Stoolball
Stoolball is a team sport which has lot of similarities to modern day cricket and baseball. In fact, many believe stoolball might have be the sport from which cricket and baseball originated from. The sport is sometimes even referred to as 'Cricket in air'.
Stoolball is played on circular grass field with an 82m diameter. There is a pitch in the middle of the field that is 15m long. A match is played between two teams with 11 players on each team.
Similar to cricket, one team does the batting while the other team does the bowling and fielding. Bowling and batting happens within the pitch, between wickets which are 9.1m apart. The wickets used are pieces of wood that are shoulder high. Bowling has to be done underarm, as in softball, and has to reach the batsman without bouncing.
The objective of the sport is similar to that of cricket. The batting team tries to score as many runs as possible, and the bowling team tries to get all the players out. The scoring and the manner in which players get out are similar to that of cricket.
Currently the sport is not very popular and is played only at a local level in a few counties in England.
Not to be confused with the game called stoolball played by the prisoners-of-war at Colditz castle during World War II.
Similar Sports
- Cricket — a team sport played on a rectangular pitch in the middle of a large grass oval, two batters protect their wicket while the fielding team attempt to get them out.
- Baseball — a bat and ball game in which the aim is to hit the ball and score runs by running around four bases.
- Bat-and-Trap — an old English bat and ball game, in which a ball is projected into the air out of a trap using a bat, and then hit between posts 21 feet away.
- Gilli-Danda — a South Asian game played with two sticks; the long stick is used to strike the shorter one in the air.
Related Pages
- About sport in the UK
- Complete list of sports
- The Encyclopedia of Sports
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