AIBU to ask you if you understand the rules of cricket?

[Flyingfish2019]

Have to say I am not a Brit and had very little exposure if cricket but whenever I hear about it it sounds like it is a game with circa 5000 hard to remember rules and circa 30.000 exceptions from that rules and cannot be fun at all.
Is this just me?

I have no idea how cricket is played apart from someone hits a ball and runs.

Nope, my dad is huge fan and has tried to explain the rules to me. I have a better grasp of quantum physics than the rules of cricket.

I have a very basic grasp of the rules as I had to watch XH play. I learnt how to score just to try and make it interesting (it didn't work).

The basics, yes. The details, not really.

I know the basics, but not the finer details. Even in a sport like F1, which I love, I've not read the rulebook in a couple of decades. Cricket has a lot of confusing terminology designed to stump (sorry) the outsider, googly, chinaman and so on.

No, I don't like cricket

Yes. The beauty of it is that the basics are really simple - most number of runs wins. How those are restricted by time or wickets depends on the format but that's the basis. Then depending on how interested you are you can learn more and more of the subtleties.

Now rugby, that's a mystery to me.

@contrmary

I know the basics, but not the finer details. Even in a sport like F1, which I love, I've not read the rulebook in a couple of decades. Cricket has a lot of confusing terminology designed to stump (sorry) the outsider, googly, chinaman and so on.

Don't forget silly mid off

Yes. Because of the Ashes in 2005 when suddenly the whole country, even the hard as nails little scrotes in my NEET group who I was working with at the time, became interested in and talked about cricket.

I don't get most of the umpire hand signals though.

Someone hits a ball with a bat then some other people run around and then then sometimes someone catches the ball and sometimes bits of wood fall off other bits of wood and people clap.

Yes I do

I can’t get my head round the different sorts of spin bowling though - off break, googlies- all that malarkey. It’s actually a really brilliant game to watch when you get the hang of it, particularly Test cricket. I love the way a really tight match ebbs and flows over the course of five days. And sorry to lower the tone but the sight of a sweaty Jimmy Anderson charging down the wicket in his cricket white is my idea of sexy!!!

Yes I understand most, perhaps not the finer details. One summer I watched all the test matches and have enjoyed watching cricket ever since. I especially like watching it from a hot sunny place when we've got snow and horrible weather here.

Now rugby.........tried to watch that a few times and can make nothing of it.

Well, actually, a little more than my grasp on the rules of rugby. Both sports I have watched live and, despite being married to a rugby obsessive, I still can't understand what is going on in rugby beyond recognising when a try has been scored. Cricket, at least, has the advantage of being played slowly. You can attend a cricket match, read a book or do some knitting, take a loo break, go to the refreshment tent, and still not miss any more action that perhaps a couple of runs and a maiden over.

Oh crossed posts with you @RaraRachael. How amusing

Yes - and I find it way easier to understand than American Football or even Baseball.

I have a better grasp of quantum physics than the rules of cricket.

Literally this.

DH has explained the rules at least ten times to me. It's like it goes in one ear and out of the other.

Yes, enough to understand roughly what they're trying to do at any one point. Basically there's a continuing tension because as the defending side you don't have enough people to stop the ball running towards the boundary for runs and at the same time have people up near the bat for catches and run-outs. So you're always heaving to balance the two depending on who's batting at the moment, the skills of your bowlers, and whetehr the state of the weather/ground suits them, how many runs you can afford to let them get. It's fascinating.

I have watched test matches in Pakistan. Yes, I quite definitely understand the rules and it's a wonderful game. They're actually quite easy, the only thing that's a bit difficult is the level of variation in describing fielding positions. You only really need to understand cover, slips, midwicket, square, mid-off. I'm sure you know the basics anyway. It's often hard to spot LBW but the technology makes it easy to see in the replays. And the other two most common ways of getting out are the bails getting knocked off (bowled) or the ball is caught by a fielder off the bat. Basically as soon as the batsman leaves his wicket (aka crease), the ball must not touch the bails, or he's out. But he has to leave the crease to make runs, unless he hits it for four (to boundary) or six (over boundary). A lot of the knowledge is just terminology. I could talk about this all day.

Yep .... I used to score for the local team, but I was a fan long before then. It’s really quite simple.

It's the most boring thing to be televised. Footage of a field with blokes standing around in white clothes (totally impractical), then a microscopic ball in the sky. Then they go in for tea. They may come out again if it's not getting dark or if it's raining.

It's actually a pretty simple sport in essence

The methods by which you do this, and the actual genuinely interesting but, are best described as tactics rather than rules.

Once you understand the structure of the game then the rules seem pretty obvious. Understanding the minutiae of it doesn't increase initial enjoyment imo

I know enough to understand what's going on, and to know that I will never willingly watch it. Don't ask me to identify fielding positions or the Duckworth Lewis method though.

Back in 2005 when the country went cricket mad, my df tried and failed to explain the rules to me. Still don't get it. And when I do think I've grasped them something Happens and I'm confused again

I also don't get know the game equates to the way they report the scores on the news

Yes. I pretty much hate all sport and have never played (or really properly watched) cricket, but I was brought up in a cricket-mad household so have learned the rules through constant exposure. They're not very complicated really.

You all have to watch this: