Cricket Explained (A Beginner's Guide to the Great Global Pastime)

Discover cricket in this updated edition of Cricket Explained: your guide to understanding one of the world's most strategic and eccentric sports.

This is the definitive beginner's guide to the game of cricket, from the singular voice of Rob Eastaway, a true aficionado of the sport. Told through engaging anecdotes and Eastaway’s unmatched humor, this updated classic grabs you by the hand and takes you along for a comprehensive tour of cricket. Here, you will gain a range of knowledge from the game's fundamentals—basic laws, terminology, equipment—to the finer points of strategy, individual playing styles, and cricket lore.

To keep things accessible, this book includes a combined glossary/index for easy reference and lighthearted, explanatory illustrations by British cartoonist Mark Stevens. So even if you don't know "short leg" from "silly mid off", or a leg break from a googly, you'll come away from Cricket Explained with an understanding for this truly international sport which, like baseball, is loved both for its elegant simplicity and its vexing complexity.

Among the topics covered in Cricket Explained's concise, user-friendly entries are:

-Cricket's history
-Twenty20 and other forms of cricket
-Making sense of the action on the field
-Batters and the batting order
-Bowlers and their individual styles
-Fielders and fielding positions
-Tactics
-Scoring and statistics
-How, like chess, a game can be won or sometimes drawn