SPORTZWIKI presents to you a two-part series consisting of the Top 24 unknown facts about the Gentleman’s game. Today, we look at the first 12 mesmerising facts about our favorite sport.
Cricket, our beloved game, is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams comprising 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard pitch. One team bats… okay, why am I telling you guys all this? Ofcourse you are well acquainted with the rules of the game, but how well do you know your favorite game?
1. Cricket is the second most popular game on the planet, second only to football. Cricket in it’s early days was thought of to be a child’s game, not to be played by serious adults. How the game has evolved!
2. The longest cricket match in history took place in 1939 between England and South Africa. The match lasted for a staggering 14 days, and the spoils were shared.
3. In the year 1788, the ‘Laws of Cricket’ were born. The laws have been penned by the Marylebone Cricket Club.
4. The ICC, earlier known as Imperial Cricket Conference, was formed in 1909 as the governing body of the game of cricket. Today, it is known as the International Cricket Council.
5. A match between Barbados and British Guyana way back in 1946 is famous for a 14 ball over in which there were no wides or no-balls. The 8-ball over was in force back then, but the extra six deliveries were due to umpire miscounting! How can the umpire be so poor in mathematics we ask!?
6. Sachin Tendulkar is actually the first ever batsman to be dismissed(run out) by using the television replays and the assistance of the third umpire. Jonty Rhodes was the fielder.
Guess what? On the very next day in the same test match, Rhodes himself was run-out by the little master Sachin Tendulkar. Sweet revenge huh?
7. The only law of cricket that has stood the test of time is the length of the pitch. Every other law has been modified in some way or the other.
8. Now this is a stat that is sure to blow your mind! In the first ever test in 1877, Australia beat England by 45 runs. 100 years later in the Centenary test, the result was exactly the same!
9. The six-ball over was introduced in 1900.
10. Geoffrey Boycott holds the record of facing the first ever ball in ODI cricket. Graham Mc-Kenzie was the bowler.
11. Cricket may not be an olympic sport nowadays, but it has appeared in the Olympics on two previous occasions. The first time was in 1896 in Athens – however there were not enough teams to compete, so the competition didn’t take place. Later in 1900, only two teams competed – Great Britain and France. Great Britain won the gold medal after defeating France.
12. Shahid Afridi used a bat borrowed from Waqar Younis to score what was then the fastest ever ODI century, in 1999 off just 37 deliveries. Corey Anderson recently broke the record by a single ball after destroying the West Indies attack.
