In order to understand your stays in England, you must first comprehend the game that is cricket. There is a lot of misunderstanding leading to derision and prejudice amongst you foreigners. I have thereby taken it on as a personal quest to educate you all in the strange ways of cricket, and some of the other peculiarities of England and Great Britain as a whole.
Before we start, 'Great' Britain as in the word 'Great' isn't because it's large or because we think we're 'Great', it is instead merely the name for the island that encompasses England, Scotland and Wales. Sorry I thought I better just clear that up. It refers to the 'greater portion' as it were, of the British Isles. I just think it's good to bear that in mind.
Anyway, without cricket much of the civilised world wouldn't be civilised, that's a fact. Cricket is the separator between civilised and uncivilised. Indeed if a country plays cricket as a sport you can be sure that it is indeed civilised. Why is this you ask? Well put simply they used to be either colonies, still are colonies or were allied with Great Britain some how. It is important to bear in mind at this point that the majority of people who play in France cannot be considered allied with Great Britain, for reasons of national security. So if a country plays cricket, you can be sure that it was once integrated with the British Empire (the greatest empire the world has ever seen no doubt). I once heard something quite funny, 'the British don't realise their empire is gone, the French don't realise their empire was rubbish and the Germans don't realise they never had an empire). I think this sums up the state of Britain's empire. It's all but gone, with only a few relatively pointless islands dotted around the globe. The only colony of any significance remaining is Gibraltar. This colony serves its purpose as an excellent naval station.
So why after the empire is cricket still played in these Commonwealth countries? Well it's quite simply because it's an excellent game. Part of the attraction to many an Englishman (I stress Englishman because it's really an English game, it's not much played in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland), is that it can't be played by the continentals. Therefore it serves its purpose as a great divider in cultures, something that separates us and them. We love this kind of thing in Britain, being an island and all that. We like very much to govern ourselves and not be messed with. It is a source of national pride that no country or foreign power has successfully invaded and overthrown the government of England for just short of 1000 years. Many people have tried to invade, they all have failed. This leads sometimes to the term 'Fortress Britain' being used. We love stuff like this.
Anyway back to cricket...
Cricket involves two teams of 11 men. There is no simple plain cut aim of the game as it were. The purpose of cricket is really a match of patience and skill. The greater team winning by scoring more points. A draw can occur when the teams fail to finish their allotted periods of play in the time available for the game, usually 5 days. It's a long game! When national teams play one another, e.g. India vs. Pakistan, the game is called a 'Test Match' and does last for 5 days. Sometimes games are played for only 1 day, although this is the absolute minimum.
The cricket pitch is the place where the game is played. It is oval in shape and has in the middle a rectangular strip of really short grass that is rolled and pressed hard, so the ball will bounce, called a 'wicket'. This is an important term so learn it well. The teams can either be batting or fielding at any one time. So one team has cricket bats, two people from the their team are on the pitch, and the other team has no implements apart from the ball. The batting pair are on the wicket at opposite ends. The fielding team bowls them the ball, this is simply a special way of throwing the ball at the batters. The bowler of the ball has to try to knock the 'bails' off the 'stumps'. The 'bails' are two small wooden sticks that sit on top of three 'stumps' of wood pushed into either end of the wicket. The batsman has to stop the ball from hitting the stumps. If it does, he will be 'out', and can no longer play. Then the next batsman will come in, and start playing, etc... etc... until all the batting team are 'out'. However it's not that simple. A batsman can also be out if he hits the ball and a fielder catches the ball before it hits the ground, or if the bowler bowls and the ball hits the leg of the batsman and the referee, called the 'umpire', thinks that his leg was in front of the stumps 'leg before wicket, aka LBW), thereby protecting the stumps from being hit. You can't do this, you must hit the ball every time, or leave it to run past the stumps, you can't touch it with you body.
The bowler bowls from one end of the wicket for 6 balls, then they swap ends, so the other batsman has a chance (but they're working for the same team). This period of six balls is called an 'over', each successive over must be bowled by a different person on the fielding team. The batsmen can score points for their team by hitting the ball and running to opposite ends, before the fielding team can return the ball and knock the bails of the stumps, before the batsmen have returned to the ends of the wicket, passed a line called the 'crease'. If they're not back in time, they are out. The next batsman will come in. Remember there are only 11 people on the team, so the fielders have to get 10 people out (must be 2 batsmen at any one time on the pitch), in order to finish the batting team's 'innings'. Then they must swap roles, the batters become the fielders, and the fielders put two people on the bat. In a 5-day Test Match, there are 2 innings for each team. The object of the game being to score more 'runs' and get the other team all out twice in the 5 days allotted to play the game.
You can also score points if you hit the ball hard enough it reaches the outer line of the pitch. If it rolls over the batsman gets automatically 4 runs, without having to run. If the ball lands outside the pitch, you automatically get 6 runs; although this is quite rare. If the batsmen start to run to opposite ends before the ball has gone over the line, they don't score those points as well, they just get 4 runs. The batting team can also score points if the bowler steps over the line from one end of the wicket that he bowls from. This is worth one run, called a 'no ball'. If he bowls the ball wide of the batsman, this is called a 'wide ball' and is worth one run. If the bowler bowls the ball, and it runs past the batsman so far he doesn't have to hit it, and he runs to score one run, this is called a 'bye' and is also worth one run. If it rolls so far that it goes over the line behind the batsman, it's called 'four byes', and is worth 4 runs.
The fielders have very special positions that they stand in to try to get the batsmen out. There is a special role for one fielder directly behind the batsman called the 'wicket keeper'. He stands really close the batsman, like in baseball, and catches the batsman out, and stops byes from happening. He normally wears protective clothes, called 'pads'. It is important to bear in mind that a cricket ball weighs a lot and is very solid. It is covered in leather too. Some other positions that I won't bother explaining are called, 'slips', 'silly mid-off', 'short leg' and 'square leg'!! These names are hard to understand. So I won't bother explaining them.
So these are the basic rules of cricket. I stress these are the basic rules of cricket. It is a very complicated game to start with, there's a lot to remember. If you want to understand it better, you have to play or watch a game. Many cricket lovers like the game because it is immensely skilful. Other like the game because of its statistics. It is admittedly a lot slower and longer lasting than other games. But that's never been a problem in other things! The most important thing to be when either playing or watching cricket is patient, if you aren't, you'll get bored very quickly.
p.s. Most people who play cricket are rich. It is a middle and upper class game; the poorer people play other things such as football usually. Although this is just the majority, some poor people play cricket too, it's just not very common.
