The game has long gained international recognition; an international federation was created in the 19th century which pretty much helped in promoting this kind of sport. Cricket is a team sport with a huge number of fans. This is primarily due to the high popularity of cricket in India, where more than a billion people live; and thanks to Indian fans, cricket is the second most popular sport in the world after football. Matches are held all year round, and the possibilities for betting are almost unlimited.
Popularity and Rich History
The first information about cricket dates back to the 16th century when British people have had already practiced a similar sport using a ball and a flat bat. The expansion of the British Empire to remote regions of the world led to its spread in new countries. However, its development has slowed down and now stumped news is rarely seen outside the former British colonies.
Cricket betting is a multi-billion dollar business in Asia, Australia, and surrounding countries, as well as in Britain. The largest markets are high-profile test matches between teams, as well as the T20 games in the Indian Premier League. About 70 percent of cricket bets are made in a live format.
Nowadays, three cricket formats can be distinguished: first level cricket, one-day matches, and T20 (“twenty”). At the first level, meetings can last 3, 4 or 5 days; test matches are held between national teams and national championships. This is the slowest form of cricket where matches are often played in a difficult tactical fight.
The fastest and most spectacular kind is T20, where matches don’t drag out for a long time. T20 is gaining more and more popularity in the world, the average duration of a meeting is three and a half hours. One Day International, or (ODI) is the golden mean. In these meetings, teams try to identify the winner within one day.
Rules of a Team Game
The main rules are very simple. Nuances and exceptions are another matter. It’s hard to understand them even after a month and a half of almost daily World Cup matches, but that makes the game only more interesting – almost every match gives rise to the debate. Players constantly appeal to referees, although most disputes are resolved by video replays and a virtual simulation system.
In general terms, it looks like this. Two teams of 11 people attacking and defending in turn. During the first part of the game, one team in full force enters the field and attacks the opponent gate with a ball (wicket). Another team takes turns releasing its batsmen. One by one, they defend the wicket by bouncing balls and gaining points. When the allotted number of shots is exhausted, the teams switch places. The one who scored the most points wins.
The highest class of batsman is to hit the balls so that none of the 11 opponent players could catch them. While the bounced ball rolls around the field, the batsman runs between two wickets in the center of the field. For each run, one point is given.
The attacking team of 11 people is placed in a large oval field. Its task is to prevent the batsman from knocking the ball away and earn points. Talented bowlers are half the battle. The more elaborate or more powerful the throw, the higher the chance of knocking down the wicket and the harder for the batsman to hit the ball which either spins and bounces unpredictably, or rushes at a speed of 150 km/h.
The other half are field players. They have two main tasks. The first one is to catch the ball bouncing off the bat before it touches the ground or flies off the field: this is where the game for batsman ends. The second task is batsman to pick the ball up as soon as possible and return it to the wicket area to either knock it out or minimize the number of enemy runs.
Cricket – A Sport for Strong Women
So do women play cricket? Yes, newspapers wrote about the women’s match in the mid-18th century. And already at the end of the 19th, the first women’s cricket club was created in Yorkshire. In 1934, the first women’s test match was held between the teams of Australia and England. Today, the Australian team is the six-time cricket world champion among women’s teams, the English team has won three times, and the New Zealand team has got one victory so far. Currently, Australia’s women’s cricket team performs internationally and has won the World Cup five times. It’s in the Guinness Book of Records for the number of victories in this tournament.
Female cricket was first mentioned in 1745. The press reported that girls from two districts gathered and played. They were wearing white clothes. After that, the first women’s cricket club was founded in 1887 in the county of Yorkshire. Three years later, the club went on a tour.
The game of cricket is an exciting action that gathers whole families to enjoy. The favorite sport of the British and Australians has become widespread throughout the world and unites a lot of people around the world.
