Sunday, April 03, 2011

Anup Kaphle: Cricket Is Not Baseball, Stop Comparing

"Understanding cricket is not that difficult — just stop comparing it to baseball."
- Anup Kaphle




India Beats Sri Lanka To Win Cricket World Cup
Anup Kaphle: The Washington Post: Cricket: The (real) game with a bat and a ball: cricket, arguably the most popular game in the world after football ...... On Wednesday, 67.5 million people watched India play Pakistan in the World Cup semi-finals, but most Americans were distracted by their anticipation for the opening day of that other game played with a bat and a ball. ...... The goal of the team that bats is to score runs. You score one run for running the length of the pitch, four runs if you hit the ball and it leaves the field on the ground, and six runs if you hit it out of the field in the air. ....... One of the common misconceptions about cricket among Americans is that the game “lasts for days.” Not necessarily. The most popular form of cricket is the one-day game, often referred to as ODI (One Day International), where each team plays 50 overs (a bowler throws the ball six times in one over). The other form of the game, called Test cricket, is a whole different story. A test match lasts for five days. ........ the game did not become a proper sport until the 18th century. The British took cricket to every country they set their feet on ...... England, the country that invented the game, has never won the world championship since the contest’s inception in 1975. Australia has won four World Cups, followed by the West Indies with two victories, and India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka with one each. ...... The Indians, for whom cricket is almost a religion ...... its star player, Sachin Tendulkar, often referred to as the “Little Master,” and one of the best in the sport, who will be playing his first ever World Cup final in his home town of Mumbai. ...... Tendulkar, who became the first player to score 200 runs in a one-day game. ...... The small island nation has all eyes on its star bowler, Muttiah Muralitharan, who helped his country win its first World Cup in 1996. Sri Lanka will be relying on Muralitharan’s ability to spin the ball, which has made him once of the most highly regarded bowlers in the world. ..... Cricket is played by millions of people in more than 90 countries .... George Washington’s troops played cricket in the summer of 1778.

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