Cricket, which has a history of more than 400 years is traditionally an outdoor sport that is played between two teams. Each team consists of 11 players and the sport is all about the contest between a bat and a ball on the centre of a ground which is called as the ‘pitch’.
The actual action is a one-on-one contest at a time that is between a batsman and a bowler. The bowler’s job is to release the ball (running in from a distance and hurling the ball without bending his bowling arm) with an objective of either restricting the batsman from hitting it efficiently or getting him ‘out’. At a time, there are two batsmen in the centre with each other changing strike after every odd run (a run around the pitch) scored or after the end of every over (which consists of a specific number of balls).
Apart from the bowler, there are 10 more players called as the ‘fielders’ on the ground that belong to the bowling side. These 10 players look out to stop the ball from getting past them (within the boundaries of the ground) and to limit the scoring as much as possible. The fielders also attempt to take ‘catches’ which are to catch the ball with their hands. For this the ball should travel full into their hands without landing on the ground. This accounts for a dismissal of the batsman. There are also other forms of ‘dismissals’ that the fielders can affect.
By the end of the match, each team gets a fair opportunity to have their share of batting and bowling against each other. And its all about which team scores more runs to decide the winner of the contest or a match. They are of course specific rules for each match which may last from one day to five days.
Basically, a batting team will be having only two batsmen in the middle at a time. Once a batsman gets dismissed, he gets replaced with another one and so on till 10 such events have happened or in case the team has run out of their limited overs. A dismissal of a batsman from the middle is termed as a ‘wicket’. So although there are 11 players who can bat for a team in a match, the number of wickets that they have is 10. This means that at no time, there will be a single batsman playing all alone.
The event of a batting side playing out till its 10th wicket has fallen or till they have run out of the overs is called as an ‘innings’. A Cricket Match can consists of one innings per a team or two innings per a team. In a match consisting of two innings per each team, the end result could be a win, loss or even a draw for either team. While the win and loss are straight forward to understand, a ‘draw’ in Cricket means that both sides fell short of time in forcing a win in the match.