It's the most-watched sporting event in the world, but the Cricket World Cup remains a mystery to many Americans. Here's a quick and dirty primer for the six-week event, taking place right now in Australia and New Zealand.
Personnel
Let’s start with the basics: Cricket is played with 22 people — 11 per team — and two umpires.
(AP Photo/Theo Karanikos)
AP Photo/Theo Karanikos
Equipment
The basic equipment consists of six stumps and four bails. Stumps are the upright, wooden posts that sit where we might expect home plate to be. There are two sets of stumps, 66 feet apart (more on that later). Atop each set of three stumps rest two bails — small pieces of wood that bridge the gaps. It is actually the fate of the bails, not the stumps, that helps dictate the progress of the game.
(AP Photo/Ross Setford)
AP Photo/Ross Setford
Field
The field stretches in an oval, measuring a minimum of 150 yards from boundary to boundary. There is some flexibility in terms of total size, much as baseball parks are unique. But the pitch, where the bulk of the action takes place, is exactly 66 feet from wicket to wicket, similar to baseball’s 60 feet, 6 inches from pitcher’s rubber to home plate.
(Getty Images/Hannah Peters)
Getty Images/Hannah Peters
Positions
Everyone on defense is a fielder, except for the bowler (pitcher) and the wicket keeper (catcher). The other nine can be moved around tactically anywhere on the field, at the discretion of the captain, to try to gain a tactical advantage. For the hitting side, two players are involved on offense — both the striker (batter) and the nonstriker, who serves as the batter’s running mate to help him score runs. This will (hopefully) make sense shortly.
(Getty Images/Morne de Klerk)
Getty Images/Morne de Klerk
Outs
As in baseball, the ultimate objective as a batter is not to make an out. Once you are out, you are replaced by a teammate and will not bat again. An out happens anytime a batted ball is caught on the fly, or anytime a bail is knocked off its stump. This can happen off a pitch by a bowler, or by any fielder while the striker and nonstriker are in transit across the pitch. It can also happen if the batter blocks the ball from hitting the wicket with his body, the same way a strike is called on a hit-by-pitch in baseball when a batter leans over the plate.
Once a batter is out, he is replaced by a teammate. This continues until the entire side has batted, at which point the inning (called an “innings”) is over.
(Getty Images/Morne de Klerk)
Scoring
There are several ways to score in cricket. The most complicated way is by the striker and nonstriker switching stations while the ball is in play. This can happen on any contact play, but the runners do not necessarily have to advance if they fear being caught for an out of any kind. Each time the striker and nonstriker switch places, a run is scored.
The most bountiful way of accumulating runs comes by making more solid contact, similar to extra-base hits in baseball. Any ball that is hit hard enough that it bounces out of the oval automatically scores four runs. Any ball that clears the boundary in the air — the equivalent of a home run — is worth six.
(Getty Images/Morne de Klerk)
The Favorites
After winning three straight titles between 1999 and 2007, Australia finally ceded the title to India in 2011. Sri Lanka has been the runner-up in the past two World Cups, but the Aussies are the top-rated team in the One Day International rankings, the format in which the World Cup is played.
(www.icc-cricket.com)
WASHINGTON — What has been the most-watched sporting event of 2015? Clearly Super Bowl XLIX, with a record 114.4 million viewers, right? Wrong. And it’s not even close.
Sunday’s World Cup rivalry matchup between India and Pakistan was expected to draw over a billion viewers across the globe — just for a group stage match. That would best last year’s soccer World Cup final between Germany and Argentina, which totaled just over 900 million viewers. If the two superpowers were to meet again in the knockout stage, the viewership might well set a record.
And yet, cricket’s impact in America is tenuous at best. ESPN picked up broadcasting rights for the sport for the last four years, but relegates coverage to its online viewing package. But while cricket attempts to gain a foothold stateside, its six-week championship is in full swing on the other end of the world, with Australia and New Zealand serving as the 2015 hosts.
The game is complicated much the same way that baseball might be hard to explain to a non-American. In that sense, many people won’t bother to learn the intricacies of the game, due to either apathy or intimidation. But with snow swirling here on the East Coast, there’s no better time to listen to the roar of the crowd and the crack of the bat … even if that bat looks a little different from the one we’re used to.
In that spirit, take the self-guided tour in the gallery above, which includes plenty of video highlights to help explain exactly how cricket is played.
