Very Basics of Cricket: Pt. 1 Trivia Quiz

Answer: Wood

The main part of the bat has always been made of willow. These days, the handle is made of cane, spliced into the main body of the bat, and usually covered with a rubber or string "grip".

Answer: Leather outer/ cork inner

The outside is made usually of four quarters of leather, stitched together by string. A lacquer is usually applied to this finished item. Take away the leather, and you get miles and miles of string wound around a cork core, and then a funny little soft rubbery ball right in the middle.

Answer: Batter

With the massive rise in women's and girls' cricket worldwide, it has slowly moved from "batsman" to "batter", even if this does conjure up something you get on your sausage in a chip shop.

Answer: Bowler

The "chucker" option is an interesting one. Without going too much into the technicalities of bowling, the arm needs to remain fundamentally "straight" throughout the bowling action. Sometimes, this "rule" is inadvertently, or even deliberatley broken, and the "slang" term for this type of bowler is a "Chucker", so although you may hear this term associated with bowlers, it's not an official term.

Answer: Three stumps, two bails

When cricket was first played, the players would grab a couple of pieces of wicket fence as the "target" for the bowler to aim at.

Answer: More than 100

There are over 100 member countries of the ICC, 10 full playing Test members, who play official Test matches against each other, 33 Associate members and 58 Affiliate members, some of the more recent members include Guernsey, Myanmar, Peru, Mexico, Swaziland, Slovenia, and Cameroon.

Answer: Ireland

Australia, England, New Zealand, South Africa, India, Pakistan, and the West Indies have all played Women's and Men's matches. Sri Lanka's Women had also played one Test match, and Ireland's Women had also played a solitary Official Women's Test against India in 2000.

Answer: Don Bradman

Sir Don Bradman was voted as the greatest cricketer of the 20th Century in a poll of fans worldwide in 2001. Born in Cootamundra, New South Wales, he played 52 tests for Australia between 1928 and 1948, averaging an amazing 99.94 runs per innings as a batsmen. Very few other batsmen have averaged over 50 in Test cricket, so Sir Don's feat is truly remarkable. Johnny Wilkinson is a rugby player, Nick Faldo a golfer, and Geoff Hurst is a footballer who once scored 3 goals for England in a World Cup Soccer Final.

Answer: Rachel Heyhoe-Flint

Rachel Heyhoe-Flint was a successful batsman and captain of the England cricket team for over 20 years. When she retired from test cricket in 1979, she held the world record at the time for the highest score made by a woman in Test cricket of 179. Evonne Goolagong was an Australian tennis player of roughly the same era, Victoria Beckham is married to a famous English footballer as well as being better known as "Posh Spice", and Donna Bradman was just too good an opportunity to make up a name that might "stump" some people.

Answer: "Wisden Cricketers Almanac"

"Wisden" was first published by the cricketer John Wisden in 1864, as a reference book to "all things cricket". It is still published annually, and is as comprehensive a record that anyone would need of all the major contemporary cricketing data. "The Guinness Book of Records" probably has a handful of some of the major cricketing records, possibly half a column at most though in amongst all the other records it publishes. "Schott's Miscellany" probably has a couple of very obscure cricketing references in it somewhere.

The closest "Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management" comes to cricket is probably in her recipes for Yorkshire Pudding, or how to make the "batter" for it.