Man, I don't understand. The basics of Cricket are very easy. I will explain it right now:
- Two teams consisting of 11 players
- One team bats, the other bowls & fields
- Instead of 4 bases like baseball there's two, with a batsman at both of them (only one is bowled to) and they have things called wickets
- Someone bowls the ball overarm to the batsman
- If the bowled ball hits the wicket, or hits his leg in front of the wicket (ie: was blocked from hitting the wicket by his leg) he is out
- If the batsman hits the ball then he and the off-batsman (ie: the one currently not batting) make a decision to run or not based on how far the ball is from a fielder.
- If the batsmen run once then obviously the off-batsman then becomes the one being bowled to.
- There is a line near each wicket called a crease. If either batsman is running and is outside that crease then the fielders will try to throw the ball at the wicket to get him out. It's like tagging a batsman while running in baseball, I guess.
- If a batsman hits the ball with any part of the bat and a fielder catches the ball before it hits the ground then that batsman is out.
- If the batsman hits the ball and it reaches the outer boundary of the field (ie: the wall between the field and the spectators) then it is treated specially. If it hits it in any way but does not go over it it is counted as four points and the batsmen don't need to run. If it goes over the boundary on the full then it is six points.
- Bowling is done in sets of six. These are called "overs". At the end of each over the bowler swaps ends and bowls to the opposite wicket, no matter which batsman is currently at which wicket.
- There needs to be 2 batsmen on the field to continue, so if 10 batsmen get out that team is done batting and it's the other team's turn to bat.
- Each team bats either once or twice and whichever team gets the most runs by the end of the game is the winner.
I guess maybe the confusing part is that there are a few different types of games. Cricket can be played in either a limited overs style or not, depending on the game. In a limited overs style game (usually for one-day matches or Twenty20) there are 50 (or 20) overs to an innings, so in addition to trying not to get all-out you've got a limited number of balls to make the highest score you can. Limited overs is generally the easiest to understand because one team bats for 50 overs, then the other, then someone wins. There is also another type of game where the overs are not limited, and each team has to bat twice. I think that these games are played over five days, and each team has to have two innings or else the game ends in a draw. Because of this there's all sorts of tactical shit that goes down whereby a team Captain can declare his team's batting innings over once they've reached a high enough score so that there's more time to get the other innings over with and ensure it doesn't wind up a draw, or if a team is not scoring very well but not able to be dismissed they waste time so that they can salvage a draw instead of a loss. That sort of thing.
Man, and I don't really even watch cricket.