With three billion followers, cricket is the world’s second most popular sport after football. There are twenty-one diverse types of crickets played, including women’s Test cricket, deaf cricket, and quick cricket, one of which is cricket for blind and visually impaired people. Blind cricket is a modified version of the sport that is played by low vision and blind people while adhering to the standard rules of the game. World blind cricket council governs blind cricket.
Modifications and rules and regulations for blind cricket
Blind cricket players
Each team must have eleven players, with a minimum of four totally blind players, three partially blind players, and maximum of four partially sighted players. The rules are different for players classified as B1; for example, they are allowed to have a runner, can take a catch on the bounce, and have their runs scored doubled and cannot be out due to being stumped.
Playing equipment
People who are partially sighted, blind, or visually impaired rely on sound and visual cues to play. The main difference is in the blind cricket ball. The blind cricket ball is made of plastic, is larger in size, and is filled with metal ball bearings. Large size of the ball allows partially sighted people to see it, and the sound of the ball allows the completely blind to identify the ball on the field. The stumps are bigger and coloured with Florissant, orange, and yellow colour.
Verbal signals
Players rely on verbal cues to play the game. When the bowler is ready to bowl, the baller must shout “ready,” to which the batsman should respond “yes,” and while delivering the ball, the baller must shout “play.” The ball should touch the pitch twice before being delivered to the batsman. The ball must be thrown underarm, and if the verbal instructions are not followed, the umpire will declare no ball.
Dress code for blind cricket
To keep track of who is who on the field, each participant on the pitch is tracked using the following system:
Players in position B1 wear a white wrist band on their right wrist or wear one white stripe on the right upper arm of their playing shirt. Players in position B2 wear a red wrist band on their right wrist or wear two white stripes on the right upper arm of their playing shirt, and players in position B3 wear a blue wrist band on their right wrist or wear three white stripes on the right upper arm of their playing shirt.
Blind cricket playing Area
The playing field measures the same as that of the field of regular cricket. The boundaries should be a minimum of forty-five and a maximum of fifty yards from the centre circle.
Blind cricket world cup
There have been five Blind World Cups in total. The first World Cup Cricket for the Blind was held in New Delhi, India in 1998. In the final, South Africa defeated Pakistan. The two semi-finalists were India and Australia.
In 2002, the second World Cup was held in Chennai, India. In the finals, Pakistan defeated South Africa.
Pakistan defeated India in the third World Cup, which was held in Islamabad in 2006.
India defeated Pakistan in the final in Cape Town, South Africa, on December 7, 2014.
India defeated Pakistan in the final in Sharjah on January 20, 2018.T20 Blind Cricket World Cup
T20 Blind Cricket World Cup
The first T20 Blind Cricket World Cup was held in 2012 at the Aditya Academy Ground in Bangalore, India. In the final, India defeated Pakistan by a score of 29 runs.
On February 12, 2017, India defeated Pakistan in the final in Bengaluru, India.