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Crocker (sometimes spelled Croccer) is a team sport played between two large teams. Its origins are in cricket and baseball. It also makes the use of a rugby ball, or a soccer ball which may explain its name. It is a casual sport not played formally, but often found on British summer camps.
Crocker is played between two teams of undefined size, typically between 10 and 50 per side. The teams are not necessarily exactly even, though they are usually of similar size. Alternatively, a lack of skill on the side of one team may be made up for by a numerical advantage (for example in the case of many children playing against fewer adults).
Crocker fields vary, but will often take advantage of whatever space is available. Often taking place on large, flat, grassy school fields, a crocker pitch may not have defined outer limits.
A generally agreed setup will involve a semicircular bowling and batting area usually marked out with cones. The batsman stands in the middle of the flat edge of the semicircle while the bowler stands opposite him on the curved edge. A wicket is set up behind the batsman, as in cricket, usually made of four cricket stumps set up to make a wider version of real cricket stumps or in another variation of the game a chair may be used as the wicket.
Behind the stumps stands a fielding player, or sometimes two; this position is usually called the wicket-keeper. At either corner of the semicircle are two more stumps set up, between which the batsmen may run.
The rest of the fielding team stand anywhere in front of the batsman and outside the semicircle. The fielding team are not allowed inside the semicircle while the ball is being bowled, and at any time typically only six players are allowed on the edge of the semicircle. The rest of the fielding team tends to spread out to field and catch shots played by the batsman.
In the general case, apart from the batsman, none of the batting team is allowed on the field of play. Instead, they line up several metres behind the batsman to watch and prepare to bat. However some variations on the rules make use of the 'disrupting rule', whereby 5 members of the batting team are allowed to enter the field of play and disrupt the fielders as they try to recover the ball. The disrupters have to follow three clear rules. First, they must not touch the ball with their hands (unless they are inside the bowling/batting area and are permitted to use their hands to remove the ball from the semicircle.) Secondly there must be no physical contact between a disrupter and any member of the fielding team. And thirdly the disrupters may not interfere with the ball when it is on its way back to the bowler.
If an umpire is present, they will usually stand at one of the corners. Their role is to count the runs and to uphold the rules and make decisions during the game.
Any equipment is often made up of things that are to hand, but usually they consist of a football-sized ball, though a softer ball may often be used to prevent injury (for example, a volleyball). Sometimes even a rugby ball is used.
The batsman's bat is usually a baseball bat, or a rounders bat, although cricket bats have been known to be used.
During play, the bowler will bowl the ball, trying to hit the stumps. Unlike cricket, the bowler can bowl continuously, as soon as the bowler receives the ball, whether the batsman is in position or not. The following rules apply to a ball bowled by the bowler at the batsman:
The bowler and the six fielders on the edge of the semicircle are rotated at regular intervals (10 to 30 balls bowled).
A batsman can be dismissed in a variety of ways. The usual rules of crocker include the following:
There are also often various other methods of dismissal for crocker batsman, especially relating to sportsmanship. Loosely connected to this is being retired, which is to be taken from batting, usually either on reaching a certain score or batting for a certain time.
Crocker is unique in the rotation between batsmen. As soon as one is out, the bowler may immediately bowl another ball, if he or she has the ball, even if the next batsman is not ready and in position, then he or she is given out if out in any of the above ways. This is most likely to do with the length of the game; with the potential for over 100 batsmen in a match the emphasis is on speed and participation of everyone.
Crocker is won by the team who, at the end of the match, has more runs. The runs are counted by the umpire.
Special rules of crocker are often employed. The most common of these are:
There is not much scope for tactics in crocker, but there are some that can be employed more by individuals than as a team.
Alternatively
If caught out a player is only half out. If a player performs a "double hit" then they are one third out. If the amount to which a player is out is greater than 1 then they are fully out. A player is still fully out straight away if they are bowled out (except on their first hit).
Bowling, in cricket, is the action of propelling the ball toward the wicket defended by a batter. A player skilled at bowling is called a bowler; a bowler who is also a competent batter is known as an all-rounder. Bowling the ball is distinguished from throwing the ball by a strictly specified biomechanical definition, which restricts the angle of extension of the elbow. A single act of bowling the ball towards the batsman is called a ball or a delivery. Bowlers bowl deliveries in sets of six, called an over. Once a bowler has bowled an over, a teammate will bowl an over from the other end of the pitch. The Laws of Cricket govern how a ball must be bowled. If a ball is bowled illegally, an umpire will rule it a no-ball. If a ball is bowled too wide of the striker for the batsman to be able to play at it with a proper cricket shot, the bowler's end umpire will rule it a wide.
Fielding in the sport of cricket is the action of fielders in collecting the ball after it is struck by the striking batter, to limit the number of runs that the striker scores and/or to get a batter out by either catching a hit ball before it bounces, or by running out either batter before they can complete their current run. There are a number of recognised fielding positions and they can be categorised into the offside and leg side of the field. Fielding also involves trying to prevent the ball from making a boundary where four "runs" are awarded for reaching the perimeter and six for crossing it without touching the grass.
In cricket, an umpire is a person who has the authority to make decisions about events on the cricket field according to the Laws of Cricket. Besides making decisions about legality of delivery, appeals for wickets and general conduct of the Game in a legal manner, the umpire also keeps a record of the deliveries and announces the completion of an over.
Backyard cricket, also known as bat ball, street cricket, beach cricket, corridor cricket, garden cricket, gully cricket and box cricket, is an informal variant of cricket. It is typically played in various non-traditional venues such as gardens, backyards, streets, parks, carparks, beaches, and any area not specifically designed for the sport.
Leg before wicket (lbw) is one of the ways in which a batter can be dismissed in the sport of cricket. Following an appeal by the fielding side, the umpire may rule a batter out lbw if the ball would have struck the wicket but was instead intercepted by any part of the batsman's body. The umpire's decision will depend on a number of criteria, including where the ball pitched, whether the ball hit in line with the wickets, the ball's expected future trajectory after hitting the batsman, and whether the batsman was attempting to hit the ball.
The Laws of Cricket is a code that specifies the rules of the game of cricket worldwide. The earliest known code was drafted in 1744. Since 1788, the code has been owned and maintained by the private Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) in Lord's Cricket Ground, London. There are currently 42 Laws, which describe all aspects of how the game is to be played. MCC has re-coded the Laws six times, each with interim revisions that produce more than one edition. The most recent code, the seventh, was released in October 2017; its 3rd edition came into force on 1 October 2022.
In the sport of cricket, the term wicket has several meanings:
This is a general glossary of the terminology used in the sport of cricket. Where words in a sentence are also defined elsewhere in this article, they appear in italics. Certain aspects of cricket terminology are explained in more detail in cricket statistics and the naming of fielding positions is explained at fielding (cricket).
In cricket, a no-ball is a type of illegal delivery to a batter. It is also a type of extra, being the run awarded to the batting team as a consequence of the illegal delivery. For most cricket games, especially amateur, the definition of all forms of no-ball is from the MCC Laws of Cricket.
French cricket is a form of cricket that creates a game similar to catch. The game can be played socially at picnics and parties or on parks and beaches. It is a form of cricket that can include children of varied ages.
Indoor cricket is a variant of and shares many basic concepts with cricket. The game is most often played between two teams each consisting of six or eight players.
In the sport of cricket, the crease is a certain area demarcated by white lines painted or chalked on the field of play, and pursuant to the rules of cricket they help determine legal play in different ways for the fielding and batting side. They define the area within which the batsmen and bowlers operate. The term crease may refer to any of the lines themselves, particularly the popping crease, or to the region that they demark. Law 7 of the Laws of Cricket governs the size and position of the crease markings, and defines the actual line as the back edge of the width of the marked line on the soil, i.e., the edge nearest to the wicket at that end.
In cricket, batting is the act or skill of hitting the ball with a bat to score runs and prevent the loss of one's wicket. Any player who is currently batting is, since September 2021, officially referred to as a batter regardless of whether batting is their particular area of expertise. Historically, batsman and batswoman were used, and these terms remain in widespread use. Batters have to adapt to various conditions when playing on different cricket pitches, especially in different countries; therefore, as well as having outstanding physical batting skills, top-level batters will have quick reflexes, excellent decision-making skills, and be good strategists.
In cricket, a dismissal occurs when a batter's innings is brought to an end by the opposing team. Other terms used are the batter being out, the batting side losing a wicket, and the fielding side taking a wicket. The ball becomes dead, and the dismissed batter must leave the field of play for the rest of their team's innings, to be replaced by a team-mate. A team's innings ends if ten of the eleven team members are dismissed. Players bat in pairs so, when only one batter remains who can be not out, it is not possible for the team to bat any longer. This is known as dismissing or bowling out the batting team, who are said to be all out.
In cricket, a run is the unit of scoring. The team with the most runs wins in many versions of the game, and always draws at worst, except for some results decided by the DLS method, which is used in rain-shortened limited-overs games when the two teams have had a different number of opportunities to score runs.
Baseball and cricket are the best-known members of a family of related bat-and-ball games. Both have fields that are 400 feet (120 m) or more in diameter between their furthest endpoints, offensive players who can hit a thrown/"bowled" ball out of the field and run between safe areas to score runs (points) at the risk of being gotten out, and have a major game format lasting about 3 hours.
Caught is a method of dismissing a batsman in cricket. A batsman is out caught if the batsman hits the ball, from a legitimate delivery, with the bat, and the ball is caught by the bowler or a fielder before it hits the ground.
In cricket, a scorer is someone appointed to record all runs scored, all wickets taken and, where appropriate, the number of overs bowled. In professional games, in compliance with Law 3 of the Laws of Cricket, two scorers are appointed, most often one provided by each team.
Stumped is a method of dismissing a batter in cricket, in which the wicket-keeper puts down the striker's wicket while the striker is out of their ground. It is governed by Law 39 of the Laws of Cricket.
The First Test of the 1948 Ashes series was one of five Tests in The Ashes cricket series between Australia and England. The match was played at Trent Bridge in Nottingham from 10 to 15 June with a rest day on 13 June 1948. Australia won the match by eight wickets to take a 1–0 series lead.