Cricket more than just a bug  

By: Nishant Dixit
Contributing Writer

 A few weeks back, a group of Nepali students at Monmouth got together to play their favorite game in the quad outside Stockdale center. Some of the onlooking American students were baffled by the sight of a familiar looking, yet strange sport. They couldn’t help but compare it with baseball. The similarities between baseball and cricket are obvious, however the two games have clear contrasts.

The Nepali students started play. One of them was trying to hit a ball that was swung at him by another player who seemed to be doing a hop while rotating his bowling hands to set the ball in motion. As soon as the person with the bat swung the bat to hit the ball as far as he could, some of the players scattered around the field scurried to collect the ball. The difference with baseball is evident at sight. When the batsman hit the ball that was bowled (pitched in baseball) at him, he did not leave his bat at the base but took it with him and ran not at an angle but straight ahead from a set of three wooden stumps to the other.

Cricket is a team sport played between two teams of eleven players each. It is a bat-and-ball game played on a roughly oval grass field, in the centre of which is a flat strip of ground 22 yards long, called a pitch. At each end of the pitch is a set of three wooden stumps, called a wicket. A player from the fielding team (the bowler) propels a hard, fist-sized cork-centered leather ball from one wicket towards the other. The ball usually bounces once before reaching a player from the opposing team (the batsman), who defends the wicket from the ball with a rectangular wooden bat. The batsman may then run between the wickets, exchanging ends with another batsman (the “non-striker”), who has been standing in an inactive role near the bowler’s wicket, to score runs. The remainder of the bowler’s team stands in various positions around the oval as fielders.

The game is divided into “overs” of six balls. At the end of an over, the batting and bowling ends will be swapped, and the bowler replaced by another member of the fielding side. Professionally, cricket is divided into two types depending upon duration of time. The One Day International has overs limited to 50 for each team. The next type of cricket was the test cricket. It was timeless, i.e. it could go on forever in its early years. Today test cricket is limited to around 5 days. If the game exceeds more than the allocated time, it will be a draw. A new form of cricket is growing in popularity these days. It is called 20/20 cricket and is limited to only 20 overs per team.

Cricket is immensely popular in some corners of the world such as Australia and South Asia. The ICC or the International Cricket Council is the governing body for professional cricket. It governs all the rules of cricket and the Cricket Federations of most of its 97 strong member states are answerable to it. The ICC member states are classified into 3 parts. There are 10 full members which are deemed qualified to play test cricket. Some of the full members are India, Pakistan, Australia, Sri Lanka and Zimbawe. The remaining members are restricted to one day internationals as associate and affiliate members.

Due to its complex rules, relatively slow yet long hours of play, cricket has been stereotyped into a game that no one can understand. However, its admirers seem to disagree. Sanjog Udas, a Nepali Student at Monmouth and a self professed “Cricket Obsessive” says “Cricket is an exciting game. It not only tests physical ability but is also a barometer for moral strength. Cricket is long, strategic and technical yet anyone can play it.” Sanjog adds, “Children play it on the streets without the rules to have fun. Grown men play it in the park with rules to have fun. The sense of satisfaction it gives is universal.”

More people seem to be agreeing with Sanjog as cricket is growing in popularity around the world. Intensive lobbying by the ICC along with a rise in media coverage has seen cricket’s evolution from being a game centered on old British colonies to countries as far as Japan. The US has been an associate member of the ICC since 1965. However, the USA cricket association has been expelled from the ICC due to an internal disagreement over team selection. Regardless of sports politics, cricket is growing rapidly in popularity among youngsters as a favorite sport. It may not overtake baseball as a national pastime, but today it is certainly capable of making its presence felt.