Cricket is the choice of the elite

Crick­et has become a sym­bol of Eng­land, just like the fog or the monar­chy. The game, which gen­tle­men from high soci­ety pre­fer to play, has always been pop­u­lar also among the com­mon peo­ple. But offi­cial crick­et clubs have always con­sist­ed of only the most dis­tin­guished per­sons. That is why mem­ber­ship in a crick­et club served as a hall­mark of an aris­to­crat. To this day, the queue for mem­ber­ship in the best crick­et clubs in the world can last more than one year.

The his­to­ry of the game

The game of Eng­lish gen­tle­men and noble­men orig­i­nat­ed in the 13th cen­tu­ry. Ini­tial­ly, crick­et was con­sid­ered only a child’s game, but over time it became a pas­time that is an inte­gral part of Eng­lish tra­di­tions. True pop­u­lar­i­ty came to crick­et in the 18th cen­tu­ry, when the rules of the game were offi­cial­ly estab­lished and fixed. At the same time, clubs of pro­fes­sion­al crick­eters began to appear.

In 1990, crick­et was includ­ed in the Olympic ros­ter. How­ev­er, the game, not too well known at that time, did not win the hearts of the audi­ence and crick­et was very soon exclud­ed from the Olympic pro­gram.

Since the begin­ning of the 20th cen­tu­ry, crick­et has become pop­u­lar not only in Eng­land, but also in oth­er coun­tries of Europe, Africa and even Aus­tralia.

What is crick­et?

Crick­et is played on a grassy sur­face. The shape of the gen­er­al field does not mat­ter much, usu­al­ly the radius of the entire site is about 130 ‑150 meters. The main action of the game takes place on a court locat­ed in the mid­dle of the field, the length of which is 22 yards or 20.12 meters, and the width is about 3 meters. Gates are installed on both edges of the site — sim­i­lar to gates — con­sist­ing of three rails lined up in a row with two cross­bars. The gate is 67.5 cm high and 20 cm wide.

Crick­et is played by two teams, each of which has 11 play­ers, of which 4–5 bowlers (bowlers) and 5–6 bat­ters (bets­men). Anoth­er impor­tant par­tic­i­pant is the wick­et-keep­er.

The game is played as fol­lows. The serv­er throws the ball into the wick­et, try­ing to break it. In turn, the bat­ter from the oppos­ing team must pre­vent this and hit the ball in time with a bat. If the serve is returned, the bats­man must run to the oth­er end of the play­ing court, while anoth­er bats­man of the same team, locat­ed at the oppo­site end of the court, must take his place. For a full run — a change in the posi­tion of the bat­ters — the team is award­ed one point.

Play­ers of the oppos­ing team not par­tic­i­pat­ing in the ball ral­ly are dis­persed across the play­ing field. Their job is to catch the ball and put it back in play. If the ball is caught and returned to the game before the end of the bats­men’s run, the run is con­sid­ered lost, and the bats­man is out of the game. Also, the bats­man is elim­i­nat­ed if the bat­ted ball was caught in the air or the serve was not hit at all.

Each match includes two stages — imming. Imming ends when each team com­pletes one series of innings. Teams change places after 10 play­ers are elim­i­nat­ed. It often hap­pens that a crick­et match can drag on for sev­er­al days due to the fact that the teams take a long time to devel­op attack tac­tics and defense strate­gies.

Fea­tures of the game of crick­et

Crick­et seems to be a fair­ly sim­ple game, how­ev­er, thanks to the preser­va­tion of cen­turies-old tra­di­tions, a lot of sub­tleties and nuances have remained in the game, the descrip­tion of which takes up a weighty vol­ume called the “Crick­et Rule­book”.

The most impor­tant “law” of crick­et, the vio­la­tion of which is pun­ished with par­tic­u­lar sever­i­ty, is pre­sent­ed in the fol­low­ing extract from the code: “Since the play­ers are full of hon­or and must adhere to lofty tra­di­tions, it is con­sid­ered the height of inde­cen­cy not to report a vio­la­tion of the rules even if the ref­er­ee did not notice it” .

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