Cricket
a way that the other player or pair cannot hit it back
Cricket is a sport which is played between two teams of
eleven players each who score runs (points) by running
between two sets of three small, wooden posts called
wickets. Each of the wickets is at one end of a rectangle of
flattened grass called the pitch. Around the pitch is a much
larger oval of grass called the cricket ground. The edge of
the cricket ground is often marked by a rope. If a player hits
the hard red ball to the rope, he gets four runs. If it gets
past the rope without hitting the ground, he gets six runs
which is the most runs you can get with one shot.
The game started in England in the 16th century. The
earliest definite reference to the sport is in a court case of
1598. The court in Guildford heard a coroner, John Derrick,
that when he was a scholar at the "Free School at
Guildford", fifty years earlier, "he and diverse of his fellows
did run and play [on the common land] at cricket and other
players". Later, the game spread to countries of the British
Empire in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Baseball
Baseball is a sport played on a field by two teams against
each other. In baseball, a player on one team throws a
small round ball at a player on the other team, who tries to
hit it with a bat. Then the player who hits the ball has to run
around the field. Players score points by running around in
a full circle around three markers on the ground called
bases, to back where they started, which is called home
plate. They have to do this without getting caught by the
players on the other team.
Baseball started in the United States in the 1700s and
1800s, but historians are not sure who invented it. Many
people in North America, South America, and East Asia play
baseball, but the sport is most popular in the United States
and Japan. In the U.S., baseball is called the national
pastime, because so many people in the United States used
to spend a lot of time playing or watching baseball games.
Today, though, most Americans follow football more than
baseball, especially when it comes time for the Super Bowl.
Badminton
Badminton is a sport for two or four people. The game is
either one player against one player or a team of two
players against another team of two players. Players use
rackets to hit a shuttlecock over a net.
The aim of the game is to hit the shuttlecock over the net in
properly before it hits the floor. Every time this is done, the
player or pair gets one point. They also get to serve. The
first player or pair to reach 21 points wins a game. The
winner of the match is the first to win 2 sets.
Badminton traces its history to a game called George
Cajoles, which was played in Pune, India in the 19th century
by the British military officers stationed there. This game
was taken by retired officers back to England where it
developed and quickly grew in popularity.
In 1877, the first set of written rules were arranged by the
newly formed Bath Badminton Club. The All England Open
Badminton Championships, the first badminton
competition in the world, was held in 1899. Badminton has
been an Olympic sport since 1992 Summer Olympics in
Barcelona. Although badminton originated in England, it is
mainly played in countries of Asia such as China, Indonesia
and the Republic of Korea that now dominates this sport.
Basketball
Basketball is a handball game usually played by two teams
of five players on the court. A basketball is a spherical
object that rolls and bounces. The objective is to get the
ball through a hoop mounted high on a backboard at back
end. It is a very popular sport worldwide, played with a
round and usually orange ball that bounces. Basketball
players mainly use skills such as dribbling, shooting,
running, and jumping.
The game is played between men's teams or between
women's teams. Basketball has been played in the Summer
Olympic Games since 1936. The shot clock rule started in
1954. The first basketball game took place in 1892, where
the court was half the size of what it is today.
In early December 1891, James Naismith, a Canadian
physical education teacher at Springfield College in
Springfield, Massachusetts invented an indoor game called
basketball. He invented the sport to keep his students from
becoming bored during the winter. Naismith wrote the
basic rules and then nailed a peach basket onto a 20-foot
tall pole. Unlike modern basketball hoops, the bottom of
the peach-basket was still there, so after a point was
scored, somebody had to get the ball out of the basket with
a long stick. Over time, people made a hole at the bottom
of the basket so the ball could go through more easily.
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