God of cricket

Basic gameplay: bowler to batter

During normal play, thirteen players and two umpires are on the field. Two of the players are batters and the rest are all eleven members of the fielding team. The other nine players in the batting team are off the field in the pavilion. The image with overlay below shows what is happening when a ball is being bowled and which of the personnel are on or close to the pitch.

Bowling and dismissal

Most bowlers are considered specialists in that they are selected for the team because of their skill as a bowler, although some are all-rounders and even specialist batters bowl occasionally. The specialists bowl several times during an innings but may not bowl two overs consecutively. If the captain wants a bowler to ”change ends ”, another bowler must temporarily fill in so that the change is not immediate.[77]

A bowler reaches his delivery stride by means of a ”run-up ” and an over is deemed to have begun when the bowler starts his run-up for the first delivery of that over, the ball then being ”in play ”.[77] Fast bowlers, needing momentum, take a lengthy run up while bowlers with a slow delivery take no more than a couple of steps before bowling.

The fastest bowlers can deliver the ball at a speed of over 145 kilometres per hour (90 mph) and they sometimes rely on sheer speed to try to defeat the batter, who is forced to react very quickly.[88] Other fast bowlers rely on a mixture of speed and guile by making the ball seam or swing (i.e. curve) in flight. This type of delivery can deceive a batter into miscuing his shot, for example, so that the ball just touches the edge of the bat and can then be ”caught behind ” by the wicket-keeper or a slip fielder.[88]

At the other end of the bowling scale is the spin bowler who bowls at a relatively slow pace and relies entirely on guile to deceive the batter. A spinner will often ”buy his wicket ” by ”tossing one up ” (in a slower, steeper parabolic path) to lure the batter into making a poor shot. The batter has to be very wary of such deliveries as they are often ”flighted ” or spun so that the ball will not behave quite as he expects and he could be ”trapped ” into getting himself out.[89] In between the pacemen and the spinners are the medium paced seamers who rely on persistent accuracy to try to contain the rate of scoring and wear down the batters concentration.[88]

There are nine ways in which a batter can be dismissed: five relatively common and four extremely rare. The common forms of dismissal are bowled,[90] caught,[91] leg before wicket (lbw),[92] run out[93] and stumped.[94] Rare methods are hit wicket,[95] hit the ball twice,[96] obstructing the field[97] and timed out.[98] The Laws state that the fielding team, usually the bowler in practice, must appeal for a dismissal before the umpire can give his decision.

If the batter is out, the umpire raises a forefinger and says ”Out! ”; otherwise, he will shake his head and say ”Not out ”.[99] There is, effectively, a tenth method of dismissal, retired out, which is not an on-field dismissal as such but rather a retrospective one for which no fielder is credited.[100]