Have you ever been in an argument with someone from the Indian subcontinent about which one of the two is better—baseball or cricket—and won the argument? If you answered yes to that question, your opponent obviously went too easy on you. I am hardly the person to write about cricket given that most of my friends consider me a disgrace because I do not share the magnitude of their passion for the game. However, it would be a shame if I failed to stand up for the unofficial religion of my country.

Whether or not baseball was inspired by cricket remains ambiguous. 

However, the similarities between the two games are prominent, and if you have never played the game, the rules are as simple as they can get. Test cricket, of course, is more complicated than rocket science, which should explain why I chose to study aerospace engineering.

Each team consists of 11 players. A coin toss determines which team gets to elect whether to bat or field first. The fielding team bowls twenty or 50 overs in the One Day International format of the game. A bowler bowls six balls in an over. Bowling a ball is similar to pitching a ball in baseball, although it is more difficult.

Meanwhile, the batting team scores by running between the wickets, or hitting the ball outside the boundary. A batsman (comparable to the batter in baseball) can be struck out in 10 different ways. The most common ways of getting out are getting caught out, bowled or being run out. Interestingly enough, you could be declared “out” if you were too much of a sissy to get on the pitch to face the team and took more than two minutes to show up when it is your turn.

After 10 batsmen are struck out or at the end of 50 overs, an inning comes to an end and the other team elects to bat. The team with the higher score wins.

If you are looking to play cricket at Wichita State University, you can visit bit.ly/12NREzL.