Official Cricket Rules

Cricket is a game played between two teams made up of eleven players each. There
is also a reserve player called a “twelfth man” who is used should a player be injured
during play.

The twelfth man is not allowed to bowl, bat, wicket keep or captain the team. His sole
duty is to act as a substitute fielder.

The original player is free to return to the game as soon as they have recovered from
their injury.

To apply the law and make sure the cricket rules are upheld throughout the game
there are two umpires in place during games. Umpires are responsible for making
decisions and notifying the scorers of these decisions.

Two umpires are in place on the playing field while there is also a third umpire off the
field who is in charge of video decisions.

This is where the call is too close for the on field umpires and they refer it to the third
umpire who reviews slow motion video replays to make a decision.

Game Structure

Fielding positions in cricket for a right-handed batsman

Test cricket is a game that spans over two innings. This means that one team needs
to bowl the other team out twice and score more runs then them to win the match.
Another key difference between test cricket and other forms of cricket is the length of
the innings. In test cricket there is no limit to the innings length. Whereas in one day
cricket & Twenty20 cricket there are a certain amount of overs per innings. The only
limits in test cricket is a 5 day length. Before the game begins an official will toss a
coin. The captain who guesses the correct side of the coin will then choose if they
want to bat or field first. One team will then bat while the other will bowl & field. The
aim of the batting team is to score runs while the aim of the fielding team is to bowl
ten people out and close the batting teams’ innings. Although there are eleven
people in each team only ten people need to be bowled out as you cannot have one
person batting alone. Batting is done in pairs.

Once the first team has been bowled out the second team would then go into bat.
Once the second team is then bowled out it would normally return to the first team
batting again. However there is an exception to this in the cricket rules, it is called
the follow-on. The follow-on is when the first team makes at least 200 runs more
than the second team made (in a 5 day test match). This then gives the first team the
option to make the second team bat again. This is particularly useful if the game is
progressing slowly or affected by bad weather and there might not be enough time
for both teams to play a full innings. Should this be the case the batting team’s
captain also has the right to forfeit their innings at any time. This is called a
declaration. Some may wonder why a captain would forfeit the opportunity for his
team to bat. However if the game is coming close to a close and it looks like they will
not be able to bowl the other team out again this could be an option. If one team is
not bowled out twice and a winner determined in the five days of play the game is
declared a draw. Therefore it may be worth declaring an innings to creat the
possibility of a win rather than a draw.