system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: The game of cricket, and how/why can the games go on for days

As an American I've always been curious, but without any media coverage it's hard to understand both the rules and gameplay. Especially how games can have such huge scores and go on for such long times.
gpt
The basic idea is similar to baseball, softball, rounders, and so on. One team bats and tries to score runs, the other bowls and fields and tries to get the batters 'out'. Cricket games owe their length to one simple aspect of the rules: *the batsman doesn't have to run*. They can face ball after ball from the bowler, just defending and making sure they're not put out, and waiting for the opportunity to make a great shot. Combined with the batsman using a wide flat bat that gives them more control than the round bat used in baseball, a batsman can stay in for a long time. In the long form of cricket each team bats twice and they keep batting until all but one batsman is out and can take four or five days. (In fact if the team batting last still has two or more batsmen in when the last day finishes, the match is a draw no matter what the runs scored are.)

'Limited overs' cricket matches are shorter and have become popular, such as one-day (matches last, dur, one-day) and Twenty20 (matches last about 3 hours). These all work by limiting the number of balls bowled in an inning(s), rather than playing until all batsmen are out. (An 'over' is six balls bowled).