CRICKET I. UNDERSTANDING THE GAME

The Cricket is the second most popular sport on the planet, with some 2.5 billion fans, mainly from Asia, Australia and the UK (the number one sport is football with some 3.5 billion fans). Cricket is therefore a sport that deserves our agronomic attention. Obviously, in order to achieve suitable sports surfacesIn order to be able to play the game, it is necessary to know what these are, what characteristics they have and what behaviour is required in the game.

The playing surfaces are very clearly differentiated, the Pitch and the OutfieldThe two are very different from each other. The Pitch is a surface with a texture whose clay content is in the region of 27-33%, which gives it very different characteristics to the OutfieldThe sandy texture is similar to those found on a football pitch. The playing field has an oval shape and in the central area there is a brown rectangle, which is what we know as the ".Pitch"where the most important events of the game take place.

In the Pitchthere are some "sticks" (wickets) which are kept in equilibrium. The game consists of one player from team A (bowler) must try to eliminate the player of team B (batsman) trying to bring down the wickets when throwing the ball. The batsman will try to defend them by batting the ball as far away as possible to run to the other end of the Pitch before it is returned to the pitcher. Another player from team B shall be on the pitcher's side to run to the opposite end when his teammate hits the ball and, in this way, each time they both reach the different ends of the Pitch, sign up for a race (run) . If the ball is thrown far, both team-mates of team B must travel as many times as they can across the Pitch to score the highest number of runs. The batsman for the next round shall be the player who ends up at the end of the Pitch from where it is batted when the ball is returned to the pitcher.

The game is extremely popular in regions such as India, Pakistan, New Zealand and the UK.

A batsman shall be eliminated if he is knocked down (or unintentionally knocks down himself) any of the wicketsif he hits the ball twice, if he stops the ball with his feet or if any player of the opposing team manages to catch the batted ball on the fly or knocks down the wickets. At this point, another player must enter as batsman (making the change in less than two minutes or he/she will also be eliminated), in this way the players will be eliminated until only one player is left and has no partner, and the game will be over. During the game the teams alternate, sometimes batting and sometimes pitching. The winning team is the one that scores the most runs.

The characteristics required for the different cricket surfaces will be achieved through a sound agronomic management. In the following posts, we will explain which parameters are the most important and how we can achieve them.