This is a batting-and-bowling contest, not eleven a side. You bat one innings and bowl the other, over a set number of overs. The pitch, the ball, the stumps and the dismissal Laws are the game. There is a fielding side — ten fielders in a fixed ring who cut off strokes and return the ball — but you cannot place it.
Pick a stroke with 1–6 or the buttons, then press Space as the ball arrives. Your timing decides where on the blade you meet it. The bat aims at where the ball was heading when you committed, so any late movement after that is movement the bat cannot follow — which is exactly how swing beats a stroke. Left and Right (or the Aim buttons) nudge your line by up to 9 cm.
Left/Right set the line, Up/Down the length, W/S the pace, Q/E the seam angle, T the delivery type. Space (or the Bowl button) starts the run-up and pressing it again releases: stop the bar near the middle or your front foot lands past the popping crease and it is a No ball under Law 21.5.2.
C changes camera, P pauses.
The rules come from MCC, The Laws of Cricket (2017 Code 4th Edition – 2026), the official code published by Marylebone Cricket Club, the custodian of the Laws. Everything below is the Law's own number and its own figure.
Law 36.1 is a conjunction of five conditions, all of which must hold, and the game checks them one by one and tells you which one saved you:
The ball's raised seam, held at an angle to the flow, trips the boundary layer on one side only. A turbulent layer separates later than a laminar one, so the wake deflects and the ball feels a genuine side force towards the seam side. Push the speed up far enough and the other side goes turbulent too; the seam then only thickens its own side's layer, that side separates early, and the force reverses.
The model is fitted to wind-tunnel measurements from R. D. Mehta, “Cricket Ball Aerodynamics: Myth Versus Science”, NASA Ames Research Center (NTRS 20000112958). It reproduces his measured reversal speeds: 100 mph for a new two-piece ball, 80 mph for a new four-piece match ball and 65 mph for one about 100 overs old — and his measured peak side force of 0.3 times the ball's weight at about 30 m/s with the seam at 20 degrees.
A ball with no seam angle and no roughness contrast cannot swing at all. A ball with a roughness contrast swings at zero seam angle — that is contrast swing, and it is real.
Cricket is a folk game of no single author; the Laws have been governed by Marylebone Cricket Club since 1787, whose first Code was adopted on 30 May 1788. This is an independent reimplementation of the Laws for the browser and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to MCC. See CREDITS.txt for the full list of sources and of every figure that is reconstructed rather than sourced.
Reconstructed, because the Laws do not fix them: the wide reach (Law 22.1.2 is a pure reachability judgement and fixes no distance — one bat length is used here); waist and head height for Laws 41.7.1 and 22.1.3; the pitch's friction and restitution (Law 6.2 makes the pitch the umpire's judgement); the force needed to remove a bail (Law 29.1 states only that it must be completely removed, which is a geometric criterion, not a physical one); the fielding ring and the running between the wickets, since the Laws place no fielder anywhere; the boundary distance, which Law 19.1 leaves to the umpires; and how much a millisecond of mistiming costs. DRS and umpire's call are ICC playing conditions, not Laws, and are not here.
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