Cricket
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11
players each on a field at
the center of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. Each team takes its turn to bat, attempting to score runs, while the other team fields. Each
turn is known as an innings.
The bowler delivers
the ball to
the batsman who attempts to hit the ball with his bat away
from the fielders so he can run to the other end of the pitch and score a run.
Each batsman continues batting until he is out. The batting team continues batting until
ten batsmen are out, or a specified number of overs of
six balls have been bowled, at which point the teams switch roles and the
fielding team comes in to bat.
In
professional cricket the length of a game ranges from 20 overs
per side to Test cricket played
over five days. The Laws of Cricket are maintained by the International
Cricket Council (ICC)
and the Marylebone Cricket
Club (MCC) with
additional Standard Playing Conditions for Test matches and One Day
Internationals.
Cricket was first played in southern England in
the 16th century. By the end of the 18th century, it had developed to be the national sport of England. The expansion of the British Empire led to cricket being played overseas
and by the mid-19th century the first international match was held. ICC, the
game's governing body, has 10 full
members. The game is
most popular in Australasia, England, the Indian subcontinent,
the West Indies and Southern Africa.
The game of cricket has a known history
spanning from the 16th century to the present day, with international matches
played since 1844, although the official history of international Test cricket began in 1877. During this time, the game developed from its origins in England into a game which is now played professionally in most of the Commonwealth of Nations
Origin
No one knows when or where cricket began but there is a body of
evidence, much of it circumstantial, that strongly suggests the game was
devised during Saxon or Norman times
by children living in the Weald, an area of dense woodlands and clearings in south-east
England that lies across Kent and Sussex. It is generally believed that cricket
survived as a children's game for many generations before it was increasingly
taken up by adults around the beginning of the 17th century. Possibly cricket
was derived from bowls,
assuming bowls is the older sport, by the intervention of a batsman trying to
stop the ball from reaching its target by hitting it away. Playing on
sheep-grazed land or in clearings, the original implements may have been a
matted lump of sheep’s wool (or even a stone or a small lump of wood) as the
ball; a stick or a crook or another farm tool as the bat; and a stool or a tree
stump or a gate (e.g., a wicket gate) as the wicket.
Derivation of the name
of "cricket"
A number of words are thought to be possible sources for the
term "cricket". In the earliest known reference to the sport in 1598
(see below), it is called creckett. The name may have been
derived from the Middle Dutch krick(-e),
meaning a stick; or the Old English cricc or cryce meaning
a crutch or staff. Another possible source is the Middle
Dutch word krickstoel, meaning a long low stool used for kneeling
in church and which resembled the long low wicket with
two stumps used in early cricket.
Another possibility is that the name derives from the Middle Dutch met
de (krik ket)sen (i.e., "with the stick chase"), which also
suggests a Dutch connection in the game's origin It is more likely that
the terminology of cricket was based on words in use in south east England at
the time and, given trade connections with the County of Flanders, especially in the 15th
century when it belonged to the Duchy of
Burgundy, many Middle Dutch[3] words found their way into southern
English dialects.
The
Commonwealth
After
the Civil War ended in 1648, the new Puritan government clamped down on
"unlawful assemblies", in particular the more raucous sports such as
football. Their laws also demanded a stricter observance of the Sabbath than
there had been previously. As the Sabbath was the only free time available to
the lower classes, cricket's popularity may have waned during the Commonwealth. Having said that, it did
flourish in public fee-paying schools such as Winchester and St Paul's. There is no actual evidence
that Oliver Cromwell's
regime banned cricket specifically and there are references to it during the interregnum that
suggest it was acceptable to the authorities provided that it did not cause any
"breach of the Sabbath".It is believed that the nobility in general
adopted cricket at this time through involvement in village games.
Gambling
and press coverage
Cricket
certainly thrived after the Restoration in
1660 and is believed to have first attracted gamblers making large bets at this
time. In 1664, the "Cavalier" Parliament passed the Gaming Act 1664
which limited stakes to £100, although that was still a fortune at the time, equivalent to about £13 thousand
in present day terms .
Cricket had certainly become a significant gambling sport by the end of the
17th century. There is a newspaper report of a "great match" played
in Sussex in 1697 which was 11-a-side and played for high stakes of 50 guineas a
side. With freedom of the press having been granted in 1696, cricket
for the first time could be reported in the newspapers. But it was a long time
before the newspaper industry adapted sufficiently to provide frequent, let
alone comprehensive, coverage of the game. During the first half of the 18th
century, press reports tended to focus on the betting rather than on the play.
Cricket
moves out of England
Cricket
was introduced to North America via the English colonies in the 17th century, probably before it had even reached
the north of England. In the 18th century it arrived in other parts of the
globe. It was introduced to the West Indies by
colonists and to India by British East
India Company mariners
in the first half of the century. It arrived in Australia almost as soon as
colonisation began in 1788. New Zealand and South Africa followed in the early
years of the 19th century.
Cricket
never caught on in Canada, despite efforts by an imperial-minded elite to
promote the game as a way of identifying with the British Empire. Canada,
unlike Australia and the West Indies, witnessed a continual decline in the
popularity of the game during 1860–1960. Linked to upper class British-Canadian
elites, the game never became popular with the general public. In the summer
season it had to compete with baseball. During the First World War, Canadian
units stationed in Britain played baseball, not cricket
International
cricket begins
The first ever international cricket game was between the USA and Canada in
1844. The match was played at the grounds of the St George's Cricket Club in New York
In 1859, a team of leading
English professionals set off to North America on the first-ever overseas tour
and, in 1862, the first English team toured Australia.
Between
May and October 1868, a team of Australian Aborigines toured England in what was the first Australian cricket team to travel overseas.
In 1877, an England touring team in Australia played two matches against full Australian XIs that are now
regarded as the inauguralTest matches. The following year, the Australians toured
England for the first time and were a spectacular success. No Tests were played
on that tour but more soon followed and, at The Oval in 1882, arguably the most famous match of all time gave rise
to The Ashes. South Africa became the third Test nation in 1889.
National
championships
A major
watershed occurred in 1890 when the official County Championship was constituted in England. This
organisational initiative has been repeated in other countries. Australia
established the Sheffield Shield in 1892–93. Other national
competitions to be established were the Currie Cup in South Africa, the
Plunkett Shield in New Zealand and the Ranji Trophy in India.
The
period from 1890 to the outbreak of the First World War has become an object of
nostalgia, ostensibly because the teams played cricket according to "the
spirit of the game", but more realistically because it was a peacetime
period that was shattered by the First World War. The era has been called The Golden Age of cricket and it featured numerous great names
such as Grace, Wilfred Rhodes, C B Fry, K S Ranjitsinhji and Victor Trumper.
Balls per
over
In 1889
the immemorial four ball over was replaced by a five ball over and then this
was changed to the current six balls an over in 1900. Subsequently, some
countries experimented with eight balls an over. In 1922, the number of balls
per over was changed from six to eight in Australia only. In 1924 the eight
ball over was extended to New Zealand and in 1937 to South Africa. In England,
the eight ball over was adopted experimentally for the 1939 season; the
intention was to continue the experiment in 1940, but first-class cricket was
suspended for the Second World War and when it resumed, English cricket
reverted to the six ball over. The 1947 Laws of Cricket allowed six or eight balls
depending on the conditions of play. Since the 1979/80 Australian and New
Zealand seasons, the six ball over has been used worldwide and the most recent
version of the Laws in 2000 only permits six ball overs.
20th-century cricket
Growth of
Test cricket
When
the Imperial Cricket Conference (as it was originally called) was founded in 1909, only
England, Australia and South Africa were members. India, West Indies and New Zealand became Test nations before the Second World War and Pakistan soon afterwards. The international game grew with several
"affiliate nations" getting involved and, in the closing years of the
20th century, three of those became Test nations also: Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe and Bangladesh.
Suspension of South
Africa (1970–91)
The greatest crisis to hit international cricket was brought
about by apartheid,
the South African policy of racial segregation. The situation began to
crystallise after 1961 when South Africa left the Commonwealth of Nations and so, under
the rules of the day, its cricket board had to leave the International Cricket Conference (ICC).
Cricket's opposition to apartheid intensified in 1968 with the cancellation of
England's tour to South Africa by the South African authorities, due to the
inclusion of "coloured" cricketer Basil D'Oliveira in
the England team. In 1970, the ICC members voted to suspend South Africa
indefinitely from international cricket competition.
Starved of top-level competition for its best players, the South
African Cricket Board began funding so-called "rebel tours", offering
large sums of money for international players to form teams and tour South
Africa. The ICC's response was to blacklist any rebel players who agreed to
tour South Africa, banning them from officially sanctioned international
cricket. As players were poorly remunerated during the 1970s, several accepted
the offer to tour South Africa, particularly players getting towards the end of
their careers for which a blacklisting would have little effect.
The rebel tours continued into the 1980s but then progress was
made in South African politics and it became clear that apartheid was ending.
South Africa, now a "Rainbow Nation" under Nelson Mandela,
was welcomed back into international sport in 1991.
Test
cricket remained the sport's highest level of standard throughout the 20th
century but it had its problems, notably in the infamous "Bodyline Series" of 1932–33 whenDouglas Jardine's England used
so-called "leg theory" to try and neutralise the run-scoring
brilliance of Australia's Don Bradman.
21st-century cricket
In June
2001, the ICC introduced a "Test Championship Table" and, in October
2002, a "One-day International Championship Table". As indicated by
ICC rankings, the various cricket
formats have continued to be a major competitive sport in most former British
Empire countries, notably the Indian subcontinent, and new participants
including the Netherlands. As of August 2013, the top rankings were held by
South Africa (Tests), India (one-day internationals), and Sri Lanka (Twenty20
champion).
The ICC
expanded its development programme, aiming to produce more national teams
capable of competing at the various formats. Development efforts are focused on
African and Asian nations, and on theUnited States.
In 2004, the ICC
Intercontinental Cup brought
first-class cricket to 12 nations, mostly for the first time. Cricket's newest
innovation is Twenty20, essentially an evening
entertainment. It has so far enjoyed enormous popularity and has attracted
large attendances at matches as well as good TV audience ratings. The inaugural ICC
Twenty20 World Cup tournament
was held in 2007. The formation of Twenty20 leagues in India – the unofficial Indian Cricket League,
which started in 2007, and the official Indian Premier League,
starting in 2008 – raised much speculation in the cricketing press about their
effect on the future of cricket
The ICC ODI Championship is an international One Day International cricket competition
run by the International
Cricket Council. The competition is notional in that it is simply a
ranking scheme overlaid on the regular ODI match schedule. After every ODI
match, the two teams involved receive points based on a mathematical formula.
The total of each team's points total is divided by the total number of matches
to give a rating, and all teams are ranked on a table in order of rating.
By
analogy to cricket batting averages, the points for winning an
ODI match are always greater than the team's rating, increasing the rating, and
the points for losing an ODI match are always less than the rating, reducing
the rating. A drawn match between higher and lower rated teams will benefits
the lower-rated team at the expense of the higher-rated team. An
"average" team that wins as often as it loses while playing a mix of
stronger and weaker teams should have a rating of 100.
As of
23 November 2014, Australia lead the ICC ODI Championship with a
rating of 117, while the lowest rated team, Ireland,
has a rating of 33
Qualification
The
championship consists of two separate ranking tables. The ten ICC Full Members
that play Test cricket are
automatically listed on the main table. The six Associate Members with One Day
International status are listed on a secondary table, but are eligible for
promotion to the main table by meeting one of the following criteria two wins
in ODIs against Full Members
·
one win in an ODI against a Full Member and also have won more
than 60% of qualifying matches versus other Associates
Ireland qualified for the main table following
their victories over Pakistan and Bangladesh in the 2007 World Cup,. and the Netherlands qualified in 2010 by beating Bangladesh. Kenya are also listed on the main table as
they previously had permanent ODI status. Latest entrant is Afghanistan, by
defeating Bangladesh in Asia Cup 2014.
The calculations for the Table are performed as follows:
·
Each team scores
points based on the results of their matches.
·
Each team's rating is
equal to its total points scored divided by the total matches played. (Series
are not significant in these calculations).
·
A match only counts if
played in the last four years.
·
Matches played in the
first year of the four-year limit count one-third; matches played in the second
year counts half; matches played in the last two years count fully;
essentially, recent matches are given higher weighting.
·
To determine a team's
rating after a particular match:
·
Determine the match
result (win, loss, or tie)
·
Calculate the match
points scored:
·
If the gap between the
ratings of the two teams at the commencement of the match is fewer than 40
points, then:
·
The winner scores 50
points more than the opponent's rating
·
The loser scores 50
points fewer than the opponent's rating
·
Each team in a tie
scores the opponent's rating
·
If the gap between the
ratings of the two teams at the commencement of the match is more than or equal
to 40 points, then :
·
The winner, if it is
the stronger team, scores 10 points more than its own rating
·
The winner, if it is
the weaker team, scores 90 points more than its own rating
·
The loser, if it is
the stronger team, scores 90 points fewer than its own rating
·
The loser, if it is
the weaker team, scores 10 points fewer than its own rating
·
The stronger team in a
tie scores 40 points fewer than its own rating
·
The weaker team in a
tie scores 40 points more than its own rating
·
Add the match points
scored to the points already scored (in previous matches as reflected by the
Table) and determine the new rating. However, matches(and the points) which do
not lie in last four year range will have to be removed.
·
Points earned by teams
depend on the opponents ratings, therefore this system needed to assign base
ratings to teams when it started.
IIC Championship
|
|||||
Rank
|
Change
|
Team
|
Matches
|
Points
|
Rating
|
1
|
 |
48
|
5623
|
117
|
|
2
|
 |
67
|
7835
|
117
|
|
3
|
|
50
|
5587
|
112
|
|
4
|
|
70
|
7569
|
108
|
|
5
|
 |
45
|
4804
|
107
|
|
6
|
|
53
|
5184
|
98
|
|
7
|
|
33
|
3158
|
96
|
|
8
|
|
46
|
4395
|
96
|
|
9
|
|
30
|
2154
|
72
|
|
10
|
|
33
|
1824
|
55
|
|
11
|
|
13
|
550
|
42
|
|
12
|
|
9
|
297
|
33
|
|
The ICC T20 Championship is an international Twenty20 cricket competition
run by the International Cricket Council. The
competition is notional in that it is simply a ranking scheme overlaid on the
regular T20I match schedule. After every T20I match, the two teams
involved receive points based on a mathematical formula. The total of each
team's points total is divided by the total number of matches to give a rating,
and all teams are ranked on a table in order of rating. As of 7 September 2014, Sri Lanka lead the ICC T20I
Championship with a rating of 131.
Points
The calculations for the Table are performed as follows:
·
Each team scores
points based on the results of their matches.
·
Each team's rating is
equal to its total points scored divided by the total matches played. (Series
are not significant in these calculations).
·
A match only counts if
played in the last three years.
·
Matches played in the
first year of the three-year limit count one-third; matches played in the
second year count two-thirds; matches played in the last year count fully;
essentially, recent matches are given higher weighting.
·
To determine a team's
rating after a particular match:
·
Determine the match
result (win, loss, or tie)
·
Calculate the match
points scored:
·
If the gap between the
ratings of the two teams at the commencement of the match is fewer than 40
points, then:
·
The winner scores 50
points more than the opponent's rating
·
The loser scores 50
points fewer than the opponent's rating
·
Each team in a tie
scores the opponent's rating
·
If the gap between the
ratings of the two teams at the commencement of the match is more than or equal
to 40 points, then :
·
The winner, if it is
the stronger team, scores 10 points more than its own rating
·
The winner, if it is
the weaker team, scores 90 points more than its own rating
·
The loser, if it is
the stronger team, scores 90 points fewer than its own rating
·
The loser, if it is
the weaker team, scores 10 points fewer than its own rating
·
The stronger team in a
tie scores 40 points fewer than its own rating
·
The weaker team in a
tie scores 40 points more than its own rating
·
Add the match points
scored to the points already scored (in previous matches as reflected by the
table) and determine the new rating. However, matches (and the points) which do
not lie in last three year range will have to be removed.
·
Points earned by teams
depend on the opponents ratings, therefore this system needed to assign base
ratings to teams when it started.
ICC T20 Championship
|
|||||
Rank
|
Change
|
Team
|
Matches
|
Points
|
Rating
|
1
|
|
23
|
3006
|
131
|
|
2
|
|
16
|
2009
|
126
|
|
3
|
|
27
|
3256
|
121
|
|
4
|
|
26
|
3076
|
118
|
|
5
|
|
26
|
3041
|
117
|
|
6
|
|
22
|
2414
|
110
|
|
7
|
|
25
|
2742
|
110
|
|
8
|
|
25
|
2481
|
99
|
|
9
|
|
12
|
1046
|
87
|
|
10
|
|
16
|
1147
|
72
|
|
11
|
|
14
|
951
|
68
|
|
12
|
|
12
|
743
|
62
|
|
13
|
|
11
|
573
|
52
|
|
14
|
|
10
|
512
|
51
|
|
Insufficient matches
|
|||||
-
|
|
3
|
190
|
63
|
|
-
|
|
3
|
90
|
30
|
|
-
|
|
3
|
0
|
0
|
|
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