Collegiate Times

Bowler Carl Ifill (left) winds up to deliver a ball during a match in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Some cricket matches last for an entire day.

"Cricket is a game played by 11 fools and watched by 11,000 fools," said the famous Irish dramatist George Bernard Shaw. Today, billions of people all over the world watch the game. If it's soccer which makes one half of the world go crazy, then the other half is full of cricket fanatics.

It is believed that cricket was devised in southeast England during the 16th century and had a strong ground during the era of the British Empire. Cricket, like field hockey, was first introduced to the Indian subcontinent by the British. The earliest recorded match was played in 1721 by British sailors on shore leave.

With the expansion of their rule throughout the subcontinent, the British took the game with them wherever they went. Cricket, which was considered a gentleman's game, has adapted itself to modern times by changing the way the game is played these days.

So, what makes this sport so popular, despite its duration?

In contrast to fast games like basketball or soccer, which finish in less than two hours, the longer version of the game - Test Match Cricket - lasts for an incredible five long days, while the "shorter" format takes an entire day for the result to come out.

Well, the uniqueness of this game is that it's unbiased to age group or physical size and it can be played literally anywhere. In fact, a very common phenomenon, called "Gully Cricket," has permeated into the lifestyle of every Indian - wealthy or poor.

As the Academy Award-winning film "Slumdog Millionaire" demonstrated, kids can even play it on the barren ground next to an airport runway.

Cricket is played with a bat and ball and consists of two opposing teams with 11 players on each side. The team that has won the coin toss can either choose to field or bat, depending on the pitch, ground and weather conditions.

Officially, it is played on a grass field in the center of which is a flat strip of ground 22 yards long called a pitch. Three wooden stumps are placed at either end of the pitch to be used as targets.

The bowler - a player from the fielding team - tosses a hard leather cricket ball from one end of the wicket to the batsman from the opposing batting team. The bowler usually has an over - consisting of six deliveries - to get the batsman out. Cricket has an uncanny resemblance to baseball in many ways; while many of their rules, terminology and strategies are similar, there are many differences between the two games.

While baseball uses base plates instead of stumps, cricket has usually one or two innings as compared to nine in baseball.

Also, the fact that it's far easier to score runs in cricket than in baseball separates these "cousins" from each other.

Coming to the basics, pace and spin bowling are two major types of bowling and have several variations like left and right arm, fast and medium pace, leg and off spinner. There are various fielding positions, which are relative to the batsman.

For instance, for a right-handed batsmen, an off-side is anywhere on the field on the right hand side of him while the leg side is on his left. The same applies for the left-handed batsmen as well.

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