Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that answer the question.
Query: What is a Cricket bat called?
The "blade" of a cricket bat is a wooden block that is generally flat on the striking face and with a ridge on the reverse (back) which concentrates wood in the middle where the ball is generally hit. The bat is traditionally made from willow wood, specifically from a variety of white willow called cricket bat willow ("Salix alba" var. "caerulea"), treated with raw (unboiled) linseed oil, which has a protective function. This variety of willow is used as it is very tough and shock-resistant, not being significantly dented nor splintering on the impact of a cricket ball at high speed, while also being light in weight. The face of the bat is often covered with a protective film by the user.
Stoolball is a sport that dates back to at least the 15th century, originating in Sussex, southern England. It may be an ancestor of cricket (a game it resembles), baseball, and rounders, in fact stoolball is sometimes called "cricket in the air". There is a tradition that it was played by milkmaids who used their milking stools as a "wicket" and the bittle, or milk bowl as a bat. Hence its archaic name of "bittle-battle."
When designating cricket seasons, the convention is to use a single year for a northern hemisphere summer season, and a dashed pair of years to indicate a southern hemisphere summer. Hence, 1948 for the English summer season and 1948–49 for the Australian summer that followed some months later. In the tropics, cricket can be played all year round.
In the United Kingdom, the cricket season starts mid-April and ends in September, whereas in Australia, the cricket season begins in October and ends in February or March.
Bath Cricket Club is an English amateur cricket club based in the city of Bath, Somerset. The club was founded in 1859 and the Men's 1st XI compete in the West of England Premier League, which is an accredited ECB Premier League, the highest level for recreational club cricket in England and Wales. Bath Cricket Club currently run four Men's teams, and two Women's Teams. In 2003 Bath Cricket Club merged with Somerset Wanderers Women's cricket team. The Women's teams use the playing name of Bath Wanderers. The Women's 1st XI play in the National Women's Premier League - South Division. This is also the highest level for recreational clubs.
Cricket in England is one of the most popular sports in the country and is known to have been played in England since the 16th century. The Marylebone Cricket Club, based at Lords, developed the modern rules of play and conduct.There are eighteen professional county clubs, seventeen of them in England and one in Wales. All eighteen counties are named after, and were originally representative of, historic counties. These clubs are heavily dependent on subsidies from the England and Wales Cricket Board, which makes its money from television and endorsement contracts and attendances at international matches. The English cricket season traditionally starts at the beginning of April and runs though to the second half of September although in recent years counties have played pre season friendly matches at the very end of March.
Although the first Test series played between England and Australia was in the 1876–77 season, the Ashes originated from the solitary Test which the two nations contested in 1882. England lost the match, played at The Oval, and a mock obituary was posted in "The Sporting Times", declaring the death of English cricket. It stated that: "The body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia." The Honourable Ivo Bligh adopted the term and, as captain of the English party that travelled to Australia the following winter, promised to bring the "Ashes" home.
Cricket has been played in Australia for over 210 years. The first recorded cricket match in Australia took place in Sydney in December 1803 and a report in the Sydney Gazette on 8 January 1804 suggested that cricket was already well established in the infant colony. Intercolonial cricket in Australia started with a visit by cricketers from Victoria to Tasmania in February 1851. The match was played in Launceston on 11–12 February with Tasmania winning by 3 wickets.
Michael Colin Cowdrey, Baron Cowdrey of Tonbridge, (24 December 19324 December 2000) was an English first-class cricketer who played for Oxford University (1952–1954), Kent County Cricket Club (1950–1976) and England (1954–1975). Universally known as Colin Cowdrey, he "delighted crowds throughout the world with his style and elegance", and was the first cricketer to play 100 Test matches, celebrating the occasion with 104 against Australia in 1968. In all he played 114 Tests, making 7,624 runs at an average of 44.06, overtaking Wally Hammond as the most prolific Test batsman, and taking 120 catches as a fielder, breaking another Hammond record. Cowdrey made 22 Test centuries (an England record until 2013) and was the first batsman to make centuries against the six other Test playing countries of his era; Australia, South Africa, the West Indies, New Zealand, India and Pakistan, making hundreds against them all both home and away. He toured Australia six times in 1954–55, 1958–59, 1962–63, 1965–66, 1970–71 and 1974–75, equalling Colin Blythe's record, and in his last Test fans hung out a banner 'M.C.G. FANS THANK COLIN – 6 TOURS'.
Playfair Cricket Annual is a compact annual about cricket that is published in the United Kingdom each April, just before the English cricket season is due to begin. It has been published every year since 1948. Its main purposes are to review the previous English season and to provide detailed career records and potted biographies of current players. It is produced in a "pocket-sized" format, being approximately 5×4 in (i.e., about 13×10 cm), so that it is a convenient size for carrying to cricket matches. The front cover of each edition has featured a photograph of a prominent current cricketer. There is a popular myth that this "honour" has a "hex" or "curse" associated with it, as the player featured then invariably has a poor season.
The Australia national cricket team represents Australia in international cricket and is a full member of the International Cricket Council (ICC) with Test and One Day International (ODI) status. Australia is the joint oldest team in Test cricket history, having played in the first ever Test match in 1877. The team also plays One Day International cricket and Twenty20 International, participating in both the first ODI, against England in the 1970–71 season and the first Twenty20 International, against New Zealand in the 2004–05 season, winning both games.
Cricket is the most popular summer sport in South Australia and attracts big crowds. South Australia has a cricket team, the South Australian Redbacks, who play at Adelaide Oval in the Adelaide Park Lands during the summer; they won their first title since 1996 in the summer of 2010–11. Many international matches have been played at the Adelaide Oval; it was one of the host cities of 2015 Cricket World Cup, and for many years it hosted the Australia Day One Day International. South Australia is also home to the Adelaide Strikers, an Australian men's professional Twenty20 cricket team that competes in Australia's domestic Twenty20 cricket competition, the Big Bash League.
Cricket is the most popular sport in the highly populous Indian subcontinent area, notably in Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, and Sri Lanka.. The deadline for submissions for the initial sports programme has passed for the 2024 Summer Olympics, but hosts Paris will have an opportunity to propose events up until the IOC board meeting following the 2020 Summer Olympics.
William Morris "Bill" Lawry, AM (born 11 February 1937) is a former cricketer who played for Victoria and Australia. He captained Australia in 25 Tests, winning nine, losing eight and drawing eight, and led Australia in the inaugural One Day International match, played in 1971. An opening batsman with a reputation for resolute defence, he had the ability to spend long periods of time at the crease. As his career progressed, he wound back his strokeplay to the point where he was described by an English journalist as "the corpse with pads on". Lawry was unceremoniously dumped as captain and player for the final Test of the 1970–71 Ashes series in Australia. Lawry's sacking is regarded as one of the more distasteful incidents in Australian cricket history—he was not informed personally of the selectors' decision before the decision was first broadcast on radio and he only became aware of his fate when confronted by reporters. Lawry was part of the Nine Network cricket commentary team and until 2018, had been in the role for 45 years.
Unlike latex-based technology underlying the modern lawn-tennis ball, the game still uses a cork-based ball very close in design to the original balls used in the game. The diameter balls are handmade and consist of a core made of cork with fabric tape tightly wound around it and covered with a hand-sewn layer of heavy, woven, woollen cloth, traditionally Melton cloth (not felt, which is unwoven and not strong enough to last as a ball covering). The balls are traditionally white, but around the end of the 20th century "optic yellow" was introduced for improved visibility, as had been done years earlier in lawn tennis. The balls are much less bouncy than lawn tennis balls, and weigh about (lawn tennis balls typically weigh 2 ounces).
By 1883, the tradition of England-Australia tours was well established, that year having concluded the first Ashes series. When England lost at home for the first time in 1882, "The Sporting Times" lamented the death of cricket in the mother country and declared that "the body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia". England captain Ivo Bligh promised that on the tour to Australia in 1882–83 he would regain "the ashes" and the term began to be established. During that tour a small terracotta urn was presented to Bligh by a group of Melbourne women. The urn is commonly, but erroneously, believed to be the trophy of the Ashes series, but it has never been formally adopted as such and Bligh always considered it to be a personal gift.
Seven team sports are currently on the program of the Summer Olympics. Cricket's inclusion in the 2024 Summer Olympics depends on the decision of the International Cricket Council and its members. A cricket tournament formed part of the Summer Olympics in 1900, although only one match was played, between teams representing Great Britain and France. However, the British team was effectively a club touring side and the French players were drawn partly from expatriates living in Paris.
The family's common name is derived from a length of "free" tail, projecting beyond the end of the uropatagium—the membrane that connects the base of the tail to the hind legs. The tail is usually best seen when resting. A special ring of cartilage slides up or down the tail vertebrae by muscular action to stretch or retract the tail membrane. This gives many species a degree of fine tuning in their flight maneuvers to rival their day-flying ecological equivalents, such as swifts, swallows, and martins. As a result, these animals include the fastest-flying of all bat species among their number. The dental formula of free-tailed bats varies between species:
The first balls were made of natural materials, such as an inflated pig bladder, later put inside a leather cover, which has given rise to the American slang-term "pigskin". Modern balls are designed by teams of engineers to exacting specifications, with rubber or plastic bladders, and often with plastic covers. Various leagues and games use different balls, though they all have one of the following basic shapes:
The 1738 English cricket season was the 42nd cricket season since the earliest recorded eleven-aside match was played. Details have survived of seven matches.
The 1970–71 Ashes series consisted of seven cricket Test matches, each of five days with six hours play each day and eight ball overs. It formed part of the MCC tour of Australia in 1970–71 and the matches outside the Tests were played in the name of the Marylebone Cricket Club. Ray Illingworth's England team beat Bill Lawry's Australians 2–0 and regained the Ashes, the only full Test series in Australia in which the home team failed to win a Test. "The Momentous Series of 1970–71" was pivotal in cricket history and "essentially ushered in the modern period of Test cricket". It was the first Test series to have more than five Tests and the first One Day International in cricket history was played in Melbourne; like the first test match in history it was won by Australia.
Cricket was originally scheduled to be included in the inaugural 1896 Summer Olympics, which were held in Athens; cricket would have been the only team sport held at the Games. There were, however, insufficient entries and so no event was held.
Bats are very well equipped to prey upon crickets. While some bats rely purely on mid-flight echolocation to locate their prey, other species locate their prey through passive listening, orienting towards sounds made by the prey, and often emitting a fainter echolocation call as they approach their target. "Teleogryllus oceanicus" crickets have been shown to be able to distinguish a range of echolocation frequencies, responding with avoidance flight away from the bats. Multiple species of bats ("Nyctophilus major" and "N. geoffroyi") have been shown to prefer trills in the cricket song compared to chirps. As a result, male crickets prefer to call from shelter, and the calls from males in shelter contain a greater number of trills than those emitted by a non-sheltered male.
Cricket clothing and equipment is regulated by the laws of cricket. Cricket clothing, known as cricket whites, or flannels, is slightly loose fitting so as not to restrict players' movements. Use of protective equipment, such as helmets, gloves and pads, is also regulated.Batsmen are allowed to wear gloves while batting. The batsman can be also caught out if the ball touches the glove instead of the bat, provided the hand is in contact with the bat. This is because the glove is considered to be the extension of the bat. The batsman may also wear protective helmets usually with a visor to protect themselves. Helmets are usually employed when facing fast bowlers. While playing spinners, it might not be employed.
"We designed the building from the inside out, not the outside in,” said Loretta H. Cockrum, Foram’s founder, chairman and CEO. “We wanted the most efficient office building ever designed, with no wasted space or wasted energy. This is a building of the future more than a building of the present. A lot of love has gone into that building, and a lot of pride."
Any player, regardless of their area of special skill, is referred to as a batsman while they are actually batting. However, a player who is in the team principally because of their batting skill is referred to as a specialist batsman, or simply "batsman", regardless of whether they are currently batting. (A specialist bowler, on the other hand, would be referred to as a "batsman" only while actually engaged in batting.) In women's cricket, the term "bats woman" is sometimes encountered, as is "batter", but 'batsman' is widely used in both men's and women's cricket.