America's first professional cricket league makes its debut in Grand Prairie tonight, as the Texas Super Kings take on the Los Angeles Knight Riders.
While cricket is brand new to American audiences, the sport is centuries old, with a robust following in countries including Great Britain, Australia, India and Bangladesh.
At first, the action might seem -- pardon the pun -- a tad foreign to you; but once you get the hang of it, it's actually very easy to follow.
Here's a little primer on how to play cricket:
Cricket is played with 11 players per side. Just like in baseball, one team's players are spread out throughout the large oval field while the other team bats.
All the action takes place in an area in the middle of the field measuring 22 yards long by ten feet wide. This is known as the pitch.
At both ends of the pitch are assemblies consisting of three stumps coming up from the ground and two bails that rest on top of the stumps. This is called the wicket.
The object of the game is to score more runs than your opponent.
On the hitting team, two batsmen take to the pitch at opposite ends. One is the striker -- the one who's at bat -- and the other is the non-striker.
Teams score runs by the two batsmen safely running to the opposite end of the pitch on a batted ball before the fielding team has a chance to break the wicket. Depending on how long it takes for the fielding team to retrieve the ball, batsmen can score multiple runs on a single batted ball by completing additional lengths on the pitch.
If a batted ball reaches the boundary either on the bounce or if it rolls to the boundary, the batting team is automatically awarded four runs without the need for the batsmen to run back and forth on the pitch. If a batted ball is hit over the boundary on the fly, like in a home run in baseball, the batting team is awarded six runs.
Unlike baseball, where teams alternate between batting and fielding nine times during the course of the game, in cricket, teams complete their batting all at once, with one team setting a target score that the other team will have to beat.
The competition format in Major League Cricket is known as Twenty20, or T20 for short. That means each team is given 20 "overs" to score as many runs as it can.
An over consists of exactly six bowled balls. The fielding team must change pitchers, or bowlers, between each over.
Sometimes, a team will get more than six pitches in a single over. Just like in baseball, the bowler must throw a ball that the batsman can reasonably hit. If not, the ball is ruled to be "wide," the batting team is awarded a run, and they get that ball again.
The object for the fielding team is two-fold: to prevent runs from scoring and to get the batsmen out. Remember, each batting team in Twenty20 cricket has only 120 pitches (plus wide pitches) to score as many runs as it can.
There are four common ways to get batsmen out in cricket. When a batsman is out, that player leaves the pitch and is replaced by a teammate.
If a batsman misses a bowled ball, and it breaks the wicket behind him, that player is "bowled out."
If the fielding team breaks a wicket before a batsman reaches the crease near the wicket, that player is "run out."
Just like in baseball, if a player on the fielding team catches the ball on the fly (fielders, except the wicket keeper, do not wear mitts), that player is -- wait for it -- "caught out."
If in the umpire's view a batsmen prevents his wicket from being broken by blocking a bowled ball with any part of his body, that player will be out "leg before wicket," or LBW as is usually indicated in the box score.
A team remains at bat until either 20 overs are completed or the fielding team gets ten batsmen out, whichever comes first.
In baseball, if a team scores 40 runs in the first inning, it would be on every sports highlight show for four days straight, and they'd be talking about that on 105.3 The Fan non-stop. In cricket, if a team scores 40 runs in the first innings (innings with an "s" in cricket), that team will very likely lose.
Reading and understanding scores in cricket will take a little getting used to.
Let's take, for example, tonight's matchup between Texas and Los Angeles. Let's say Texas is up first and sets the target score that Los Angeles will have to beat. If after six overs Texas has scored 48 runs and has had two of their batters get out, the scoreboard will look something like this:
TEXAS 48/2 (6)
LOS ANGELES yet to bat
One might read that out loud by saying "After six overs in the first innings, Texas has scored 48 runs with two wickets."
The way you read a final score depends on which team wins, the first team that set the target score or the second team that beat it.
So let's say the final score is:
TEXAS 160/7 (20)
LOS ANGELES 132/8 (20)
You would say "Texas won by 28 runs."
However, if Los Angeles surpasses Texas' total, the score might read:
TEXAS 160/7 (20)
LOS ANGELES 161/5 (16.2)
You would say "Los Angeles won by five wickets with 22 balls left," since going by the run total would make the game appear closer than it actually was.
If all this sounds exciting to you, you can see a match live in person at the new Grand Prairie cricket stadium, the former minor league baseball stadium just off Belt Line Rd. near I-30.
Tonight's game is sold out, but there are tickets still available for seven other matches through next Tuesday, July 18th.
Then following seven matches in Morrisville, North Carolina, the action will then return to Grand Prairie for the playoffs starting June 27th.
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