10. Match Details

The Toss

Before play the captain will inspect the pitch. Based on the pitch and weather conditions, he will select his final 11 players. If the pitch is soft or dusty, spinners are selected; if the pitch is hard, additional fast bowlers are selected at the expense of spinners.
Half an hour before the start of play, the two captains under the supervision of the umpires toss a coin to determine who bats first. The captain who wins the toss, gets the option either to bat or bowl.

Bowled Out

Getting Bowled Out is nothing but getting all 10 wickets, before 50 overs are up. If you can bowl a team out, then that reduces the score the opposition could have scored, had they batted the full 50 overs. The team that is chasing a total, usually is more susceptible to getting bowled out.

Should I bat first or second?

Batting First

If the team is uncertain about the nature of the pitch or simply wants to play safe, they bat first. If the opposition bowling is strong, batting first is a good option.

Sometimes, the nature of the pitch deteriorates (i.e. makes batting difficult) as the game progresses, hence batting first is also a better option.

Another advantage of batting first is that once you have got a total on board; the other team still has to chase it, and anything could happen once they chase. Most of the weaker teams achieved great upsets over fancied teams by batting first and bowling the opposition out.

Batting Second

The captain opts for batting second, if he is confident that his team can successfully chase any total. You know your target, and you don't have to worry what total to set. All you have to do is to limit the opposition to a low score, and bat well to successfully chase the target.

If the pitch does not deteriorate (i.e. conditions for batting gets more difficult as the game goes on) batting second, is a definitely a better option.

Another advantage of batting second is during day-night games, played under lights. In tropical venues, the ball collects a lot a dew in the outfield. This results in a poor grip on the ball. Hence bowlers lose some control, as regards to the spinning and swing of the ball.

Field Restrictions

As we have seen, the field is divided into the Infield and Outfield. In addition to these, there is a close-catching position. This is a circle 15 yards (13.716m) radius around the batsman.

In the first 15 overs of the game, the captain can only put 2 fielders in the outfield. Also there has to be a minimum of 2 players in the close catching positions, excluding the bowler and wicket-keeper.

After the 15 overs, the restrictions are relaxed, but there can be no more than 5 fielders in the outfield, standing at the boundary.

Partnerships

Fall of Wicket (FoW):

When a wicket is lost (person out), the score at which he is out, is called the Fall of Wicket.

A FoW scorecard might look like this: The first number is the wicket fallen and the next number was the score at which he got out.

1/4; 2/34; 3/68; 4/130; 5/145; 6/189; 7/210; 8/222; 9/245; 10/250

A Partnership is the number of runs scored between the 2 batsmen since the last Fall of Wicket.


In the above example, the 1st wicket partnership was worth 4 runs, the 2nd worth 30 runs, 3rd worth 34 runs and so on. It is the difference between 2 consecutive FoW's.

Wins

If the team batting first wins the match, then they are said to have won the match by "n" runs. Where 'n' is the difference between their score & the losing team's score.

If the team batting second wins the match, then they are said to have won the match by "n" wickets. Where 'n' is the number of not-out batsmen.