Here at Colgate, we have a student body that hails from all 50 states as well as over 50 countries. This remarkable diversity is displayed across campus with different clothing, clubs and food. To highlight their diverse interests, The Colgate Maroon-News sports section will periodically feature sports that perhaps get overlooked in the local community of Central New York. We hope these articles will  teach the Raider community about both different athletic happenings from around the world and their cultural significance.

Over the past summer, England hosted the eleventh edition of the Women’s Cricket World Cup. Cricket is a bat and ball style game that is popular in much of South Asia and many former British colonies. Like baseball, a team can only score when it is at bat. A bowler, the equivalent of a pitcher, tosses the ball toward the batsmen whose goal is to make contact with the ball before it hits a set of wood blocks behind her known as a wicket. If the ball hits the wicket or the batsman’s body, the batsman is out. Once the batsman successfully hits the ball, she will run toward the other wicket that is directly behind the bowler. The batsman will receive a run if she can reach the other wicket before the bowler can hit the wicket with the ball. In the impressive instance of the batsman hitting the ball out of the boundaries of the field, she will receive six points if the ball left the field on the fly and four points if it had bounced.

Unlike baseball, Cricket uses a set of “overs” or innings depending on what type of game it is. An over occurs when a bowler bowls six consecutive balls whether it be to a single or multiple batters. A bowler may not bowl back-to-back overs – most teams have two bowlers – and a batsman may see multiple

different bowlers in her time at bat. An inning is when an entire team has batted and is ruled out. There are three main versions of cricket accepted at the professional level: T20 where each team receives 20 overs, a Test Match in which each team has four innings  and One  Day  Cricket  where  each team receives one inning.

The Women’s Cricket championship  games were played in the One Day Cricket format and was contested between teams representing Australia, England, New Zealand, West Indies (Caribbean), India, South Africa, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. The first round consisted of a round robin format with each team playing one another once and the top four advancing. Australia and England both tied for first with records of 6-1, but England won the tiebreaker on run differential to claim the top seed, with India and South Africa also advancing. In the semi-finals India’s Harmanpreet Kaur set a World Cup record by scoring 171 runs to lead India to a 281-245 win over Australia. In the other semi-final, the host England took a 221-218 win over South Africa to advance. In the finals Natalie Sciver scored 51 runs, carrying the hosts to their fourth World Cup title 228-219.

While cricket may seem abstract to most Americans, it is one of the most popular sports internationally. Colgate students from various parts of the world share an interest in this sport. It may not have the historic aspect of America’s pasttime, baseball, or the popularity of professional American football; however, with such a strong international following, it may be worth your time to watch.                                    

 Contact Gideon Hamot at [email protected].