Cricket
is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an
oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long
pitch. One team bats, trying 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. Here are some interesting
facts about this game :-1. The game of cricket is the second most popular game in the world, second only to soccer. Cricket in its early days in England was considered a child's game, not to be played by serious adults.
2. The longest cricket match in history occurred in 1939 between England and South Africa. The match lasted for 14 days and finally ended in a tie.
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| Origins of Cricket !!! |
4. Sachin Tendulkar is the first batsman to be dismissed (run out) by using the television replays by the third umpire, Jonty Rhodes was the fielder. Next day,in the same test match,Jonty Rhodes was given run out by the umpire.This time the fielder was none other than Sachin Tendulkar.!!
5. The ICC was formed in 1909. The Imperial Cricket Conference was formed to govern the laws of cricket. The ICC is known today as the International Cricket Conference.
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| ICC Logo |
7. SHAHID AFRIDI used a bat borrowed from Waqar Younis to score the fastest century in a One-Day International.!!
8. The only law of Cricket that has not had any changes or modifications is the length of the pitch.
9. Geoff.Boycott was the one who faced the first ball in One-Day cricket. Graham Mc-Kenzie was the bowler.
10. In the first ever Test in 1877, Australia beat England by 45 runs. 100 yrs later,in the Centenary Test ,the result was exactly the same.!!
11. The 6 balls over were first introduced in 1900.
12. Hassan Raza is the youngest player to play an International Test match as he was 14 years 227 days at that time!
13. Cricket has appeared in the Olympics only twice. The first time was in 1896 in Athens, however, when it came down to it there were not enough teams to compete so the competition did not occur. Then, in 1900 at the Paris Olympics, only two teams were able to compete: Great Britain and France. The winner, Great Britain, received the gold medal.
14. The first century in Test cricket was scored by Charlie Bannerman of Australia in 1877.
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| Sachin Tendulkar !!! |
15. The first bowler to take 10 wickets in a Test innings was Jim Laker in 1956.
16. In a test match in Faisalabad in 1997-98 ,Mushtaq Ahmed was bowling to Pat Symcox.Symcox missed the ball,which went on to knock the middle stump.However,the heat had fused together the bails and they did not fall.Symcox went on to make 81,his second highest test score..!!
17. Today most of batsman records belong to Sachin Tendulkar: First 200 in ODIs, Most Runs in ODIs and Test Matches, 100 International Hundreds and so so on...
18. Geoff.Boycott was the one who faced the first ball in One-Day cricket. Graham Mc-Kenzie was the bowler.
19. Only four test series have ended 0-0 with all five matches being drawn. India was involved in three of them, including two in a row against Pakistan.
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| History of Cricket Bats !!! |
21. The first player to score 100 runs and take 10 wickets in the same Test was Australia’s Alan Davidson in 1960.22. The first batsman to share in 50 century partnerships in Tests was India’s Sunil Gavaskar.
23. Sri-Lanka lost their last six wickets for 8 runs off 371 balls in the game vs. Australia at Melbourne in January 1990.
24. Four Stumps !!!! -- An experimental game was played at Lords in 1963 to look at the effects of adjusting two features of cricket : the size of the wickets and the LBW rule,in order to create a wicket of width 11 inches rather than 9 inches,four stumps were used in that trial match.
