Try this OBL (first draft, not spellchecked etc etc)
There's no getting away from the fact that cricket looks pretty complicated. There's a lot of numbers, a lot of silly names and when a commentator says, "Five off the over, 136 for 4 with 12 still to play," it can be enough to make even the most determined beginner break down in tears. The funny thing is, that's all actually quite simple.
Now, we've all played some kind of cricket at one stage or another as children, haven't we? Usually on a gloomy British campsite with one of those little sets that comes in a green polythene case and contains one bat, one ball, three stumps and some tiny bails. If your holiday experiences were anything like mine, the bat would be so small that it would appear to have been built for kittens, the ball would be heavier than lead, the stumps wouldn't go in the ground and the bails would be blown into a farmer's field by the first gust of wind. Nevertheless, the game's central structure would be the same. Your little sister would hold the bat backwards and knock her stumps over first ball. You would insist that this meant she was out and you would be told off by your mum for taking it all too seriously. You would take the bat and, on your first ball, accidentally hit it straight up in the air where it would be caught by your mum who would catch it cleanly and make some kind of remark about karma, which you wouldn't hear through your hot, frustrated tears. Then your Dad would step up and spend 45 minutes repeatedly tonking the ball over the shower block, running backwards and forwards when the ball got lost in the bushes and clocking up 23 runs at a time. When the tantrums eventually subsided, the cricket set would be hastily given to another family and the afternoon would never be spoken of again. This, I'm told, is the first memory that most people have of cricket, so it's not really a surprise that many potential fans are so traumatised that they can't stand to watch it at a professional level.
Nevertheless, the fact is that you already know the basics. You know that the general idea is to score runs, which you do by running from one marker to another. You know that there are stumps involved that you must protect, you know that if you hit the ball straight up in the air and it is caught, your contribution will be over and you even know that if you hit the ball and it is returned to the marker before you manage to run there, you will be run out. You actually know all the important stuff already, you just don't know how 'proper cricket' works.
The main difference between the campsite game and its professional equivilant is that proper cricket is played by two teams of eleven players and not by a family of four with some playing to impress, some not entirely sure what game they're playing and others just glad that they're not on a day-trip to the donkey sanctuary.
Instead of one set of stumps, there are two and they are placed at either end of a 22 yard strip of very, very short grass known as 'The Pitch'. The batsmen work in pairs to score runs, with one of them at one set of stumps batting and his partner at the opposite end, waiting to run. If the ball is hit well, they both run, passing by each other in the middle and crossing the line just in front of the stumps known as 'The Crease' to score a single run. Having now swapped places, their roles are reversed for the next ball.
If one of them is dismissed, for example by hitting the ball up in the air and having it caught, he has to walk off the pitch and is replaced by one of his team-mates. Once a batsman is dismissed or 'Out' as it is known, he cannot return. A batsman cannot bat alone so, with an eleven man team, if ten of them are dismissed, that is the end of that team's turn, or 'Innings' as we like to call it. At this point, the other team have their innings, sending two batsmen to the pitch and replacing them one by one when they are out until ten of their eleven men have been dismissed. At this point, their innings being over, the two teams compare the amount of runs they have scored and the side with the most wins! How easy was that?
