adminOn the point with : Aubrey Farai Kamba
I HOPE you are in good health and that my last article helped in demystifying a lot in the game of cricket. Now I take it the concept of hwishu has shed more light into how it is easy for us to understand the game of cricket.This week though, I am going to look at the equipment used in the game of cricket. Unlike the game of hwishu, cricket has more equipment that one uses so as to be able to play. With hwishu one just needs to have a strip of land or ground to just draw the lines and the circle and a ball and one is good to go.
Equipment
The equipment used in cricket is different from hwishu though because hiwshu only has a ball and lines and circles drawn on the ground.
Cricket Ball:
Hard, cork and string ball, covered with leather. A bit like a baseball (in size and hardness), but the leather covering is thicker and joined in two hemispheres, not in a
tennis ball pattern. The seam is thus like an equator, and the stitching is raised slightly. The circumference is between 224 and 229 millimetres (8.81 to 9.00 inches), and the ball weighs between 156 and 163 grams (5.5 to 5.75 ounces). Traditionally the ball is dyed red, with the stitching left white. Nowadays white balls are also used, for visibility in games played at night under artificial lighting.
Cricket Bat:
Blade made of willow, flat on one side, humped on the other for strength, attached to
a sturdy cane handle. The blade has a maximum width of 108 millimetres (4.25 inches)
and the whole bat has a maximum length of 965 millimetres (38 inches).
Wickets:
There are two wickets – wooden structures made up of a set of three stumps topped by
a pair of bails. These are described below. Stumps:
Three wooden posts, 25 millimetres (1 inch) in diameter and 813 millimetres (32
inches) high. They have spikes extending from their bottom end and are hammered into the ground in an evenly spaced row, with the outside edges of the outermost stumps 228 millimetres (9 inches) apart. This means they are just close enough together that a cricket ball cannot pass between them.
Bails:
Two wooden crosspieces which sit in grooves atop the adjacent pairs of stumps.
Protective Gear:
Shoes:
Pads, gloves, helmet, etc for batsmen to wear to prevent injury when struck by the ball. Leather, usually with spiked soles for grip on the grass.
Clothing:
Long pants, shirt (long or short sleeved depending on the weather), possibly a sleeveless or long-sleeved woollen pullover in cold weather. For games played with a red ball, the clothing must be white or cream. With a white ball, players usually wear uniforms in solid team colours. Add a hat or cap to keep the sun off. There are no regulations regarding identifying marks or numbers on clothing.
The Field
A cricket field is a roughly elliptical field of flat grass, ranging in size from about 90 to 150 metres (100-160 yards) across, bounded by an obvious fence or other marker. There is no fixed size or shape for the field, although large deviations from a low-eccentricity ellipse are discouraged.
In the centre of the field, and usually aligned along the long axis of the ellipse, is the pitch , a carefully prepared rectangle of closely mown and rolled grass over hard packed earth. It is marked with white lines, called creases.
The dimensions are in centimetres (divide by 2.54 for inches).
I hope we all have a better understanding of this sport that we all think is elitist yet we are having boys and girls coming from the dirty streets of Dangamvura and other high density suburbs in the country playing for the national team. Hope to catch on the rebound by the boundary line in my next article, have a blessed week.
Online Reporter