Playing time (cricket)
Encyclopedia
Games in the sport
Sport
A Sport is all forms of physical activity which, through casual or organised participation, aim to use, maintain or improve physical fitness and provide entertainment to participants. Sport may be competitive, where a winner or winners can be identified by objective means, and may require a degree...

 of cricket
Cricket
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...

 are played over a number of hours or days, making it one of the sports with the longest playing time, though sailing
Sailing
Sailing is the propulsion of a vehicle and the control of its movement with large foils called sails. By changing the rigging, rudder, and sometimes the keel or centre board, a sailor manages the force of the wind on the sails in order to move the boat relative to its surrounding medium and...

, yachting
Yachting
Yachting refers to recreational sailing or boating, the specific act of sailing or using other water vessels for sporting purposes.-Competitive sailing:...

, road cycling
Cycling
Cycling, also called bicycling or biking, is the use of bicycles for transport, recreation, or for sport. Persons engaged in cycling are cyclists or bicyclists...

 and rallying
Rallying
Rallying, also known as rally racing, is a form of auto racing that takes place on public or private roads with modified production or specially built road-legal cars...

 are sometimes longer. Typically, first-class cricket
First-class cricket
First-class cricket is a class of cricket that consists of matches of three or more days' scheduled duration, that are between two sides of eleven players and are officially adjudged first-class by virtue of the standard of the competing teams...

 matches are played over three to five days with at least six hours of cricket being played each day. One-day cricket
One-day cricket
Limited overs cricket, also known as one-day cricket and in a slightly different context as List A cricket, is a version of the sport of cricket in which a match is generally completed in one day, whereas Test and first-class matches can take up to five days to complete...

 matches last for six hours or more. Cricket therefore has special rules about intervals for lunch, tea and drinks as well as rules about when play starts and ends. These rules are outlined in Laws 15 (Intervals) and 16 (Start of play; cessation of play) in the Laws of cricket
Laws of cricket
The laws of cricket are a set of rules established by the Marylebone Cricket Club which describe the laws of cricket worldwide, to ensure uniformity and fairness. There are currently 42 laws, which outline all aspects of how the game is played from how a team wins a game, how a batsman is...

.

When the game is played

The game is only played in dry weather. Additionally, as in first-class cricket
First-class cricket
First-class cricket is a class of cricket that consists of matches of three or more days' scheduled duration, that are between two sides of eleven players and are officially adjudged first-class by virtue of the standard of the competing teams...

 it is not unusual for balls to be bowled at over 80mph, the game needs to be played in enough daylight for a batsman to be able to see the ball. Play is therefore halted when it rains (but not usually when it drizzles) and when there is bad light. Some one-day games are now played under floodlights, but, apart from few experimental games in Australia
Australian cricket team
The Australian cricket team is the national cricket team of Australia. It is the joint oldest team in Test cricket, having played in the first Test match in 1877...

, floodlights are not used for first-class games, including Test match
Test cricket
Test cricket is the longest form of the sport of cricket. Test matches are played between national representative teams with "Test status", as determined by the International Cricket Council , with four innings played between two teams of 11 players over a period of up to a maximum five days...

es. Apart from some experimental One Day International series in Australia's roofed Telstra Dome
Telstra Dome
Docklands Stadium is a multi-purpose sports and entertainment stadium in the Docklands precinct of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia...

, professional cricket is played outdoors.

These requirements mean that in England
English cricket team
The England and Wales cricket team is a cricket team which represents England and Wales. Until 1992 it also represented Scotland. Since 1 January 1997 it has been governed by the England and Wales Cricket Board , having been previously governed by Marylebone Cricket Club from 1903 until the end...

, Australia, New Zealand
New Zealand cricket team
The New Zealand cricket team, nicknamed the Black Caps, are the national cricket team representing New Zealand. They played their first in 1930 against England in Christchurch, New Zealand, becoming the fifth country to play Test cricket. It took the team until 1955–56 to win a Test, against the...

, South Africa and Zimbabwe
Zimbabwean cricket team
The Zimbabwean cricket team is a national cricket team representing Zimbabwe. It is administrated by Zimbabwe Cricket...

 the game is played in the summer. In the West Indies
West Indian cricket team
The West Indian cricket team, also known colloquially as the West Indies or the Windies, is a multi-national cricket team representing a sporting confederation of 15 mainly English-speaking Caribbean countries, British dependencies and non-British dependencies.From the mid 1970s to the early 1990s,...

, India
Indian cricket team
The Indian cricket team is the national cricket team of India. Governed by the Board of Control for Cricket in India , it is a full member of the International Cricket Council with Test and One Day International status....

, Pakistan
Pakistani cricket team
The Pakistan cricket team is the national cricket team of Pakistan. Pakistan, represented by the Pakistan Cricket Board , is a full member of the International Cricket Council, and thus participates in , and cricket matches....

, Sri Lanka
Sri Lankan cricket team
The Sri Lankan cricket team is the national cricket team of Sri Lanka. The team first played international cricket in 1926–27, and were later awarded Test status in 1981, which made Sri Lanka the eighth Test cricket playing nation...

 and Bangladesh
Bangladeshi cricket team
The Bangladesh national cricket team is a national cricket team representing Bangladesh. The team is administered by the Bangladesh Cricket Board . Bangladesh is a full member of the International Cricket Council with Test and One Day International status...

 games are played in the winter. In these countries the hurricane and typhoon season coincides with their summers. This has another effect. Games start earlier in these places than in the countries which play cricket as a summer sport. In these countries games start at around 9.30am rather than the 10.30am or 11am start time used in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, say, so that play for the day is complete before dusk, which may be as early as 5.30pm.

Starting and finishing play

A game or day starts when the umpire
Umpire (cricket)
In cricket, an umpire is a person who has the authority to make judgements on the cricket field, according to the Laws of Cricket...

 at the bowler's end calls ‘Play’. ‘Play’ is also called to restart the game after an interval or interruption. Before an interval in or interruption of play, and at the end of a match, the umpire at the bowler's end calls ‘Time’ and removes the bails
Bail (cricket)
In the sport of cricket, a bail is one of the two smaller sticks placed on top of the three stumps to form a wicket. The bails are used to determine when the wicket is broken, which in turn is one of the critical factors in determining whether a batsman is out bowled, stumped, run out or hit wicket...

 from both of the wicket
Wicket
In the sport of cricket the word wicket has several distinct meanings:-Definitions of wicket:Most of the time, the wicket is one of the two sets of three stumps and two bails at either end of the pitch...

s. The bowling side cannot make an appeal
Appeal (cricket)
In the sport of cricket, an appeal is the act of a player on the fielding team asking an umpire for a decision regarding whether a batsman is out or not. According to the Laws of Cricket, an umpire may not rule a batsman out unless the fielding side appeals...

 for a dismissal
Dismissal (cricket)
In the sport of cricket, a dismissal occurs when the batsman is out . Colloquially, the fielding team is also said to have snared, bagged or captured a wicket. At this point a batsman must discontinue batting and leave the field permanently for the innings...

 after ‘Time’ has been called.

The game finishes when the first of three things happens:
  1. There is a result, so that one of the teams has won or the team batting last has lost all its wickets with both teams having the same score thereby giving a tie;
  2. The later of the minimum number of overs
    Over (cricket)
    In the sport of cricket, an over is a set of six consecutive balls bowled in succession. An over is normally bowled by a single bowler. However, in the event of injury preventing a bowler from completing an over, it is completed by a teammate....

     for the last hour are completed and the agreed time for the end of the game has been reached (see notes below);
  3. If the players leave the field, either for adverse conditions of ground, weather or light, or in exceptional circumstances, and no further play is possible.


Notes:
  1. In one-day cricket
    One-day cricket
    Limited overs cricket, also known as one-day cricket and in a slightly different context as List A cricket, is a version of the sport of cricket in which a match is generally completed in one day, whereas Test and first-class matches can take up to five days to complete...

     the second of these is replaced by the requirement that the agreed number of overs has been reached.
  2. The term last hour can be a misnomer. One hour before the scheduled end of the game, the last hour starts. An agreed minimum number of overs (usually 15 in Test match
    Test cricket
    Test cricket is the longest form of the sport of cricket. Test matches are played between national representative teams with "Test status", as determined by the International Cricket Council , with four innings played between two teams of 11 players over a period of up to a maximum five days...

     cricket and 20 in other first-class cricket games) is bowled. The last hour therefore lasts either for the longer of 60 minutes, or the time it takes to bowl the agreed minimum number of overs. This rule is there to prevent time wasting by a team that looks likely to lose a game.
  3. Today, Test matches
    Test cricket
    Test cricket is the longest form of the sport of cricket. Test matches are played between national representative teams with "Test status", as determined by the International Cricket Council , with four innings played between two teams of 11 players over a period of up to a maximum five days...

     are played under a set of conditions agreed by the boards of the competing countries. These are highly standardised. Days are scheduled as six hours of playing time, but there is a requirement that a minimum of 90 six-ball overs are bowled, and the third session may run overtime if the over rate has been slower than this. If there is a change of innings, two overs are deducted from the requirement.
  4. If there are interruptions to play for weather or light, the scheduled stumps time may be extended by up to one hour to compensate (light permitting). If more than an hour's play is lost, time may be added on subsequent days.

Intervals

Because of the length of the game, there are a number of intervals that occur in a game of cricket. These are:
  • The period between close of play on one day and the start of the next day's play.
  • Intervals between innings
    Innings
    An inning, or innings, is a fixed-length segment of a game in any of a variety of sports – most notably cricket and baseball during which one team attempts to score while the other team attempts to prevent the first from scoring. In cricket, the term innings is both singular and plural and is...

    .
  • Intervals for meals (lunch and tea
    Tea (meal)
    Tea can refer to any of several different meals or mealtimes, depending on a country's customs and its history of drinking tea. However, in those countries where the term's use is common, the influences are generally those of the former British Empire...

    ).
  • Intervals for drinks.


There are special rules setting out the duration of each interval. The interval between innings lasts for 10 minutes.

Before the coin toss to determine which side bats first, the hours of play, including the timing and duration of intervals for meals or any non-standard interval, is agreed. Though if nine wickets are down when the agreed time for tea is reached so that the bowling team only needs one more wicket to end the batting team’s innings, tea is delayed to the earlier of that wicket being taken or 30 minutes elapsing. In a one-day game the teams may agree to take an interval for tea between the innings rather than have a separate interval. Also, the teams and umpires sometimes agree to have other intervals. This may be to allow the teams to be presented to an important visitor or to allow time for a presentation or acclamation when a player breaks a significant record. Other intervals may be varied slightly if a wicket falls just before the interval is due to be taken.

Drinks intervals are agreed at the start of each day, but are not taken during the last hour of the match. Drinks intervals are particularly important when the game is played in particularly hot climates. Games being played in heat of 40 degrees Celsius and above are not unknown. Drinks intervals may not last for more than 5 minutes.

Notable games

A number of games are notable for either their length or because they were played through adverse conditions that would usually see the game called off.

The longest Test

Test match
Test cricket
Test cricket is the longest form of the sport of cricket. Test matches are played between national representative teams with "Test status", as determined by the International Cricket Council , with four innings played between two teams of 11 players over a period of up to a maximum five days...

 cricket is international cricket played over 3 or more days. Nowadays almost all Test matches are scheduled over 5 days. In the past some Tests were ‘timeless’, that is, they were scheduled to be played to their conclusion regardless of how long that took. The longest Test on record was between South Africa and England in Durban
Durban
Durban is the largest city in the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal and the third largest city in South Africa. It forms part of the eThekwini metropolitan municipality. Durban is famous for being the busiest port in South Africa. It is also seen as one of the major centres of tourism...

, South Africa. The game started on 3 March 1939 and play continued on the 4th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 13th and the 14th. Play was scheduled for the 11th, but none was possible because of rain, giving 9 days of actual, and 10 days of scheduled play. By the evening of 14 March England were 316 and 654 for 5 chasing South Africa’s 530 and 481 needing just 42 more runs for victory. But England needed to leave Durban on the 15th to catch their boat home, so, despite being a ‘timeless’ Test, a draw was agreed. England’s 654 is the highest score ever recorded batting last (beating the next highest by over 200 runs).

External links

  • http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/344781.html Article on Cricinfo using light meter
    Light meter
    A light meter is a device used to measure the amount of light. In photography, a light meter is often used to determine the proper exposure for a photograph...

    s
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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