Everybody agrees that the most popular sport in the world today is soccer. 

But which is the second most popular? Is it basketball? Maybe rugby? Tennis perhaps? 

No, as you've probably guessed by now, the answer seems to be cricket. 

To help you understand this text better, you can also use the video for Year 8 (5èmes)

The rules of cricket

The reason for this is that cricket is the number one sport in many countries with huge populations, such as India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. 

It is popular in many other countries as well, including the U.K., Australia, South Africa, Sri Lanka and New Zealand. 

Cricket is, like baseball, a "bat and ball" game in which bowlers "bowl" the ball and batsmen try to hit "shots" with a bat and score runs for their team. As in baseball, batsmen are "out" if their shot is caught, or if they don't get to a "safe haven" in time when they're making runs. 

What is very different, however, is the time taken to play the game. In cricket, a single game can take five full days to complete! But thankfully there are shorter formats for people who love to play the game but also have to go to work sometimes.

History

Cricket has been a team sport in Britain for hundreds of years. In the eighteenth century, it became a well-organized sport. 

This resulted in cricket's growing popularity : cricket became the perfect game for gentlemen in London.

 It was not too demanding physically and could be played with dignity even by slightly older gentlemen, unlike more athletic games such as football and rugby. 

International matches also began in the nineteenth century, with the first match being between the U.S.A. and Canada in 1844. While the game never became popular in these two countries, it became very popular in most Commonwealth countries and an international system of "Test matches" between these countries soon developed. T

The first official Test match was between England and Australia in March 1877 at Melbourne Cricket Ground, which the Australians won by 45 runs. 

The Cricket World Cup is a tournament in the one-day limited-over format, which is held every four years and has now become the world's third most viewed sporting event. 

How the Game Works

A cricket match is usually played between two teams of eleven players on an oval-shaped grass field. 

In the centre of the field is a strip of hardened turf 22 yards (20.12 m) long, called a cricket pitch. 

At each end a set of three tubular stakes called "stumps" are stuck upright in the earth with two small pieces of wood, called bails, balanced across the top of each set. These are the wickets, and a batsman stands in front of a wicket with his long wooden bat as he waits for a bowler to bowl the hard, fist-sized ball. 

The bowler bowls from just beside the wicket at the other end of the pitch. 

At the same time, the other members of the bowler's team stand in various positions around the field acting as fielders.

If the batsman misses the ball, and the ball hits the wickets, he is out and his turn to bat is over. 

If he hits the ball into the air and a fielder catches it, he is out.

If a ball which the umpire thinks is going to hit the wicket is blocked by batsman's legs, he is out lbw (leg before wicket). 

But if the batsman hits the ball, he and his batting partner, who is standing at the other end of the pitch, can run to the opposite ends of the pitch to score one run. They can score two runs by each running back again. Three runs are scored if each batsman runs three lengths of the pitch, and so on. 

But if a fielder gets to the ball and throws it at one of the wickets, and the ball hits the wicket before a running batsman crosses a line near the wicket called the crease, the batsman is "run out". 

The team scoring the most runs in its innings (the period during which one team is at bat) is the winner.

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