Wicket or wicket ball was a historical American form of cricket played until the late 19th century. [2] [3] [4]
Wicket or wicket ball was a historical American form of cricket played until the late 19th century. [2] [3] [4]
Wicket came to America from England most likely during the late 17th century. [5] George Washington played it once in 1778 during the Revolutionary War, [6] [7] where it was pursued by soldiers in general as a way to maintain physical health. [8]
As the 19th-century rise of baseball, which had a far shorter playing duration than contemporary forms of cricket, threatened to see cricket overtaken as the most popular bat-and-ball sport in the country, American cricket fans sought for new ways to keep cricket relevant. In this context, wicket was pursued by some as a way to modify cricket to be higher-scoring and shorter in duration. However, it was rejected by many traditional cricket fans, and thus faded away, with its grip over even its stronghold of Connecticut disappearing by the turn of the 20th century. [5] [9]
Wicket used a wicket which was much wider and shorter than a cricket wicket, and a bat that resembled a spoon. There were up to 30 fielders and 3 innings, making the game finish in an afternoon. [5]
The creases that batters had to run across to score runs were called "Tick Marks", scoring a run (which happened when the batters crossed each other running to the other wicket) could be called a "cross", and the cricket pitch where the ball was bowled was 75 feet (23 m) long [5] and called an alley. Run outs were known as "ticking [out]" the batter. [10] In some forms of wicket, a batter could be out in a way resembling leg before wicket if the ball hit them on the body (known as a "sham" or "shinning") thrice under certain circumstances. [11]
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.
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.
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 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.
The question of the origins of baseball has been the subject of debate and controversy for more than a century. Baseball and the other modern bat, ball, and running games – stoolball, cricket and rounders – were developed from folk games in early Britain, Ireland, and Continental Europe. Early forms of baseball had a number of names, including "base ball", "goal ball", "round ball", "fetch-catch", "stool ball", and, simply, "base". In at least one version of the game, teams pitched to themselves, runners went around the bases in the opposite direction of today's game, much like in the Nordic brännboll, and players could be put out by being hit with the ball. Just as now, in some versions a batter was called out after three strikes.
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.
Cricket is a multi-faceted sport with different formats, depending on the standard of play, the desired level of formality, and the time available. One of the main differences is between matches limited by time in which the teams have two innings apiece, and those limited by number of overs in which they have a single innings each. The former, known as first-class cricket if played at the senior level, has a scheduled duration of three to five days ; the latter, known as limited overs cricket because each team bowls a limit of typically 50 overs, has a planned duration of one day only. A separate form of limited overs is Twenty20, originally designed so that the whole game could be played in a single evening, in which each team has an innings limited to twenty overs.
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.
Stoolball is a sport that dates back to at least the 15th century, originating in Sussex, southern England. It is considered a "traditional striking and fielding sport" and may be an ancestor of cricket, baseball, softball, and rounders. The sport has been called "cricket in the air". There is evidence to suggest that it was played as a tradition by milkmaids who used their milking stools as a "wicket" and the bittle, or milk bowl as a bat, hence its archaic name of bittle-battle.
In cricket, the batting order is the sequence in which batters play through their team's innings, there always being two batters taking part at any one time. All eleven players in a team are required to bat if the innings is completed.
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.
Vigoro is a team sport, played mainly by women in Australia, that originally combined elements of cricket and tennis, although in its current form it may be more similar to cricket and baseball.
Bat-and-ball games are field games played by two opposing teams. Action starts when the defending team throws a ball at a dedicated player of the attacking team, who tries to hit it with a bat and then run between various safe areas in the field to score runs (points). when they are not in safe zones, and thus prevent them from further scoring. The best known modern bat-and-ball games are cricket and baseball, with common roots in the 18th-century games played in England.
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game that is played between two teams of eleven players on a field, at the centre of which is a 22-yard (20-metre) pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. Two players from the batting team stand in front of either wicket holding bats, with one player from the fielding team bowling the ball towards the striker's wicket from the opposite end of the pitch. The striker's goal is to hit the bowled ball with the bat and then switch places with the nonstriker, with the batting team scoring one run for each exchange. Runs are also scored when the ball reaches or crosses the boundary of the field or when the ball is bowled illegally.
In sports, the term diamond sports refers to recreational variants of baseball, a bat-and-ball sport. The most popular and closely related sport to baseball is softball, with the two sports being administered internationally by the World Baseball Softball Confederation, alongside Baseball5.