps they have their cricket bat and clothing stuffed under the stairs, getting everything out when asked to take part in a friendly match at work or the local community cricket club.

The cricket season runs from April to September in Britain. But because cricket is a global sport and other parts of the world have their summers at different times of the year, even when no cricket is being played in Britain - because the weather's cold and wet - cricket is being played somewhere else in the world. For example, in Australia the cricket season runs from late October to March; and in the U.S., it runs from June to October.

Reviewing the great divide: Amateurs and professionals

Over time, the skill and fitness standards of professional cricketers have raced away from those of amateurs.

A long time ago, when test match cricket had just started to be played, many top players were amateurs. Often they were members of the upper classes who didn't have to work and had enough spare time on their hands to play cricket. However, back then a lot of sham amateurism went on with top players claiming to be amateurs but receiving great big "expenses" payments.

Even in the relatively recent past, seeing a few beer bellies among professionals wasn't unusual - going back to the 1980s, former England captains Mike Gatting and Ian Botham both carried a bit of extra padding around their midriffs! Even the Australians had their fair share of rotund cricketers such as Tasmanian David Boon and fast bowler Merv Hughes. Nowadays, though, beer bellies are as rare as hen's teeth among professionals: They are athletes. As a result, performance levels in the professional ranks have raced away even further from amateurs, especially when it comes to fielding. Go to watch any club cricket match and you can bet that before long you'll see a fielder misfield the ball or miss it altogether. Such moments of enjoyable farce are few and far between in the professional ranks.

But not only physical fitness and playing standards mark the growing gulf between professional and amateur. Some of the rules now differ between top-notch-professional and amateur matches.

In part the difference in rules is down to the inevitable march of new technology. In professional cricket matches broadcast on television and online, the umpires can call on the help of video replay technology. They do this by requesting that a third umpire, sitting on the sidelines, review the video evidence in order to give a decision - usually on whether a batter has been caught, run-out, stumped, or dismissed leg before wicket (LBW). See Chapter 2 for more on the third umpire and modes of dismissal. The third umpire then radios a decision back to the two umpires on the pitch and the decision is given. Under the Decision Review System (DRS), a batter who has been dismissed caught or LBW can call for the third umpire to look again at the video footage and ball-tracking technology to check that the on-field umpire's decision was correct. Of course in amateur games - where rustling up a cricket ball and two sets of stumps can sometimes be hard enough - you won't find video replays or extra umpires.

Some experts suggest that by adopting such new technology the professional game is in danger of pulling away from the roots of the game. Ultimately, some argue, this could undermine the popularity of the professional game because amateur cricketers - who make up a sizeable proportion of fans at matches - may become unable to relate to the game as played by the professionals. In short, alienation could prove a big turn-off. However, with the use of video technology now three decades old, the evidence is that it has enhanced the experience of those watching the...