Get ready for bold batting, stunning sixes and classic catches: at Birmingham 2022, Cricket’s coming home!

The Women’s T20 Cricket will emulate history at Birmingham 2022 as the first T20 International was played by women, and this will be the first time both the T20 format and the women’s game feature at a Commonwealth Games!

A Quick Overview

Cricket is contested by two teams of 11 players each. The fielding team has 11 players on the field at all times – one of whom will bowl the ball. The batting team has two players on the field at a time.

Each team will have an ‘innings’ in which they will take a turn to bat. In T20, the innings is made up of 20 ‘overs’, each of which will see the ball bowled six times. T20 is the fastest format of the sport and will be jam packed with enough action to keep you on the edge of your seat.

The bowler bowls the ball towards the batter, whose job it is to score as many runs as possible without getting ‘out’. The batter will score runs by running between the two wickets before the ball is returned to the bowler. Batters can also score four ‘runs’ by hitting the ball to the boundary of the field, or six if the ball crosses the boundary without touching the ground.

The batter is ‘out’ if they miss the ball and it hits their wicket, if they hit the ball and it is caught by a fielder without bouncing, or if the fielder returns the ball to the wicket before the batter completes a run.

The batting team will continue until their 20 overs have finished, or until ten batters are ‘out’. At this point, the batting and fielding team will switch places.

The team who scores the most runs is the winner.

Birmingham 2022 will not only see T20 Cricket make its Commonwealth Games debut, but will mark a first appearance for the women’s game, too.

Cricket has been played once before, with a men’s 50-over competition held at Kuala Lumpur 1998. South Africa won Gold on that occasion.

Fun Fact

The first T20 international was played by women in 2004 between England and New Zealand a year before the first men’s T20 international in 2005.