Originally <a href='/showthread.php?p=20242734'>posted</a> on 11/13/2013:

I think 5Dimes and the book Pinny uses, BetOnline, are good for cricket.

Yeah, a lot more of you guys should get into cricket. It's not that difficult to understand after watching it a few times.

Here is a post in made in my thread, it is long, but I think explains cricket pretty well (the words in parenthesis is what my post was, I AM NOT trying to promote my thread because I don't fukk around like that, so that is why I am not linking my thread):

"Now let's move onto cricket. First off there are different forms of cricket and they are different based on the length of the match and the amount of “overs”. I like to think of an “over” as an inning in baseball. Now when a team is batting I have heard their whole batting segment referred to as their innings, but that is not really important. It is just easiest to think of each “over” as an inning. Ok, cricket is a sport between 2 teams. They start with a coin toss and whoever wins the toss decides if they want to “bat” or “bowl” first. Bowling is like fielding in baseball. The bowling team has a bowler who bowls the ball (the bowler goes up to their line (most people get a running start) and before crossing the line, throws the ball at the ground in front of the batter and it bounces off the ground and the batter takes a swing at it) to the batter and then all the other members of the bowling team stand around the “batting zone” (so to speak) and they try to catch the ball if it is hit. The cricket field is like a really big circle. There is the boundary (out of bounds zone) on the outermost part, then the fielders and in the middle of all this is the batting zone. There are three big terms to remember: overs (already talked about those), runs, and wickets. Think of wickets as an out. Each cricket team is made up of ten players so each team, when they are batting, gets ten wickets (outs). When a team is BATTING they have two players on the field. One player stands on one end of the batting zone and the other batter stands on the other end of the batting zone. We’ll call these two zones the north zone and the south zone. While both batters hold a bat, only one hits at a time. The bowler runs up to the south zone and “bowls” the ball to the batter at the north zone (yes the bowler runs past the batter standing in the south zone). At which point the batter swings and he either hits the ball or he misses. This leads us to wickets. Behind each batter, there are these sticks and on the top part of these sticks balanced in between them are little pieces of wood, also known as the “stumps”. If the ball is bowled to you and you swing and miss, these “stumps” are hit with the ball and the wood pieces in-between the sticks will fly up and that is a “wicket”. So basically it is one strike and you are OUT, but sometimes of course the ball may go past the "stumps" altogether. Now that is one way to get a wicket. I said before that on the bowling side there are team members playing in the field or outfield. If one of these guys catches a ball when it is in the air then that is a wicket. Also there is a fielder standing behind the “stumps” behind the batter, and he is known as the wicket keeper. Sometimes (not always) if a batter hits the ball and it flies up behind him and the wicket keeper catches it, it also counts as a wicket. Finally like at 11:48 in the video below, the ball can be hit back to the bowler who catches it and it may not count as a wicket. Wickets can be complicated. Again when you bat, your team gets 10 wickets (10 outs). Ok now for the third term, runs. When the batter hits the ball there are a few ways to score runs. First off, each one of the two batters run to the opposite side of the batting zone than the one they are standing on (the batter standing on the north zone runs to the south zone). Now the batters run at the same speed because they each have to reach their respective zone for a run to count. When they run to the opposite side, they have to touch their bat down at a point over the line. If the bowling team gets the ball up off the ground (not if they caught it in the air) they can throw it back at the “stumps” and if they hit the “stumps” before the batter that was running towards that group of “stumps” touches his bat down, than that batter is out. When a batter is out, he has to leave the field of play and then they will bring in the next batter to replace him so they will have two batters on the field at a time. Now of course if there have been 9 wickets already, then there will be only one batter out there. So after you hit the ball and you each run to the other side of the batting zone, that is one run (even if there are two batters, it only counts as one run). But, when you hit it you can run for as many runs as you safely think you can before the ball is thrown back. If you don’t hit a ball far enough and you don’t think you can get any runs, then you don’t have to run. Another way to score runs is if you hit the ball and it goes towards the boundary. If the ball is hit and it bounces on the ground and then runs into the boundary (the boundary is made up of a ring of padding) it counts as a FOUR (four runs), if the ball is hit and it stays in the air and it goes over the boundary (a good bit of the time it goes into the stands) it counts as a SIX (six runs). If you score a FOUR or a SIX, the batters do not have to physically run to score the runs. Think of a FOUR like a ground rule double (your hit gets you on base, you do not have to push for a double) and a SIX like a home run. Now the bowler never changes what side he throws too, so if batter A is bowled a ball, he hits it, and the team scores 1 run, Batter A now is standing beside the bowler and batter B bats until either he gets out or an odd number of runs (1 or 3 usually) is scored in which case batter A will be on the side once again that the ball is bowled too. Also, you can switch out who the bowler is (like relief pitchers) AND a bowler can bowl for a while, field for a while, then come back and bowl again. After all your overs are done or all 10 wickets take place, your team becomes the bowling team and the other team becomes the batting team. Even if you got out via a wicket, when you are the bowling team you all get to play in the field. Alright so that is how wickets and runs work. There are also fouls which can give you a free ball or a free run but that gets even more complicated. Now there are the different cricket formats, such as Test matches (these take place over like 4 days or something), One Day Internationals (ODI’s) and T20. On ODI’s you bat for 50 overs and since each over is comprised of 6 balls, you get 300 total balls bowled to your team (if you don’t all get out before then, of course), on T20 you bat for 20 overs so 120 balls, and on ODI’s and T20 you do all you batting at one time. On test cricket matches you get to bat more than once. So you bat, bowl, bat, bowl, etc. (unless you either win the toss and elect to bowl first or the other team wins the toss and they say you have to bowl first in which case it would go bowl, bat, bowl, bat, etc.). Each time you bat goes by the cricket term Innings. There is a lot that goes into cricket, but when you watch this video I think you will understand it a lot better and I hope I thoroughly explained it. Since there is six balls an over, the scorecard will read (for say the first over) 1-0 and 1.1 for the first ball, 1.2 for the second ball, etc. and the last ball will have it read 1.6 then the second over starts so it will read 2-0 and it will also say 2.1, then 2.2, etc. Also on the score card the 0 in for example 1-0 means the number of wickets taken or the number of people out. So if 4 people have gotten out it will say 1-4 or 2-4, or 3-4, etc. Remember the batting is done when the overs are finished or there has been 10 wickets made (all 10 batters are out). Finally, there is run rate. If you score 4 runs during the course of your 1st over then your run rate (RR) is 4, if you have scored 12 runs over your first 3 overs (a very bad score) than your RR is still 4. If you bat second the Required RR is the RR you have to maintain per each over in order to win. Whew, I think that’s it. Like I said, THERE IS A LOT THAT GOES INTO CRICKET. Here is a video of a T20 match between Pakistan and Sri Lanka so you can see how it works.

"

Hopefully that helps everyone who want to learn more about cricket. You can CLEAN UP when you bet cricket.