Cricket is a several hundred years old sport. Cricket is a team sport, which falls in the category of Bat-and-Ball sports. Other Bat-and-Ball sports are Baseball or Softball. A cricket team consist out of 11 players each and is played on an oval shaped grass field. In the middle of the field is a 22yards, 20.1m, long strip, called pitch.
Cricket is the second most popular game in the world, with over 100 members in the ICC, International Cricket Council in Dubai. Cricket is the mostly popular in Ex-Commonwealth Colonies, especially in Asia and the Caribbean, which are assembled under the West Indies in cricket.
Cricket is the most popular sport in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri-Lanka and Australia. However, it is also a major sport in England, New Zealand, South Africa, Zimbabwe and the West Indies.
There are several types of cricket. The most important four types are Test cricket, One-day cricket, Twenty20 cricket and First-class matches.
Test Cricket is an international game that is played between different countries. Normally a Test Match last three to five days, it can not last longer then 5 days. Each team gets two innings. The first Test Match was played in 1877 between Australia and England. Today there are a total of ten countries taking part in Test Matches.
One-Day Cricket is a cricket game limited to one day. It was first introduced in England in 1969. A One-Day match is also known as Limited Overs International, or LOI, because of the limited amount of overs. Each team starts of with one inning. The Bowler is limited to 10 overs per inning. One-Day Cricket games reach huge amounts of fans watching over TV.
Twenty20 Cricket a new type of game. It was first played in 2003 in England and was created to bring more fans to watch the game and normally doesn’t last more then 3 hours. A Twenty20 game consists of 20 overs for each side. A bowler can only bowl one fifth of the total overs, which are normally 4 per inning. If the bowling team doesn’t reach 20 overs after 75 minutes, the batting team is credited 6 runs for every successful over after the 75 minutes.
First Class Match is a high quality matches that takes at least 3 days. Each team gets 2 innings and if these not finished during one game-day the game will be continued on the next day.