"Beyond the Boundary: Unveiling the Mystique of Cricket"
BY manav babbar
Cricket
Cricket is one of many games in the "club ball" sphere that basically involve hitting a ball with a hand-held implement; others include baseball.
In cricket's case, a key difference is the existence of a solid target structure, the wicket (originally, it is thought, a "wicket gate" through which sheep were herded), that the batter must defend.The cricket historian Harry Altham identified three "groups" of "club ball" games: the "hockey group", in which the ball is driven to and from between two targets (the goals); the "golf group", in which the ball is driven towards an undefended target (the hole); and the "cricket group", in which "the ball is aimed at a mark (the wicket) and driven away from it".
Modern time cricket
Modern day cricket involves three formats of matches:
Test matches
One-Day Internationals
Twenty20 Internationals
All matches are played under the rules and regulations approved by the International Cricket Council (ICC), which also provides match officials. The ICC also introduced a “Test Championship Table” in 2001 and a “One-day International Championship Table” in 2002.
In the early 21st century, the rise of Twenty20 (T20) cricket revolutionized the sport. T20 matches are fast-paced and high-scoring, with each team facing 20 overs over a period of about three hours. The England and Wales Cricket Board established the official rules for T20 in 2003, when the first tournament was played by the English county teams.
International cricket
Most international matches are played as parts of 'tours', when one nation travels to another for a number of weeks or months, and plays a number of matches of various sorts against the host nation. Sometimes a perpetual trophy is awarded to the winner of the Test series, the most famous of which is The Ashes.
The ICC also organises competitions that are for several countries at once, including the Cricket World Cup, ICC T20 World Cup and ICC Champions Trophy. A league competition for Test matches played as part of normal tours, the ICC World Test Championship, had been proposed several times, and its first instance began in 2019. A league competition for ODIs, the ICC Cricket World Cup Super League, began in August 2020 and lasted only for one edition. The ICC maintains Test rankings, ODI rankings and T20 rankings systems for the countries which play these forms of cricket.
Influence on everyday life
Cricket has had a broad impact on popular culture, both in the Commonwealth of Nations and elsewhere. It has, for example, influenced the lexicon of these nations, especially the English language, with various phrases such as "that's not cricket" (that's unfair), "had a good innings" (lived a long life) and "sticky wicket". "On a sticky wicket" (aka "sticky dog" or "glue pot") is a metaphor used to describe a difficult circumstance. It originated as a term for difficult batting conditions in cricket, caused by a damp and soft pitch.
Greats of cricket
Following the launch of the top Test and ODI performances lists, Wisden received many requests asking whether it was possible to create a ranking list of all-time great players by using the same formula and examining the average rating each player received per innings. Including a weighting for players with longer careers, Wisden arrived at the lists below. In Tests, Donald Bradman was the clear leader in the batting category and Muttiah Muralitharan was ranked as the top bowler. In the ODI section, Viv Richards and Wasim Akram are the top-ranked players.
Top 5 Test batsmen
Rank Batsman Rating
1 Australia Donald Bradman 1349.0
2 India Sachin Tendulkar 1000.5
3 Cricket West Indies Viv Richards 913.9
4 Cricket West Indies Garfield Sobers 912.0
5 Australia Allan Border 911.2
Top 5 Test bowlers
Rank Bowler Rating
1 Sri Lanka Muttiah Muralitharan 1320.4
2 New Zealand Richard Hadlee 1232.9
3 England Sydney Barnes 1209.3
4 Australia Shane Warne 1195.8
5 Australia Clarrie Grimmett 1184.8
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