South Africa Tees Off Against West Indies in Cricket Test Match

Today’s cricket bout between South Africa and the West Indies: Quinton de Kock of South Africa is eyeing up a pitch during the 1^st test. At the moment, today’s game has ceased: the West Indies has yet to get up since South Africa has scored an astronomical 552 runs — with highlights being Stiaan van Zyl scoring 101 runs in his debut and Hashim Amla scoring a whooping 208 runs. Best of all, the West Indies will have to wait to go against South Africa’s best Dale Steyn, who is one of four players who have yet to bat.

Now for most Americans who do not know, cricket is quite a long game that like the West Indies and South Africa match can go on for several days. So players could be up for long periods of time, with the inning only ending if ten of the eleven batsmen are out: a player can get out if the ball is caught on a fly, the wicket is broken while someone is at bat or running, as well as a multitude of other more complicated reasons.

As for scoring, there are two batters on the field at a time and they are always by the wickets, which there are two that happen to be parallel from each other. When the at bat player hits the ball and both teammates switch sides, then that team scores a point. But again, they need to cross the line before the opposite wicket to secure that point. And finally, once the first team goes through all of their players, the opposing team gets a chance to bat: to win all they would need to do is score more points than the other team. However, in Test cricket, the longest variation of the sport, the two teams play a four-inning match — which as previously stated means that it will take place over the course of a few days.

Article by Anthony Falco