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Dear Readers:

Compliments,

Cricket can be confusing if you’re a newcomer, or simply if there isn’t a tradition in your country. But, once you understand the basics, its easy to build up your knowledge. The same principles and terms apply to every form of the game, so once you’ve developed a good foundation, then sky’s the limit.

To the uninitiated, cricketing terms can be like a foreign language. The difference between terms like short leg and long on, or yorker and googly might not be obvious at first, but there are lots of online or printed resources to help. One difficulty with most of these is that they assume a certain level of cricket knowledge. However Wikipedia is a good starting point, as it gives the basics as well as providing links to more detailed explanations. Cricinfo.com also supplies a useful list for beginners.

With some understanding of the rules and terms, you’ve made a solid start on learning how to play cricket. Now, there are different paths depending on your aspirations as a player or supporter, or both.

Like any other sport, good players have to get the basic skills right from the beginning, and then build on them. This is true for young or old, male or female. And, if there’s a young cricketer in your family, you’ll have a great time supporting them too.

I encourage you to visit my website cricketmansion.webs.com to learn more about this great sport.

Good Luck!

Cricket Player.           

All about CRICKET

Welcome to Cricket Mansion – This blog site is “All about CRICKET” where you find information about the rules of the game, how to play the game, cricket gears you need and tips to improve your cricketing skills.

Essential things you need to play cricket:

Cricket Bat , Cricket Ball , Cricket Stumps , Cricket Gloves for Batting and Keeping  and Players.

Warm up is real important even before you play a friendly time pass game. Do some stretching exercise, rotate your arms, little skipping or jogging, to get yourself ready for the action.  

Getting ready for a game:

§  Cricket can be played almost anywhere… in your backyard, ground, park, beach or even streets.

§  Mark your pitch and the crease for batting and bowling.

§  Place your stumps and mark the boundaries.

§   Based on the size of the group you have, you can split as two teams.

§  Toss a coin and decide which team bats or fields first. Also decide how many overs to play

Playing the game:

§  The fielders and wicket keeper takes their positions.

§  The game starts with a striker and a non-striker out on the field for the batting team. The striker is ready to be bowled to by standing in a batting position in front of the wicket ready to hit the ball.

§  The bowler bowls the ball to the striker, with usually one bounce before it reaches the striker.

§  The striker hits the ball and both the batsmen run to try to reach the opposite popping crease. When both successfully touch, by body or bat, the ground behind the opposite crease, a run is scored.

§  A six run is scored by hitting the ball over the boundary with out touching the ground. If the ball reaches the boundary and touches the ground in doing so, the batting team is granted four runs.

§  The batsman can get out in a number of ways. Most common ways are bowled, caught, run out, stumped and hit wicket. To learn more about the ways a batsman can get out click here.

§  To learn more about cricket rules, click here.

Common Batting Mistakes

Earlier I had provided 6 tips for aggressive batting. As a follow up to this post I am providing some common mistakes that batsman make.

1. Incorrect Grip: When holding the bat, there should be a natural V formation in between the hands.
2. Bottom hand dominance: Some players have their Bottom hand go far too around the grip. This gives too much bottom hand dominance. This causes the bat to go too far towards the point or gully in the backlift, resulting in the batsman playing across the line. Playing across the line of the ball means playing at the ball with the downswing of the bat coming through at an angle of the ball. The face of the bat is closed to the line of the ball, giving less surface area of the bat to hit the ball. This increases the chances of the ball being edged behind to the keeper or slips.
3. Do not have the hand too far apart: Control in the grip and your shots, comes from the top hand. When the top hand is in control of the bat, it allows the backlift to go back at the correct angle, allowing the full face of the bat to hit the ball.
4. Don’t stand still for too long: Standing too still before the ball is bowled will put pressure on you. Relax, tap the bat, and move back and forth to be ready to hit the ball.
5. Forward press: do not go across the stumps on the offside before the ball the bowled. The right way is to back up a step or two towards the wicket and go forward with the bat coming down having the head straight looking at the delivery to play the ball.

Prevent Injuries

Although cricket is not a contact sport, injuries can and do occur, often due to overuse. Cricket is often played in the heat, so players and spectators need to be protected from dehydration, heat stress and sun damage.

Common injuries
The most common types of injuries suffered through cricket are strains, sprains, fractures, bruising and open wounds. Many of these injuries affect the upper body, particularly the hands and fingers.

Injuries to the face, finger and hand from a cricket ball are the most common types of hospital-treated injuries, followed by falls.

Bowlers are inclined to suffer overuse injuries, such as back and shoulder injuries.

Preventing injury
To prevent injury, you should:

• Be prepared
• Wear the right gear
• Keep the playing environment safe
• Know yourself and the sport.

Be prepared
Remember to:

• Attend training so your body is ready.
• Warm up and stretch before playing.
• Cool down and stretch after playing.

Wear the right gear
Make sure you:

• Wear a mouthguard, preferably custom-fitted, at all times.
• Wear shoes designed for cricket.
• Wear protective pads.
• If you have a history of injury, speak to your doctor or physiotherapist about appropriate bracing or protective gear.

Keep the playing environment safe
A safe ground is important, so remember to:

• Remove hazards, such as stones and water, from the playing surface.
• Make sure the pitch is smooth and clean.

Know yourself and the sport
Suggestions include:

•  Know and use the right techniques for bowling, batting and catching.

• Get your coach to teach you the proper sliding stop technique.
• If you are a pace bowler, you should restrict the number of overs bowled during play, taking into account your physical maturity and fitness.
• Know how to use the equipment properly and safely.
• Follow the rules and play fairly.

Other safety tips
Suggestions include:

• Wear a hat and use sunscreen.
• Drink water before, during and after play.
• Don’t play in extreme heat or wet conditions. Where possible, games should be rescheduled.
• Make sure everyone, including coaches, players and parents are aware of the symptoms of heat-related illness.
• Check that qualified first aid personnel, first aid kits, icepacks and a stretcher are available at all times.
• Check that telephone access, to contact emergency services, is available.

Respond promptly to injuries
If you or someone else is injured:

• Remove injured or bleeding players from the ground immediately.

• Seek prompt attention from qualified first aid personnel.
• Make sure you are fully rehabilitated before returning to play.
• Wear a brace for at least three months after serious joint injuries.

Where to get help

• Your doctor
• Sports physician
• Physiotherapist

What is Cricket Mansion?

Cricket Mansion is dedicated to helping you find the best information about the sports of Cricket, how to play the game and have a great time. This is a real site. By real, I mean genuine and sincere.


There are so many cricketing websites and blogs, but not many sites explain the basics of how to play the game. Cricket Mansion’s blogs and website cricketmansion.webs.com provides the information on how to play cricket, how to improve, how to understand the game and what you need to get started. The language is plain and simple, easy for even cricket novices or even people who have no cricket knowledge to follow. The design of the site is very simple and clean which helps to keep your interest in the blog.  There is no unnecessary clutter, and this further keeps your interest in the blog at its max.

In the meantime though Cricket Mansion doesn’t provide latest news and happenings in the cricket world, but blogs and articles are posted regularly providing tips and tricks for playing and improving you skills.

Cricket Mansion’s blog is an example of how a cricket player can use blogging technology to let the world know of his talents.  Cricket Mansion uses the free blogging software from blogspot.com, so there's no need to register the domain name or pay for hosting.

If you like us to provide information on any specific area, please let us know. We will try our best to get information from the best sources possible….

Review of "And God Created Cricket"

In this blog, we are reviewing the book “And God Created Cricket” by Simon Hughes

Simon Hughes guides the readers through all the great tales of the Cricket game, from its earliest origins in the sixteenth century, through the formation of the MCC and the opening of Lord's cricket ground in 1787, to the spread of county cricket in the next century, when the Wisden Cricketers' "Almanack" was first published and the Ashes series was born to the present day.

 Throughout its 500-year history, cricket has been a mirror for society as a whole, reflecting the changes that have brought the people from the quintessential village green to Freddie Flintoff's pedalo, from W G Grace to Monty Panesar, via a fair number of eccentrics, heroes and downright villains. The outline of his story is how the English had invented the game and how other countries have learned the game swiftly and have become better at this game, even to the level of beating England.  It is the story of the mad characters who inhabit the game, the extraordinary lengths people will go to watch and play it, the tale of a national obsession. It debunks the myth of cricket sportsmanship, showing the origins of sledging and match-fixing in centuries of subterfuge, corruption and violence.

The culture and history of the game are amusingly brought out in an enormously jolly book. Overall the book provides plenty of fun, good stories, research from the analyst and history of cricket for the readers.

The Cricket Fun Roundup

§  5 Key Element of Cricket.

“Keeping it simple. Talking only about the main aspects of the game.”

§  6 Tips to become an Aggressive Batsman

“Oh come on! Who doesn’t like Aggressive Batsmen ?? They make cricket fun and provide the fans the entertainment needed for the time and money spent.”

§  Pace or Spin, Which is better?

“Can you pitch it hard and quick – You may belong in the Brett Lee, Shohib Akthar, Zakeer Khan’s team.  Do you put a spin on everything you throw: Car keys, crushed paper.  You may belong in Shane Warne, Anil Kumble, Muttiah Muralitharan’s team.”

§  Recommended products to get started with cricket

“Have a group of friends? What do you need to have a great time in your backyard?”

§  Take a look at another great cricket blog

“Cricinfo provides the most comprehensive live cricket available as well as unparalleled statistics, quality editorial comment and analysis.”

§  Cricket for Dummies

“Everything you need to know about the sport of Cricket.”

§  The A-Z of Cricket

“Information on cricket’s history and complexities in an entertaining and informative way.”

§  Cricket Explained

“From the game’s fundamentals- basic rules, terminology, equipment - to the finer points of strategy individual playing styles, and cricket lore.”

Pace or Spin, Which is better?

Bowling has since being the most skillful and difficult of cricket skills to acquire. It is a technique by which a person (bowler) runs up to the wickets and throws the ball to the batsman, with a full arm, trying to hit the wicket to get the batsman out. 

There are two distinct styles of bowling: fast and spin. Individual bowlers generally specialize in one style or the other. Occasionally a player may be adept enough at both styles to be able to switch between them, but this is rare. To learn various bowling styles, click here.http://www.dangermouse.net/cricket/bowling.html

How you hold the ball is important for bowling. Each type of bowling delivery requires a different style of grip on the ball. Various techniques for holding the ball is well explained in this article. http://www.liveindia.com/cricket/Bowling.html

If pace bowling is your style, check out what tips that Ian Pont offers to improve your skill by discovering what movement and feelings work best for you. http://www.pitchvision.com/fast-bowling-tips-with-ian-pont/

“Googly, Leg-spin, Flipper, Top-spin, Off-break, Left-arm” Are you wondering what are all these terms? These are the different types of spin bowling.  Visit the spin bowling page to find out more on these.http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport/hi/english/static/in_depth/cricket/2001/spin_bowling/default.stm

The main aim of fast bowling is to bowl the hard cricket ball at high speed and to induce it to bounce off the pitch in an erratic fashion or move sideways through the air, factors which make it difficult for the batsman to hit the ball cleanly. A typical fast delivery has a speed in the range of 136 to 150 km/h (85 to 95 mph). Mavericks Cricket Institute offers you tips on how to bowl faster and straighter. http://www.maverickscricket.com/fast-bowling-tips.html

5 key elements of cricket.

Cricket is played between two teams with only 11 players a side.First team, Team A, will bat first and try to score many runs as  possible. While the second team, Team B, will bowl and make it hard for Team A to score runs. Teams bowl in overs. When Team A's innings is over, Team B will come to bat and try to beat the score of Team A, while Team A is bowling and fielding.

Let us look at the main aspects of playing the game.

1. Batting - The aim of batting is to score runs.The batter also has to stop the ball hitting the wickets, in order to avoid getting himself out.
2. Bowling - Bowlers bowl the ball towards the batter, trying to hit the wickets inorder to get the batter out.The bolwer is also trying it make it difficult for the batter to score runs.
3. Fielding - Fielding is the job of the bowlers teammates. Fielders try to stop the ball as quickly as possible when the ball is hit and prevent the batsman from taking runs by throwing the ball back to the bowler or the wicket-keeper.
4. Catching - Fielders also get the batsman by catching a ball. When the batsman hits the ball and if the fielder catches it before the ball hits the ground, the batsman is out.
5. Wicket-Keeping. - Wicket-Keeper is the specialist fielder who stands behind the wickets. He is there to stop the ball which the batsman misses. He also can get the batsman out by catching the ball.

Here is a cool 4 minute video explaining the game....

Recommended Products to get started with Cricket

International Cricket 2010 (Ps3) 

 For a cricket fans who want to have some cricket fun at home with PS3, this game is a huge relief. The graphics used is very decent. Stadiums and player avatars look nice. Great Job in audio commentary. You  get to hear commentary in several former players voices. Game Play - Easy Mode is really easy to play without any difficulties. The difficulty gradually increase with every higher mode. In the hard mode, batting and bowling gets little challenging. Overall, the game is great. Have some fun with your friends.

                                       Ozefox Runmaker Cricket Bat Set

The Ozefox Runmaker cricket bat set is an inexpensive cricket set for boys & girls. Use it to play cricket in the backyard or in the local park. It comes with 3 batting stumps & bails to make a wicket for the batting end , a single bowling stump, the bat & hard tennis ball. Sets up quickly & easily can be used for 2 players or as many as 20 people in the one game. Fun for the whole family. Great starter set for most ages.

 

Hot Shot Cricket Set

Hot Shot Cricket is a fun safe way for boys & girls to play a modified version of Cricket, regarded by many as the worlds 2nd most popular sport. Both safe and fun This cricket set is suitable for the whole family. Hot Shot Cricket was originally designed for schools and other organizations like boy & girls scouts, church youth groups etc, to use when learning and playing the great game of cricket. This Hot Shot Cricket set is very durable it's the set most school PE departments choose when looking for cricket equipment.

Take a look at another great cricket blog…

From time to time I will be analyzing and posting about good blog sites out there in the web that provides great information about Cricket.

Here is a good one…http://blogs.espncricinfo.com/

Some highlights of espncricinfo blog:

The blog provides interesting information about things in international cricket arena that doesn’t get main stream media attention. There are special sections that cover about first class cricket games, the prospective future international players, the struggles and challenges facing these prospective players, things happening around Pakistani cricket world, post match analysis, important things going in player’s life that aids or affects their performance, how is cricket helping communities and transforming lives etc.

Blogs are posted almost every day by many authors. The language is plain and simple, easy for even cricket novices to follow. Their posts are targeted to provide information, news, latest cricket buzz to fans at all levels.

There are many active followers for these blogs. The site provides RSS feeds for which readers can subscribe to let them know when new blogs are available and alerts readers when new comments are posted.

The site has introduced mobile apps and face book pages for the fans to catch the latest and greatest happening the cricket world.

The blog does not provide information on how to play cricket or how to improve or how to understand the game. These blogs are for readers who have some basic knowledge about the game.

Watch out for more analysis on other cricket blogs in the future. If you like us to review any blog sites in particular, let us know…

6 Tips for becoming an agressive batsman

Aggressive batsman can quickly score runs and easily put pressure on the bowler in any situation of the game.  Batting aggressively can be very fascinating for the batsman as well as very entertaining for the spectators. But batting is not an easy thing to do in a cricket field, be it any condition. Putting the ball away to the boundary consistently can come with lots of practice. Here are some tips to become good at this skill:

1.  Ideal Grip: A batsman must have the ideal grip to be able to play all the strokes properly. The ideal grip on the bat must be both the hands together at the handle of the bat. Make sure that your grip is neither too loose nor too tight. The correct grip allows you to bat with flair and also does not restrict you in playing any of the shots. Hold the bat the way you get a full powered swing: Hold the handle of the bat in the right place so that you comfortably get a full outstretched swing of the bat. Some great batsmen hold the bottom of the handle or some hold the top of the handle.  Hold it in a place that is very comfortable for you.

2. Strong Batting Stance: For aggressive batting, your stance should be strong and composed. A high back lift stance helps in improving your batting reflexes and gives extra power to the shots played.

3. Proper Footwork: Footwork is the most crucial aspect of batting and a batsman must have excellent footwork to play different kinds of shot. Get your feet moving while playing hard shots. If you move your feet towards the pitch of the ball you'll be able to transfer the weight of your back leg to the shot you'll play. This adds on as some extra power to your shots and also increases your chances of hitting the ball from the middle of the bat.

4. Position your head:  Head should be in the right position while playing shots. With a steady head you'll have more control on your shots and you'll improve your shot selection and placement.

5. Watch the ball: One way of perfecting your batting is through playing each ball according to its merit. It is not possible every time for a bowler to ball six good balls in an over and also it is very rare that you will receive six bad balls in an over. Remember it takes only one good ball to get you out. So watch each and every ball very carefully and watch out for the bad balls. Keep watching the ball in the bowlers hand till the ball is delivered. If you follow this meticulously you can very easily find out what type of ball the bowler is going to deliver. You can be prepared in advance to face the type of ball being bowled to you and then adjust your footwork and shots accordingly.

6. Follow Through: Finish your shot with a clean follow through. A good shot follow through gives perfect lift to the ball and prevents you from injuries.

Cricket for Dummies

Cricket For Dummies book provides you with everything you need to know about the sport of Cricket. All the information you need to get started as a player or become a fan is in this book. But the good news is that, you don’t have to read this book from cover to cover. Perhaps you’ll be watching a game of cricket on television or listening to radio coverage and you’d like to know more about a particular aspect of the game and its history then just turn to the chapter which does the job. If you’re keen to get playing cricket, there is this book for you. There is a section dedicated battling, bowling and fielding techniques as well as explaining the tactical nuances of cricket captaincy. In addition, there is a chapter on training which is essential reading for anymore looking to develop their playing technique and all round physical conditioning.

 If playing the game isn’t for you and you’d rather be a fan, Cricket For Dummies book has an enormous amount to offer. The domestic and international cricket scene is laid out in full for you and there is a whole chapter dedicated to showing you how to get watch big match cricket.