Cricket in 2050: The future of the sport and its wonderful form

Disclaimer: It is a fantasy article about how the events may turn in future and includes imaginary concepts purely written for entertainment purposes.

The year is 2050 and Cricket is at its finest. Let's move on to discuss the amazing sport and describe everything new about the game for those who want to know about it on the best time of the sport's glorified history.

Stadium:

The Cricket stadiums are now a closed, circular with green turf and it has a light brown rectangular patch right at the centre, called the 'pitch. From cricket's origin to late 2020s, it was played under the bright sky.

However, an attempt was made to change that. An immense amount of innovation and hard work for years provided for cricket to be played indoors by the construction of Docklands Stadium (Etihad Stadium) but it was not a great success, in its initial run of course.

The idea about indoors stadium, once again, knocked the doors of cricket with the amount of flying-car invaders increased. Soon, many matches were recorded delay or cancellation due to rain. Hence, ICC marked indoors stadium as a mandatory requirement.

Most of these stadiums have car-pads (previously known as helipads) on the surface of the roof. These are booked by cricket fanatics as soon as the schedule of a series or tournament is announced.

People travel from stadium roof to their respective seats by high-speed elevators in a matter of 1.5 seconds. These high-tech seats can be switched to public or private mode on the choice of each audience member. Every seat has a built-in high-definition transparent glass screen which offers features like zooming and choosing camera views of bowler, batsman or anyone on the field.

The earbuds are also available for fans to adjust the volume of bat and ball sounds. Fans can also listen to the commentary from experts through them but cannot listen to a single word from the men playing because of the high privacy provided.

The game:

Cricket is the classic match between two teams consisting of 11 players each. A beautiful, 3D, randomly programmed toss (coin lookalike) is performed in a Virtual Reality environment created in the middle of the ground, ranging from roof to the turf.

Note: Coins were the metal circular bodies peoples used as currency in the past.

The team which bowls first, troubles all its eleven players to come in the ground with two of the opposition players with bats in their hands made of wood, silicon and some other elements. These electronically modified bats record each and every stat of the batsmen. A few of those stat types are flinging speed, percentage middling of the ball, types of shots.

Opposition bowler bowls the glowing white spherical bowl with two lines of insects on it and tries to get the batsman out. Bowling team has to send all 10 of 'em back or all the overs have to be bowled. There are three types of formats; ODI with 35 overs a side and T20 with 20 overs a side. The third and long format is played in 5 days with 50 overs a day and a pink ball is used. In some countries, the light green ball is used in the longer format.

Rules

The team which bats first has to restrict the opponent from the score they made in the first place.

Scoring runs

Batsmen look to score as many runs as possible by running between the wickets. If batsmen change their ends, it will be 1 run. If they cross more than one time (most unlikely), then 2 runs are recorded.

A boundary is marked by orange neon mark around the ground.

If the ball hit the boundary after few bounces, a blue light will glow throughout the stadium for 3 seconds and it will be counted as four runs. Similarly, if the ball hits the boundary or goes over it, a purple light will glow resulting in 6 runs.

Howzzatt

There are some ways to get a batsman out:

Bowled is the one in which a bowler hits the stumps behind the batsman.

LBW is one in which batsman is blocking the stumps and ball hit his pads. Bowler turns behind and raise his hands in front of the black sight-screen. The decision will be announced on the big screen instantly.

Runout is the one in which any of the two batsmen fail to reach their bat beyond the white line called crease before a fielder hits the stumps. It is confirmed by Red light flash inside the stadium. If he reaches before the ball hits the stumps, green light illuminates the stadium.

If a fielder catches a ball hit from the bat without bouncing inside the circumference, it is called caught out.

Stumping is one in which batsman steps out of his crease and keeper dislodges the rods.

Previously, umpires used to take decisions on appeals of bowler and fielders.

Commentary:

The expert's panel sit in a well-equipped lounge (commentary box) to have their view of the beautiful game alongside small screens in front of them. The idea of doing commentary on-field was given by the English cricketer and great commentator, Nasser Hussain, when he came on the pitch to have fun with commentary in a match between World XI and Windies at Lords.

This idea struck the minds of some people but was dangerous as it could cause horrific injuries. Thanks to Virtual Reality, it became possible some time ago (circa 15 years). Commentators standing or sitting in the studios can have access to watch the game from any of the player's view.

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Do you think this may come true in any form? Do you have other suggestion? Sound off in the comments section below.