Cricket: The Basics: What You Need To Know

Cricket fans have their own language when they talk about the game. To keep up, it is useful to know what terms like Belter, Lifter, Paddle and Tonk.

Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on a field, at the center of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats and tries to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the runs scored by the batting team. A run is scored by the striking batsman hitting the ball with his bat, running to the opposite end of the pitch and touching the crease there without being dismissed. The teams switch between batting and fielding at the end of an innings.