THE RULES OF CRICKET

For all of you who don't understand Cricket, I give you this....

There are two sides, one out in the field and one in.

Each man that's in the side that's in goes out and when he's out he comes back in and the next man goes in, (that is out) until he's out at which point he comes in.

When all the men in the side that's in are out, the side that's out comes in and the side that's been in goes out and tries to get those coming in out.

Sometimes you get men still in and not out!

When both sides have been in and out including the not outs, that's the end of the game.

Unless the game is washed out, in which case no one gets to go in, but everyone stays inside and no one gets out.

The bowling takes place in overs, in which the bowler can hurl the ball as fast as he can at the wicket to get the batsman out, and the batsman who is in tries to hit the ball as hard as he can.

They seem to enjoy this sort of thing, though no one knows how the ball feels about it all.

An over lasts six balls, after which the over is over, unless it is Australian, when there are two more balls before the over is really over.

Each match takes five days.

It takes this long because they need time to figure out who is in, i.e. out, and who is out, i.e. in, and who is not out, but not yet in.

There are one-day matches, which oddly are usually played at night these days (which may make you wonder why they don't call them one-night matches), in which everyone is in a hurry to get in and stay out.