Australian are famous for their prowess at sport. It is truly impressive, particularly given the relatively small population of my country. A good example of that we won the 2015 Cricket World Cup. Cricket? Huh? You don’t know anything about it, do you? Well, here’s one interesting fact: it is the world’s 2nd most popular sport.
Cricket is played by many Commonwealth countries, such as Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the West Indies, Pakistan, and (especially) India. Cricket is a summer sport in Australia, since it cannot be played in the rain or in bad light, given how hard, small, and slippery a cricket ball is, and how fast it can travel when hit with a bat.
The game is similar in concept to baseball, but, as the pictures show, the equipment is slightly different. A bowler (Picture 1, middle) bowls the ball; the batsman (Picture 2) tries to hit it away, and the fielders (Picture 1, front) try to catch it (making the batsman ‘out’), or throw it into the stumps (those three sticks in the middle of both pictures), while the batsmen run up and down the ‘pitch’ (the pathway between the two sets of sumps) in order to accrue runs.
Well, that’s cricket in a nutshell – a very popular sport in my country, and Australia is officially the best in the world [well, this year, anyway].