Easy. Cricket really isn’t as hard as it seems.
There are two teams of eleven players.
It is played on a pitch. This is a strip of turf 22 yards long and about 4 yards wide. At each end are wickets – sticks which the batters stand in front of and the bowlers try to knock down. Play alternates between ends. Outside the pitch is the field, a huge expanse of grass where fielders chase down or try to catch the ball.
The game is about scoring more than the other team. You have points, but they are called runs, because, like baseball, the batters run when they hit the ball - they only run if it’s possible, though, and if the ball runs over the edge of the field they get 4 or if it goes flying over without bouncing, they get 6.
So you score more runs than the other side. Or you try to. Meanwhile they try to stop you doing it.
While one side tries to bat and accumulate runs, the other side is the fielding team. The fielding team has a bowler, who has to deliver the ball to the batter with a straight - usually vertical or near vertical - arm at the point of delivery, from 22 yards away, making the ball bounce before it reaches the batter. The leather ball, with its raised seam, is similar to a baseball, though it starts off shinier. The bowler can bowl fast (around 93mph), can spin the ball (by twisting the wrist or fingers as the ball leaves the hand) and cause it move in ways after it bounces which the batter will hopefully not understand before it reaches them, or can swing the ball - ie exploit the different amounts of shine on each side of the ball to make it move in the air and deceive the batter.
The bowler is really aiming for three three-foot high sticks behind the batter, called the stumps or the wicket. If the bowler manages to hit these, the batter is out. The bowler bowls six deliveries (an over) before swapping with another bowler, who works from the other end of the pitch.
If the batter hits the ball, they might run - this means trying to get to the other end of the pitch, 22 yards away, from where the bowler has bowled. They don’t have to - it is entirely up to the batter.
There is a fielder permanently behind the batter, the wicketkeeper, and the other nine fielders are arranged around the field however the captain chooses (although certain forms of cricket have restrictions as to where fielders can be placed).
A batter can be bowled (ball hits the stumps), run out (fails to get to the other side before a fielder knocks down the stumps with the ball), caught, leg before wicket (you are NOT allowed to stop the ball hitting the stumps by putting your body in the way!) and a few other ways.
If the batter is out, they leave the field and a new batter comes in. Since batters have to bat in pairs (remember play alternates between ends of the pitch), when ten of the eleven batters are out the innings is over. In some forms of the game you carry on until all ten are out, in others you have to finish your innings after a certain time.
The winning team is that which has more runs than the other. To win though you have to get more runs than them and get all their players out.
Simple and beautiful. And it looks even more beautiful than it sounds. A cricket match unfolds over hours for the shorter form of the game, or five days for the longer form. Over a five day match each team bats and fields twice and the most extraordinary duels and relationships open up; and no matter how long the match is, those tiny moments, as in all sports, can still turn a game.
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