Cricket gains popularity in Richmond. Here's a crash course on how to play.

HENRICO COUNTY, Va. -- There is a burgeoning cricket community in Central Virginia where dozens of teams and leagues share their passion for the sport that dates back to mid 16th century England.

Cricket's longtime popularity worldwide, and relatively new popularity around Richmond, may be due to its simplicity.

"You just need three stumps which are wooden sticks you can find anywhere, a bat and ball which is very cheap and you can start playing," Dr. Hitesh Vaishnav said. "Cricket is getting popular. Even at my work there are many Americans taking interest in cricket. It's growing and it's good to see that mainstream people are taking interest."

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Never heard of cricket? Here's a crash course on the rules of the game.

• There are 11 batters per team
• In the most popular version of the game, each team gets to bat in their team's half of an inning.
• There is no foul territory so any ball, hit anywhere, can be in play
• But the batter doesn't necessarily have to start running once the ball is hit

"If you touch the baseball, you have to run and you can get out at first base," Vaishnav said. "In cricket, you choose. If it is safe to do, then you do it. If it is not safe then you stay where you are."
If the batter runs, he only does so between home plate and one other base — called a stump.

A cross, or running safely between stumps, counts for one run.

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Like baseball, fielders can get a batter out by catching the ball in mid air or throwing to a teammate at one of the stumps before the runner can get there.

Once a batter is out, he's done hitting for the game.

"There is no limit until all the batters from one team gets out," Manish Kumar Ugaria said. "Technically, if the other team is not able to get the batters out, they can continue to play for five days."

The pitcher is called a bowler.

The bowler can run up to a certain point before delivering the ball.

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Like baseball, there are various ways that a bowler tries to throw off a batter's timing.

"It can come without a bounce or it can come with a bounce. Mostly it comes with a bounce on the pitch," Kumar Ugaria said.

"They use a slow ball sometimes," Vaishnav added. "Sometimes they bounce close to their feet and sometimes they bounce really high. It goes above your waist or goes past your head. You have to be prepared how it's going to bounce.

The U.S. and the West Indies recently hosted Cricket's World Cup to sellout crowds at some of the biggest stadiums in the country.

Hitesh and some of his friends made the trip up to a 34,000 seat temporary stadium at Eisenhower Park on Long Island to watch India against Pakistan. It's one of the sport's biggest rivalries.

"Tickets were crazy expensive but it didn't bother me," Vaishnav said. "I had to go there, spent quite a bit of money. But the joy that I got cannot be replaced with anything else that I can purchase."

"We all play cricket with passion," he added. "We follow it with passion."

Click here to learn more about the Richmond Strikers Cricket program .

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