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Team sports

Cricket

Cricket matches a batting side seeking runs against a fielding side seeking wickets. The same core laws support formats ranging from multi-day Tests to limited-overs contests completed in a few hours.

Decided byscoring
Formatboth
Olympic statusNot established
Rules currencyCurrent source linked

At a glance

  • Eleven players per team.
  • The pitch is 22 yards long with a wicket at each end.
  • An over consists of six legal balls in modern top-level cricket.

Player profile. Cricket rewards specialists within one side. Batters combine judgment, technique, and concentration; bowlers produce pace, swing, seam, or spin within a legal action; wicketkeepers react close to the bat; and all fielders need catching, throwing, positioning, and anticipation across changing match situations.

Where it happens

A central pitch with two wickets sits inside a much larger oval boundary whose exact shape can vary. Creases govern bowling release, batter safety, and run-outs, while the surrounding field offers no fixed lanes: captains place fielders to control preferred scoring areas and create catching opportunities.

  • Pitch 22 yd (20.12 m); overall ground shape and boundary distance vary.

What you need

  • Cricket bat
  • Leather ball
  • Three-stump wickets and bails
  • Pads, gloves, helmet, and protective box

How to play

  1. Two batters occupy opposite wickets while a bowler delivers and fielders defend the ground. Runs come from running between wickets, boundaries, and extras; innings end through wickets, overs, declarations, or format limits.

The essential rules

  1. A bowler delivers six legal balls per over.
  2. The bowler may not overstep the front crease on release.
  3. Batters may run after most deliveries at their own risk.
  4. A boundary along the ground scores four; a ball clearing it on the full scores six.
  5. A batter may be dismissed through recognized modes such as bowled, caught, run out, stumped, or leg before wicket.
  6. Only legal dismissals and appeals allow the umpire to give a batter out.
  7. Teams alternate innings according to the match format.
  8. Wide and no-ball deliveries add extras and normally do not count as legal balls.

How the result is decided

Batters add runs by completing exchanges between wickets, striking boundaries, and receiving extras for specified illegal or misdirected deliveries. The innings ends by wickets or format limits, and the result compares team totals while accounting for whether the chasing side reached its target before its available wickets or deliveries ran out.

Fouls and penalties

  • No-ball
  • Wide
  • Fielding restriction breach
  • Ball tampering
  • Dangerous bowling
  • Time wasting

Techniques

  • Fast, swing, seam, and spin bowling
  • Front- and back-foot batting
  • Defensive strokes and attacking drives
  • Wicketkeeping
  • Catching and throwing

Tactics

  • Set fields to batter and bowler.
  • Manage bowlers in spells.
  • Balance wicket preservation against scoring rate.
  • Use swing, seam, spin, and pace variation.

Disciplines and variants

  • Test cricket
  • One Day International
  • Twenty20
  • The Hundred and domestic short formats

Competition landscape

  • ICC Cricket World Cup
  • ICC T20 World Cup
  • ICC World Test Championship
  • Domestic leagues and championships

Records in the reference

No stable record table is published here. Records change; use the current governing-body source before acting.

How the sport developed

The book follows cricket from English bat-and-ball traditions into a codified game spread through international competition. Overarm bowling, protective equipment, standardized wickets, and limited-overs formats altered tactics and audience rhythm, but the central contest between a delivered ball, two batters, and a defending field remained intact.

  • The source notes cricket's immense following in South Asia.
  • Record and World Cup tables stop around the book's 2020 publication.

Play it in India

Played in India · dated public evidence.

A dated public source documents an Indian federation, programme or centre for this sport. Current local intake, price and availability still require confirmation.

  • Board of Control for Cricket in India is the current organisation reference; MYAS recognition is not established by the cited source. This does not establish local intake, price, schedule or availability.
  • MYAS states that BCCI has not been recognised as a National Sports Federation.
  • Included as an additional sport for the Los Angeles 2028 edition; this does not make it a permanent core-programme sport.
Organisation reference
Board of Control for Cricket in India
Recognition state
Not established by the current MYAS snapshot
SAI NCOE discipline rows
No matching centre row found
Khelo India discipline
Not established
Olympic programme
Not a current core-programme sport
India Olympic medals
No sport-level total in current sources

Evidence and currency

This is an original KhelPath explainer assembled from editorial research. It is orientation, not an authoritative rulebook.

ICC playing conditions ↗ · observed 2026-08-28

Read the correction policy