Saddle up on your imaginary steed, grab your coconuts, and prepare for a basic lesson
We want to show you how to play cricket the right way—the way we Brits have played it since at least the 16th Century. And who better to demonstrate than the Knights (pronounced 'kuh-nig-huts') of a very silly place called Camelot?
The field
Much like the baseball diamond, the cricket pitch has an infield and an outfield. But instead of three bases in a diamond pattern, there are ends and only two in an oval field.
Secondly, you've been using too few players. Cricket fields 11, with a total of four innings being played in Test cricket (two per side), with each player batting once per inning (they all have to bat - none of this designated hitter nonsense) and two batsmen on the field at all times. We can only assume the two-man shortfall came about because of the unpopularity of baseball--which of course will be rectified once you start playing it properly!
First, the bowler (pitcher) bowls the ball to the batsman (hitter)
Second, the batsman makes contact
While its clearly revolutionary and genius and so on to make your bats tubular when striking a round surface, we found that when one is hurling an 80 mph ball at you, it's nice have a flatter surface to connect with it. The flat hitting surface is called a blade, which is connected to the handle and has no connection to the movie from 1998.
Next, the batsman runs from one wicket to the other
Why someone would ever just stand around on a base for ages upon ages we'll never know. This is a key difference. Instead of having 4 places to reach, we've streamlined the process. Check it out: TWO WICKETS, each with a safe zone called a crease--our equivalent of a base. The batter runs from one base to the other as quickly as possible to score as many runs as possible. SO much easier to remember.
But the batsmen must avoid getting out
Since we only have two "bases" in cricket, the batsman runs between them to score as many times as s/he can until s/he is in danger of being run out, which is similar to being thrown out in baseball: it happens when one of the fielding players breaks the wicket with the ball when a batsman is outside the crease. Besides being bowled or run out there are eight other ways of getting out in cricket. Makes it more interesting, what?