Thanks to my friend Marty, I’ve learned about how this cryptic pastime actually works, and it’s not really that hard!

Okay, so there’s a few varieties: 20/20, 50/50, or a multi-day “test match.” The test match is more complicated, so I’ll focus on 20/20 or 50/50. That number refers to the number of “overs” you get, and 1 over = 6 bowls (1 bowl = 1 “pitch”, for baseball fans). So in a 20/20 match, each team gets 120 bowls.

There are two wickets in the field. The batter stands in front of one wicket, another guy on the batter’s team stands in front of the other wicket, and the bowler bowls to the batter.

• if the bowl hits the wicket, the batter is out, and that's a big deal. So the batter hits almost all of the bowls.
• if the bowl is wide or otherwise bad (like a "ball" in baseball), it's a redo and the batter's team gets 1 point. So that's rare.
• if the batter hits it:
• if it's caught on a fly, the batter is out. So the batter usually doesn't try to hit it up in the air.
• if it goes outside the boundary around the field in any direction on a fly, that's a "six", meaning the batter gets 6 points.
• similarly, if it goes outside the boundary on a bounce, that's a "four".
• otherwise, the batter and the other guy run back and forth between the two wickets as many times as they want. But if the fielding team gets the ball to the wicket and the batters aren't on base, the batter is out. So they usually run pretty conservatively. Usually a hit results in 0 runs or 1 run, and sometimes 2.