New to Cricket? Start Here.

Here's our promise: you don't need to know your googly from your gully to love this game. Plenty of us didn't grow up with cricket either — we're here for the noise, the drama and the people. So if you've never watched a match in your life, you're exactly who we wrote this for. Give us five minutes and you'll follow your first Flames game like you've been coming for years.

The whole game, in 60 seconds

Cricket is a bat-and-ball game between two teams of eleven. One team bats (tries to score) while the other bowls and fields (tries to stop them and get them out). Then they swap.

A coin toss at the start decides who bats first. The batting team sends out two players at a time and scores points — called runs. The fielding team tries to get batters out. When you're out, you're off. Once ten of the eleven batters are out (or the time runs out), the innings ends and the teams switch roles.

Whoever scores the most runs wins. That's it. Everything else is just detail, and the good news is, the detail is where the fun lives.

Start with T20 — it's the friendliest way in

Cricket comes in a few lengths. Traditional matches can last days. Twenty20 (T20), the format we play, is the quick, loud, floodlit version: about three hours, closer to a gig than a marathon.

The only number you really need is the over. An over is six balls bowled in a row. In a T20 game each team gets 20 overs to score as many runs as they can — so 120 balls to make it count. Fast bowling, big hitting, music, atmosphere. It's cricket with the boring bits taken out, which is exactly why it's booming in cities like ours that never grew up on the game.

The handful of words you'll actually hear

You can enjoy a whole match knowing just these:

• Pitch: the strip of short grass in the middle where the action happens (the rest of the ground is the outfield).
• Wicket: an annoyingly flexible word. It means the three wooden stumps the bowler aims at, and it's what people say when a batter gets out ("that's a wicket!"). Context tells you which.
• Stumps & bails: the three posts (stumps) with two little sticks balanced on top (bails). Knock the bails off and the batter's gone.
• Boundary: hit the ball to the edge of the field and you score without running: four runs along the ground, six if it clears the rope in the air. A six is the big roar moment.
• Run: the batters score one by running to swap ends. Quick singles, big sixes — it all adds up.
• Innings: one team's full turn at batting.

That's genuinely enough to follow along. The rest you'll pick up by osmosis, pint in hand.

How do you get out?

There are officially ten ways to be dismissed, but you'll see the same few again and again:

• Bowled: the ball hits the stumps. Simple and brutal.
• Caught: a fielder catches your hit before it bounces.
• LBW (leg before wicket): the ball hits your leg when it would've hit the stumps. This is the one everyone appeals for loudly.
• Run out: you don't make your ground before the fielders break the stumps.
• Stumped: you wander out of your crease and the keeper whips the bails off.

The other five are rare and wonderful — hit wicket, obstructing the field, hitting the ball twice, timed out and more. Spot one live and you've witnessed something most lifelong fans rarely see.

Cricket is for everywhere — even Vondelpark

You don't need whites, a club or even a proper ball to start. A bat, a tennis ball and a bit of grass will do — a park, a beach, a car park, your street. That's how most of the world's players began. Amsterdam has plenty of space for a knockabout (yes, Vondelpark counts), and it's the best way to feel why a good shot is so satisfying.

Want to see it — or play it — near you?

The quickest way to fall for cricket is a live T20 under lights. Come and see the squad that's about to light up the city.

Play or watch grassroots cricket in Amsterdam. Cricket here is centred just south of the city in Amstelveen, and the local clubs genuinely welcome beginners. VRA Cricket Club at vra.nl, Amsterdamsche Cricket Club / ACC at acc-cricket.nl, and you can find any club near you via the KNCB club finder at kncb.nl/en/clubs.

Still lost? Good.

Nobody understood everything at their first match — that's half the fun. Come as you are, ask the person next to you, and let the game pull you in. There's a place by the fire for you.