Very Basics of Cricket: Pt. 3 Trivia Quiz

Answer: Burping the Umpire

"Handled the Ball" is fairly self explanatory - and usually comes into play when a batsman uses his hand to prevent the ball hitting his wicket, or being caught by a fielder - "Obstructing the Field" comes into play in much the same circumstances. "Timed Out" is a relatively recent introduction, designed to stop unecessary time wasting - the incoming batsman must enter the field of play within two minutes of the preceding batsman leaving the field - though this time measure has now been reduced to 90 seconds in some forms of one day cricket.

"Burping the Umpire" was just TOO ridiculous - wasn't it?

Answer: The batsman's helmet

With hindsight, it's quite amazing really that the protective helmet wasn't introduced much earlier - a hard, round object being aimed at your head at speeds of 90mph and more can cause significant damage - and has done throughout the annals of cricket.

It wasn't until the likes of Dennis Amiss, Mike Brearley and Sunil Gavaskar started experimenting with variations on a motorcycle helmet in the 1970's that this sort of protective headgear was first seen at all publicly, and it didn't take long for the helmet to become a standard piece of equipment in every cricketer's kit bag.

In the UK, it is now compulsory for every cricketer under the age of 18 to wear a helmet at all times when batting, even if this is only whilst practicing.

Answer: The English team had to catch a boat home

Known as the "Timeless Test", they still hadn't managed to achieve a result after 12 days - so the English side reluctantly had to pack their bags, and board their ship for home!

This is the longest "First Class" cricket match on record - though in June 2006, members of the Citipointe Church of Brisbane, in Australia, managed to play a match non stop for 34 hours (the majority of it in heavy rain) to raise money for victims of the Asian Tsunami.

Answer: the Blackcaps

Although the New Zeland team have sported black caps for many a year, the nickname "The Blackcaps" is a fairly recent phenomenon. The Khaki Warriors would not be such a ridiculous alternative - in the 1980's, the New Zealand one day team played in a sort of Khaki/ Cream type uniform - a distinctive shirt still worn by many of their fans to this day.

Answer: Life

A batsman usually asks the umpire for a "guard" at the beginning of his innings - this is designed to give the batsman an idea about his position in relation to the stumps. It's quite a quaint practice really - the batsmen will hold his bat sideways on to the unpire, ask for the guard, and the umpire will literally say "left a bit, right a bit etc." until the bat is positioned in precisely the point that the batsman has asked - usually covering either the middle stump, the leg stump - or half way between the two - a matter of fractions of an inch at a time!

Answer: An invasion of bees had the players ducking for cover

The batsmen were lucky not to be given out L.Bee.W., by all accounts ! Although it probably wasn't much fun for the players at the time, it makes for hilarious viewing - and you can see a clip of it at the following URL if you need to see it to bee-lieve it;

http://www.dekhona.com/sports-videos/aibgjouono

Answer: Caught

Statistical analysis show that in excess of 60% of dismissals are by the batsman being caught (where the ball is hit in the air, and caught by a fielder before it touches the ground - just as in Baseball), with the next most common modes being bowled (where the ball hits the stumps, removing one or both of the bails), L.B.W. (leg before wicket - where the ball usually hits the batsman's leg pads, preventing the ball from hitting the wickets), stumped and run out.

There are another six modes of dismissal (hit wicket, obstructing the field, hit ball twice, handled ball, timed out and retired out) but these occur very rarely.

Answer: Duckworth-Lewis system

Many different systems have been trialled over the years, but the Duckworth-Lewis system has proved to be the one that has prevailed over all others. It is a statistically based system which takes into account the amount of runs required, the amount of overs left, and the amount of wickets standing. Sounds simple enough - but I'd challenge even the most ardent of cricket fans to be able to calculate it accurately without the use of a computer!

Answer: 25 overs

The original One Day Internationals (ODIs) in the 1970's were usually played over a 60 overs a side format. This was reduced to 50 overs in the 1980's, and has remained as the standard length of ODI cricket. However, a new phenomenon has appeared in the 21st Century - Twenty20 cricket, with the first Twenty20 World Cup taking place in 2007, and the introduction of the IPL in India and the Stanford Twenty20's in the West Indies has taken this exciting format to massive levels of interest wordwide.

25 over cricket has never been a standard match length in international cricket, although some ODIs have been reduced to that length due to circumstances.

Answer: USA

Many of the Founding Fathers were known to be keen cricket players and supporters, and records exist from the 1770's of cricket fixtures between recognized clubs in the USA - indeed, it is on the record of the US Congress in the 1780's that John Adams said "If the leaders of cricket clubs could be called "presidents", there was no reason why the leader of the new nation could not be called the same!"

There are no records of any Australian cricket teams prior to the 1800s, and although the famous soccer team, AC Milan, was formed from the cricket team established in Milan in 1899, there is no record of any earlier clubs in Italy.

There is very little evidence of cricket ever being played in Burkina Faso prior to the 21st Century - though the sport is currently enjoying a huge growth there, with ICC Affiliate membership a realistic aspiration.