The ICC Cricket World Cup is finally here! Well, you probably are wondering what cricket even is, and you're not the only one. Most Americans don't know the game or how it's played. Instead of following cricket Americans follow Baseball, a game based off of cricket.

The similarities between the two sports are that they both include a bat, a ball, outs, a pitcher, a batter, fielders, and a field, so at least like 3/4 of both sports are similar. The differences are that cricket pitchers usually bounce the ball when they pitch as opposed to baseball pitchers not doing so.

By bouncing the ball the pitcher makes it hard for the batter to track the ball, the batter must track the ball around .200 seconds after the pitch is released, that's less time than a baseball batter can initiate a swing on a 95 MPH fastball! Overs are the limit of balls you get in an inning, unlike baseball cricket has two long innings lasting until either the batting team has reached 10 wickets (outs) or reached the limit for balls that can be pitched. There are 6 balls pitched in an over, so a total of 300 balls is the maximum amount of balls that can be pitched. Wickets are outs, the goal of the fielding side is to get wickets, a wicket can either be a ball or bat hitting the stumps (Sticks behind the batter) or someone in the field catching the ball hit by the batter. Finally, runs are scored by the batter running back and forth with a partner running the opposite direction in the space between the stumps. This is true unless the ball is a boundary, this means the runs will be scored automatically, boundary runs of 4 and 6. You get a four by getting a ground ball that hits the end of the oval, like a double or a triple in baseball (Cricket is played on an oval field, not a diamond), and you get a six by getting a ball across or over the end of the field (Like a homerun).

Cricket is the second largest sport in the world, mainly because it's played in large-population countries like Australia and India.

The teams that are participating are:

India

New Zealand

Australia

Sri Lanka :)

Bangladesh

Afghanistan

England

Scotland

South Africa

West Indies