Cricket in 20: The over and bowling

The pitch is a twenty-two-yard strip of prepared clay with a wicket at each end. A wicket is three vertical stumps topped by two small bails. Painted lines called creases mark the batter's and bowler's ground: the popping crease defines where a batter is safe and where a bowler must land his front foot. The bowler runs in and delivers from one wicket toward a batter defending the other. Everything in the game is organized around these two wickets and the strip between them.

Runs are the currency of cricket. Batters score by hitting the ball and running to the opposite crease before the fielders can break the wicket; each completed length of the pitch is one run, and they may run several. A ball that reaches the boundary along the ground is worth four; one cleared on the full is worth six. Batters need not run and will often defend or leave deliveries, waiting for a scoring chance. The two batters swap ends on odd numbers of runs, deciding who is on strike.

An over consists of six legal deliveries bowled from one end by a single bowler, after which play switches to the other end and a different bowler takes over. No bowler may bowl two overs in succession. In limited-overs cricket each bowler is capped, ten overs in a fifty-over ODI, four in a T20. Bowlers vary pace, swing, seam, and spin to beat the bat, and are judged on wickets taken and on economy, the average runs conceded per over.