Cricket is a sport that has been played around the world for more than eight thousand years with some games lasting almost that long!

Cricket is played by two teams of eleven players, which take turns trying to get each other out, normally with two innings each and ten outs per innings. For newcomers to the game, cricket is played with a flat bat, rather than a rounded one, and players do not run to a base to score a run, but instead run 22 yards to the other end of the wicket and cross with another batter. If the ball is hit hard enough to go far, players may keep running back and forth between the opposite ends, scoring as many as 3 runs. If the ball goes all the way to the perimeter of the field, the batter scores 4. If it gets to the perimeter without bouncing, you get a maximum 6, the home-run of cricket!

A player is out in several ways –

1. Bowled, which is kind of like a strike where it hits the stumps behind the batter flush.
2. Caught, which is where a fielder catches the ball before it bounces.
3. Run out, where one of the two batters doesn’t make ground to the other end of the wicket in time and a fielder crashes the stumps beforehand.
4. LBW (Leg Before Wicket), where the batter blocks the ball with a part of their body and not the bat, and the umpire deems that the ball would have crashed the stumps.