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It has, like baseball, its fastball bowlers, its control bowlers and those who specialize in slow, tricky teasers ("googlies"). The bowler gets up speed with a run of from, 10 to 50 feet, must not bend his elbow when delivering the ball. His chief aim is to knock down the batsman's wicket (see chart) for an out. The batsman, who defends the wicket, seldom tries to swat the ball out of the park (though over the fence, "a boundary," is an automatic six runs). He hopes to whack out a low grasscutter, since a ball caught on the fly is out. If he thinks he can make it, he runs for the other wicket (66 feet away) and a teammate, ready at the other wicket, trades places. Every time they change places successfully, they have scored a run. A man stays at bat until he has been bowled, caught out, run out or ruled "l.b.w."* If he is still in when his side has been retired, (i.e., when ten men are out) he "carries his bat."
Don't Slug, Please. Sometimes one batsman, alternating with a teammate, stays UD all afternoon. A 'half-century (50 runs) causes decorous applause; a century a little more. Australia's Bradman, the greatest player of the game today, now making a comeback after getting fibrositis while in the Army, once made 334 runs in an innings. Slugging for the fences, a la baseball, is considered unrefined.
The British, seeing G.I.s play baseball during the war, generally regarded it as a sissy game, like the one played by little girls & boys and called Rounders. When Babe Ruth tried his hand at cricket in a visit to England in 1935, he swatted the ball so hard that he broke the bat. He glowed: "I wish they would let me use a bat as wide as this in baseball."
* Leg before wicket: when the umpire rules that the batter's leg — -and not his bat — kept the ball from hitting the wicket.