Cricket

Materials/equipment: 4 Balls and

Space: Football 7 Court
Stick or Tennis Racquets, 2 wickets, 6
Stumps
Number of participants: 24
Duration: 30 min
Task description: Cricket is played between two teams, normally with 11 players a side.
One team will elect to bat, the other fields and bowls. The batting team aims to score as
many runs as possible by batting in pairs.
Batters try to hit a ball that is 'bowled toward them from a set distance along a pitch. A
run is scored when a batter safely completes the distance running from one end of the
pitch to the other. A batter can make a score without running, by hitting a ball over the
boundary of the field of play, which counts for 4 or 6 runs, depending on whether it
bounces before clearing the boundary.
The team can also accumulate runs from bowlers and fielders mistakes, such as a no
ball where the bowler is too close to the batter when they bowl, or a wide when the
ball is too far away from the batter, making it too hard to hit.
The aim of the fielding side is to get the batters out by taking wickets or restricting the
number of runs scored.
Once the innings is completed the teams switch between batting and fielding. The
innings is completed when the batting team is all out or all overs have been bowled.

Alternatives: An indoor version of cricket (indoor cricket) has much the same rules
however teams of 8 per side compete in shorter length games (16 overs per side), and
batters bat in pairs for 4 overs each regardless of how many times the batter goes out.
Each time the batter goes out they simply lose 5 runs from their score.

Graphic explanation:

History

The origins of cricket lie somewhere in the Dark Ages - probably after the Roman Empire, almost certainly before the
Normans invaded England, and almost certainly somewhere in Northern Europe. All research concedes that the
game derived from a very old, widespread and uncomplicated pastime by which one player served up an object, be it
a small piece of wood or a ball, and another hit it with a suitably fashioned club.

How and when this club-ball game developed into one where the hitter defended a target against the thrower is
simply not known. Nor is there any evidence as to when points were awarded dependent upon how far the hitter
was able to despatch the missile; nor when helpers joined the two-player contest, thus beginning the evolution into
a team game; nor when the defining concept of placing wickets at either end of the pitch was adopted.

Etymological scholarship has variously placed the game in the Celtic, Scandinavian, Anglo-Saxon, Dutch and NormanFrench traditions; sociological historians have variously attributed its mediaeval development to high-born country
landowners, emigr Flemish cloth-workers, shepherds on the close-cropped downland of south-east England and the
close-knit communities of iron- and glass-workers deep in the Kentish Weald. Most of these theories have a solid
academic basis, but none is backed with enough evidence to establish a watertight case. The research goes on.

What is agreed is that by Tudor times cricket had evolved far enough from club-ball to be recognisable as the game
played today; that it was well established in many parts of Kent, Sussex and Surrey; that within a few years it had
become a feature of leisure time at a significant number of schools; and - a sure sign of the wide acceptance of any
game - that it had become popular enough among young men to earn the disapproval of local magistrates.