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Cricket

Bangladesh vs Sri Lanka 2nd Test Live score updates

Stay updated with Times of India to get all the live cricket score updates, scorecards, and ball-by-ball commentary of the 2nd Test match between Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players each on a field at the centre of which is a 22-yard (20-metre) pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The game proceeds when a player on the fielding team, called the bowler, “bowls” (propels) the ball from one end of the pitch towards the wicket at the other end, with an “over” being completed once they have legally done so six times. The batting side has one player at each end of the pitch, with the player at the opposite end of the pitch from the bowler aiming to strike the ball with a bat. The batting side scores runs either when the ball reaches the boundary of the field, or when the two batters swap ends of the pitch, which results in one run. The fielding side’s aim is to prevent run-scoring and dismiss each batter (so they are “out”, and are said to have “lost their wicket”). Means of dismissal include being bowled, when the bowled ball hits the stumps and dislodges the bails, and by the fielding side either catching a hit ball before it touches the ground, or hitting a wicket with the ball before a batter can cross the crease line in front of the wicket to complete a run. When ten batters have been dismissed, the innings ends and the teams swap roles. The game is adjudicated by two umpires, aided by a third umpire and match referee in international matches.

 

Forms of cricket range from Twenty20, with each team batting for a single innings of 20 overs and the game generally lasting three hours, to Test matches played over five days. Traditionally cricketers play in all-white kit, but in limited overs cricket they wear club or team colours. In addition to the basic kit, some players wear protective gear to prevent injury caused by the ball, which is a hard, solid spheroid made of compressed leather with a slightly raised sewn seam enclosing a cork core layered with tightly wound string.

The earliest reference to cricket is in South East England in the mid-16th century. It spread globally with the expansion of the British Empire, with the first international matches in the second half of the 19th century. The game’s governing body is the International Cricket Council (ICC), which has over 100 members, twelve of which are full members who play Test matches. The game’s rules, the Laws of Cricket, are maintained by Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) in London. The sport is followed primarily in South Asia, Australasia, the United Kingdom, southern Africa and the West Indies.[1]

Women’s cricket, which is organised and played separately, has also achieved international standard. The most successful side playing international cricket is Australia, which has won seven One Day International trophies, including five World Cups, more than any other country and has been the top-rated Test side more than any other country.

History

Origins

A medieval “club ball” game involving an underhand bowl towards a batter. Ball catchers are shown positioning themselves to catch a ball. Detail from the Canticles of Holy Mary, 13th century.

Cricket is one of many games in the “club ball” sphere that basically involve hitting a ball with a hand-held implement; others include baseball (which shares many similarities with cricket, both belonging in the more specific bat-and-ball games category[2]), golfhockeytennissquashbadminton and table tennis.[3] In cricket’s case, a key difference is the existence of a solid target structure, the wicket (originally, it is thought, a “wicket gate” through which sheep were herded), that the batter must defend.[4] The cricket historian Harry Altham identified three “groups” of “club ball” games: the “hockey group”, in which the ball is driven to and fro between two targets (the goals); the “golf group”, in which the ball is driven towards an undefended target (the hole); and the “cricket group”, in which “the ball is aimed at a mark (the wicket) and driven away from it”.[5]

It is generally believed that cricket originated as a children’s game in the south-eastern counties of England, sometime during the medieval period.[4] Although there are claims for prior dates, the earliest definite reference to cricket being played comes from evidence given at a court case in Guildford in January 1597 (Old Style), equating to January 1598 in the modern calendar. The case concerned ownership of a certain plot of land and the court heard the testimony of a 59-year-old coronerJohn Derrick, who gave witness that:[6][7][8]

Being a scholler in the ffree schoole of Guldeford hee and diverse of his fellows did runne and play there at creckett and other plaies.

Given Derrick’s age, it was about half a century earlier when he was at school and so it is certain that cricket was being played c. 1550 by boys in Surrey.[8] The view that it was originally a children’s game is reinforced by Randle Cotgrave‘s 1611 English-French dictionary in which he defined the noun “crosse” as “the crooked staff wherewith boys play at cricket” and the verb form “crosser” as “to play at cricket”.[9][10]

One possible source for the sport’s name is the Old English word “cryce” (or “cricc“) meaning a crutch or staff. In Samuel Johnson‘s Dictionary, he derived cricket from “cryce, Saxon, a stick”.[6] In Old French, the word “criquet” seems to have meant a kind of club or stick.[11] Given the strong medieval trade connections between south-east England and the County of Flanders when the latter belonged to the Duchy of Burgundy, the name may have been derived from the Middle Dutch (in use in Flanders at the time) “krick“(-e), meaning a stick (crook).[11] Another possible source is the Middle Dutch word “krickstoel“, meaning a long low stool used for kneeling in church and which resembled the long low wicket with two stumps used in early cricket.[12] According to Heiner Gillmeister, a European language expert of Bonn University, “cricket” derives from the Middle Dutch phrase for hockeymet de (krik ket)sen (i.e., “with the stick chase”).[13] Gillmeister has suggested that not only the name but also the sport itself may be of Flemish origin.[13]