Sport

Cricket has a bit of a reputation for being hard to understand, but it’s actually a simpler game than the most popular North American sports.

Here’s everything you need to know to enjoy a cricket match in 600 words or less.

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Cricket is played on an oval field with a rectangular pitch in the middle. Two players on the batting team stand on either side of the pitch; the eleven players on the fielding team take up positions around the field.

Runs

The cricket ball is bowled overarm by a player on the fielding team and can bounce once. The batter hits the ball and switches ends with the other batter, scoring one run each time this happens.

If the batter hits the ball all the way to the boundary of the field, they score four runs automatically.

If they hit the ball really hard over the boundary, they score six runs.

Wickets

The goal of the fielding team is to get the batters out (“take their wickets”) before they score lots of runs.

The batter is out caught if they hit the ball and a fielder catches it before it hits the ground.

The batter is out bowled if they miss and the ball hits the wicket behind them.

The batter is out leg before wicket if they use their body to block the ball from hitting the wicket.

The batter is run out if they run and the fielding side breaks the wicket before they’re safe.

The batter is out stumped if they come too far out, miss the ball, and get run out by the wicketkeeper.

Overs

Every six balls, the fielders switch ends and a different player from the fielding team comes on to bowl. Six balls is also called an over.1

Each team gets to bat for 20 overs2 or until they have lost ten wickets. Whichever team has the most runs after both sides bat wins.

Extras

There are a bunch of rules that govern how the ball should be bowled. A violation results in a do-over, except the batting team is awarded an extra run and gets to keep any runs they scored off the illegal delivery.

A wide is signalled if the umpire judges that the ball was bowled too wide or too high for it to be reasonably hit.

A no ball is signalled if the delivery is illegal for another reason, usually because the bowler stepped too far over the white line.

A batter cannot be dismissed for being caught, bowled, stumped, or LBW off a no-ball. Depending on the competition, the batter may be awarded the same immunities for the next ball as well — this is called a “free hit”.

Positions

A typical team roster has some specialist batters who usually don’t bowl, some specialist bowlers who aren’t expected to get lots of runs, and some all-rounders who are good at both batting and bowling.

There are two main bowling styles: fast bowlers rely on the speed of their deliveries while spin bowlers deliver slow but tricky balls.

Each team has a wicketkeeper who stops the balls that get past the batter. You can recognize the wicketkeeper as the only fielder who wears gloves.

Fielders can be deployed anywhere, subject to a few restrictions.3 . Commentators describe fielding positions using funny names like slip, gully, mid-off, square leg, and third man.

Scoreboard

A typical TV broadcast overlay displays the following information:

• The batting team’s current run total and wickets lost.4
• The number of overs completed or the number of balls remaining.
• The current batters’ names, runs scored, and balls faced, with some indication of which batter is facing the next ball.
• The current bowler.

The overlay often shows other relevant information, which may include the current run rate (average runs per over), the target score needed for the team batting second to win, and/or an indication of any special fielding restrictions.

Conclusion

That’s all you need to follow and enjoy a cricket match! All that’s left to learn is some jargon, the names of the players, and the details of whatever tournament or competition you want to follow. You’ll pick up all of those as you go.

Some tournaments worth following are:

• The Men’s Twenty20 World Cup (this June).
• The Women’s Twenty20 World Cup (this October).
• England’s The Hundred (August).
• Australia’s Big Bash League (December–January).
• India’s IPL (April–May) and WPL (March).

National sides often play series against each other as well.

If you want to watch cricket, most series are carried in Canada by subscription streaming service Willow TV. You can also follow live text summaries and scorecards on sites like ESPN Cricinfo.

Footnotes

I recently attended a Seattle Mariners game as part of a Microsoft event. It was my first time at a baseball game, so I recorded a bunch of observations about the experience.

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The stadium experience

This was my first time attending any professional sport in person, so I didn’t have any idea what to expect. I checked the stadium rules in advance and found I could bring my camera, but not my camera bag or any of my larger lenses. Fortunately, my wide-angle lens and 20–55mm kit lens — both barely within the regulations — were enough to get some interesting photos.

A big part of the ballpark experience is being able to wander around the stadium; I spent at least half the game exploring rather than sitting in my assigned seat. There’s a lot to look at and do in the stadium, and as long as you’re not blocking anyone’s view during an at-bat, there’s remarkable freedom to walk around the aisles and see the field from different angles.

Baseball is complicated

Many of the Microsoft employees at the game — including myself — are more familiar with cricket than with baseball. Cricket has a reputation in North America for being hard to understand, but when I compare my beginner’s guide to cricket with our deliberations our section had to understand what was going on, I realized that baseball is much more complicated.

Can you decipher these scoreboards?

Answer key (bottom section)

Balls, strikes, and outs are fundamental to the game, relatively easy to explain to a newcomer, and mercifully unabbreviated on the bottom right of the scoreboard.

Each team’s current score is the total number of runs under the “R” column; columns 1–9 show how many runs were scored in each inning. The “H” column counts the number of hits resulting on a runner on base due to the batting team’s efforts; the “E” column counts the number of errors by the fielding team that allowed their opponent to get a runner on base.

I had no idea what the acronym “MVR” stood for until a colleague expanded it to “mound visits remaining”; this refers to a kind of time out the fielding team can take to discuss strategy or switch pitchers.

Answer key (side sections)

The sides of the scoreboard display the current lineup of each team with jersey numbers and positions; the highlighted name tells you whose turn it is to bat. The batting lineup shows one other piece of information for each player:

• For players that have not yet batted in the inning, it shows the batting average.
• For players that have batted already in the inning, it shows a cryptic acronym that tells you the result of their at-bat.
• For pitchers (who do not bat), I think it shows the pitcher’s earned runs average (ERA) which is its own whole thing.

On the right-hand side of the first scoreboard, we see that the name highlighted in yellow is the current batter, Seattle’s Dominic Canzone, who wears number 8 on his jersey, plays left field, and has a batting average of .219.

The three Seattle players above Canzone have already batted this inning. Center fielder Raleigh had a single (recorded as “1B”), as did right fielder Raley. First baseman France is listed as having a “P3” which is apparently the acronym for “out after hitting a pop fly which was caught by the first baseman.”

Answer key (middle section, first scoreboard)

The middle of the first scoreboard shows the statistics of the current batter. I had to look up most of the stats on Wikipedia:

Abbr	Value	Stat	Meaning
G	15	Games	Number of games the batter has played in this year.
AB	32	At-bats	Number of opportunities the batter had to bat, more or less, except that walks and some other outcomes don’t count towards this statistic.
2B	1	Doubles	Number of hits on which the batter was able to safely reach second base.
3B	0	Triples	Number of hits on which the batter was able to safely reach third base.
BB	3	Bases on balls	Number of times the batter was awarded first base after four called balls. (Better known as “walks”.)
SO	11	Strikeouts	Number of times the batter was called out after three strikes.
SB	0	Stolen bases	Number of times the player was able to steal a base. There are a bunch of rules about when a runner can steal a base and when something is scored under this statistic.
CS	0	Caught stealing	Number of times the player was tagged out while attempting to steal a base.
AVG	.219	Batting average	Percentage of at-bats where the batter hit the ball and safely reached a base.
R	4	Runs	Number of times the batter scored a run by crossing home plate.
H	7	Hits	Number of times the batter hit the ball and safely reached a base.
HR	3	Home runs	Number of hits on which the batter was able to safely touch all three bases and cross home plate. (Usually by hitting the ball into the crowd.)
RBI	6	Runs batted in	Number of times the batter’s action allowed another player to score a run.
OBP	.286	On-base percentage	Percentage of the time the batter gets on base, including being awarded first base for a walk or being hit by a pitch.
SLG	.531	Slugging percentage	Average number of bases achieved per at-bat.
OPS	.817	On-base plus slugging	OBP plus SLG, for some reason.

Answer key (scoring decision, second scoreboard)

Now we just need to figure out what “FC, E5, No RBI” is supposed to mean. This was displayed on the jumbotron after the following play:

“FC” stands for “fielder’s choice”, meaning that the third baseman chose to try to get the out at third instead of throwing it to first. This means the hit doesn’t count towards the batter’s statistics. The “E5” means the scorer decided that the Seattle players were safe because of the third baseman’s error.

Finally, the run that scored during the play does not count as an RBI for the batter because if it weren’t for the error, there would have been three outs and the runner wouldn’t have scored.

Seriously, baseball is complicated.1

Spot the camera

Before I came to the game I watched a video about camera assignments at professional baseball games and I had fun finding the camera operators at high first, low first, and center field.

I was walking around the concourse when the Mariners’ Ty France hit a home run. While the crowed erupted in cheers, I was excited for a different reason — I was in the perfect position to watch the cable-suspended camera move into position behind third base and film the runner crossing home plate!

Random people keep the ball rolling

To me, no sport is as compelling as all the logistics and anonymous work that goes on behind the scenes. For example, T-Mobile Park still has an analog scoreboard in addition to all the digital ones, which means someone has to be in charge of updating it.

Every time a player gets on base, their team’s batboy runs out to pick up their discarded bat and help switch their gloves. The home team’s batboy is also responsible for refilling the umpire’s stock of extra balls, which happens a lot — MLB teams go through about a hundred balls in a game!

The most exciting piece of logistics came between innings, when an army of men with rakes came out to smooth the base paths.

Take me out to the ball game?

I’m never going to be a person who regularly attends live sports: it’s too crowded, too noisy, and I don’t care enough about the action happening on the field. But I’m really glad to have gone once. It was a lot of fun to explore the stadium and see a few glimpses of what goes in to putting on a baseball game. Thanks Microsoft for bringing me to a fun event!

Footnotes