Cricket Explained offers the sports enthusiast a user-friendly introduction to baseball's British cousin, a game that shares with America's national pastime the common ancestor "rounders." This is the definitive beginner's guide to the game of cricket, written by Robert Eastaway, a world authority on the sport, and co-inventor of the Coopers & Lybrand World Cricket Ratings System. Cricket Explained takes the reader from the game's fundamental --basic rules, terminology, equipment --to the finer points of strategy, individual playing styles, and cricket lore. The book includes a combined glossary/index for easy reference and is illustrated throughout with the lighthearted drawings of British cartoonist Mark Stevens. So even if you don't know "short leg" from "silly mid off" or a bowler from a batsman, you'll come away from Cricket Explained with an understanding for this truly international sport which, like baseball, is loved both for its elegant simplicity and its vexing complexity. Among the topics covered in Cricket Explained's concise, user-friendly entries are: -- Cricket's history -- Making sense of the action on the field -- Batsmen and the batting order -- Fielders and fielding positions -- Fielding and batting tactics -- Scoring and statistics -- Bowling strategy -- How many players are required -- How runs are scored, outs are made, and a game is won -- Umpires and the rules -- Bowlers and their individual styles -- Different types of cricket played throughout the world

Whether you’re a weekend cricketer or aspiring armchair expert, Cricket For Dummies helps you make sense of this fascinating sport. Not just a jargon busting guide to cricket’s laws, techniques and tactics, it also contains advice on kitting yourself out and provides lessons on playing the game and improving your batting, bowling and fielding skills. For the budding fan, there’s a guide to the greatest players, the memorable matches, and a tour through the cricketing scene – both domestic and international – giving you the knowledge you need to fully appreciate this special game. This book has been updated for the Ashes 2009, featuring revised information on new players, the Indian premier league, Stanford 20:20 and the latest coverage of past and future competitions. Julian Knight is a BBC journalist, writer, and cricket enthusiast. He is a former youth coach and captain, and has been a club cricketer for over 20 years. Consultant Editor Gary Palmer played first class cricket for ten years with Somerset before becoming a professional coach.

A complete guide to cricket for players and fans alike Whether you're a budding player or aspiring armchair expert, Cricket For Dummies helps you get to grips with this fascinating sport. Completely revised and updated for the first back-to-back Ashes series in 38 years, this hands-on guide gives you clear explanations of the cricket's laws, step-by-step explanations of techniques and tactics, and exciting coverage of the tournaments, global rivalries, and great players. Fully revised and updated to chronicle the rise of twenty20 cricket and the IPL, the implementation of DRS, and the changing face of the game Covers cricket basics—the pitch, the laws, the equipment and more Provides an in-depth look at cricket formats Offers a guide to building cricket skills—bowling, batting, and fielding Includes coverage of the best players and the biggest tournaments throughout the world Complete with Top Ten Lists of the greatest cricketers, the most memorable cricket matches, and the biggest controversies, Cricket For Dummies is your one-stop resource on this popular sport.

It starts in a suburban backyard with Darren Keefe and his older brother, sons of a fierce and gutsy single mother. The endless glow of summer, the bottomless fury of contest. All the love and hatred in two small bodies poured into the rules of a made-up game. Darren has two big talents: cricket and trouble. No surprise that he becomes an Australian sporting star of the bad-boy variety—one of those men who’s always got away with things and just keeps getting. Until the day we meet him, middle aged, in the boot of a car. Gagged, cable-tied, a bullet in his knee. Everything pointing towards a shallow grave. The Rules of Backyard Cricket is a novel of suspense in the tradition of Peter Temple’s Truth. With glorious writing harnessed to a gripping narrative, it observes celebrity, masculinity—humanity—with clear-eyed lyricism and exhilarating narrative drive. Jock Serong’s first novel, Quota, won the 2015 Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction. The Rules of Backyard Cricket was shortlisted for the 2017 Victorian Premier’s Award for Fiction, and was a finalist in the 2017 Mystery Writers of America Edgar Awards and the 2017 Indie Book Awards. On the Java Ridge won the Colin Roderick Award and the international Staunch Book Prize in 2018. Jock lives with his family on Victoria’s far west coast. ‘The Rules of Backyard Cricket by Jock Serong, while classified as ‘crime’, is a compelling literary novel dissecting toxic sporting culture and its fallout.’ Paddy O’Reilly, Australian Book Review, 2016 Books of the Year ‘The Rules of Backyard Cricket got the thumbs up from everyone.’ Favourite Fiction for 2016, Avenue Bookstore ‘My favourite reading experience of the year (and I don’t even like cricket).’ Heather Taylor Johnson, Sydney Morning Herald’s Year in Reading ‘Blow me down if I didn’t hang on every word.’ Clare Wright, Best Books of 2016, Australian ‘One of the great novels written about sport...Delicious. It’s the top read of the summer.’ Stuff NZ ‘A deeply interesting novel about sibling rivalry, family, masculinity, and the game of cricket...Serong is a talented storyteller, and he brings this unusual world to life.’ Booklist ‘Merges my childhood dreamscape of hot days and sporting ambition with a page-turning thriller set within the rot of professional sport. Beautifully Melbourne. Get on it!’ Tony Wilson ‘Readers who have fallen in love with Australian mysteries, thrillers and crime novels have a whole world to discover with fantastic authors bringing the southern hemisphere to life...As in the UK, cricket is a national passion in Australia and Jock Serong delves into the murky world of professional sportsmen.’ Jane Harper, Daily Mail

In C. L. R. James's classic Beyond a Boundary, the sport is cricket and the scene is the colonial West Indies. Always eloquent and provocative, James--the "black Plato," (as coined by the London Times)--shows us how, in the rituals of performance and conflict on the field, we are watching not just prowess but politics and psychology at play. Part memoir of a boyhood in a black colony (by one of the founding fathers of African nationalism), part passionate celebration of an unusual and unexpected game, Beyond a Boundary raises, in a warm and witty voice, serious questions about race, class, politics, and the facts of colonial oppression. Originally published in England in 1963 and in the United States twenty years later (Pantheon, 1983), this second American edition brings back into print this prophetic statement on race and sport in society.

After Chester lands, in the Times Square subway station, he makes himself comfortable in a nearby newsstand. There, he has the good fortune to make three new friends: Mario, a little boy whose parents run the falling newsstand, Tucker, a fast-talking Broadway mouse, and Tucker's sidekick, Harry the Cat. The escapades of these four friends in bustling New York City makes for lively listening and humorous entertainment. And somehow, they manage to bring a taste of success to the nearly bankrupt newsstand. Join Chester Cricket and his friends in this classic children's book by George Selden, with illustrations by Garth Williams. The Cricket in Times Square is a 1961 Newbery Honor Book.

Cricket is a strange game. It is a team sport that is almost entirely dependent on individual performance. Its combination of time, opportunity and the constant threat of disaster can drive its participants to despair. To survive a single delivery propelled at almost 100 miles an hour takes the body and brain to the edges of their capabilities, yet its abiding image is of the gentle village green, and the glorious absurdities of the amateur game. In The Meaning of Cricket, Jon Hotten attempts to understand this fascinating, frustrating and complex sport. Blending legendary players, from Vivian Richards to Mark Ramprakash, Kevin Pietersen to Ricky Ponting, with his own cricketing story, he explores the funny, moving and melancholic impact the game can have on an individual life.

Curious about the game of cricket? Start here! Cricket For Dummies, Third Edition will help you understand the basics of cricket, the internationally popular sport that has leagues around the globe. With this guide, you can enjoy watching matches, and even set up a casual game with friends. The book includes clear explanations of the rules, step-by-step guides to strategy and tactics, and info on all the most popular tournaments around the globe. Learn about the cricket greats of today and yesterday, plus get updates on the latest developments, including Major League Cricket and the Cricket World Cup. This new edition of Cricket For Dummies is a fascinating and thorough introduction to the sport, in the classic, easy-to-understand Dummies style. Learn the laws of cricket so you can watch games and follow league play Set up a game of cricket and play with your friends Get the latest updates in the cricket world, including upcoming must-watch tournaments Figure out the strategies and techniques that make cricket so interesting Cricket For Dummies, Third Editionis a valuable resource for new fans who want to understand the game of cricket.

Shortlisted for the Cricket Writers Club 'Book of the Year' 2022 and the Sunday Times Sports Book Awards 'Cricket Book of the Year' 2023 In telling the story of cricket from the bottom up, Different Class demonstrates how the "quintessentially English" game has done more to divide, rather than unite, the English. In 1963, the West Indian Marxist C.L.R. James posed the deceptively benign question: "What do they know of cricket, who only cricket know?" A challenge to the public to re-consider cricket and its meaning by placing the game in its true social, political and economic context, James was, all too subtly, attempting to counter the game’s orthodox history that, he argued, had played a key role in the formation of national culture. As a consequence, he failed, and the history of cricket in England has retained the same stresses and lineaments as it did a century ago — until now. In examining recreational rather than professional (first-class) cricket, Different Class does not simply challenge the widely accepted orthodoxy of English cricket, it demonstrates how the values and belief systems at its heart were, under the guise of amateurism, intentionally developed in order to divide the English along class lines at every level of the game. If the creation of opposing class-based cricket cultures in the North and South of England grew out of this process, the institutional structures developed by those in charge of English cricket continue to discriminate. But, as much as the exclusion of Black and South Asian cricketers from the recreational mainstream is the most obvious example, it is social class that remains the greatest barrier to participation in what used to be the national game.