B2 First - Reading Multiple Matching Exercise

Cricket

Cricket is a sport which is played between two teams of eleven players each who score runs (points) by running between two sets of three small, wooden posts called wickets. Each of the wickets is at one end of a rectangle of flattened grass called the pitch. Around the pitch is a much larger oval of grass called the cricket ground. The edge of the cricket ground is often marked by a rope. If a player hits the hard red ball to the rope, he gets four runs. If it gets past the rope without hitting the ground, he gets six runs which is the most runs you can get with one shot.

The game started in England in the 16th century. The earliest definite reference to the sport is in a court case of 1598. The court in Guildford heard a coroner, John Derrick, that when he was a scholar at the "Free School at Guildford", fifty years earlier, "he and diverse of his fellows did run and play [on the common land] at cricket and other players". Later, the game spread to countries of the British Empire in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Baseball

Baseball is a sport played on a field by two teams against each other. In baseball, a player on one team throws a small round ball at a player on the other team, who tries to hit it with a bat. Then the player who hits the ball has to run around the field. Players score points by running around in a full circle around three markers on the ground called bases, to back where they started, which is called home plate. They have to do this without getting caught by the players on the other team.

Baseball started in the United States in the 1700s and 1800s, but historians are not sure who invented it. Many people in North America, South America, and East Asia play baseball, but the sport is most popular in the United States and Japan. In the U.S., baseball is called the national pastime, because so many people in the United States used to spend a lot of time playing or watching baseball games. Today, though, most Americans follow football more than baseball, especially when it comes time for the Super Bowl.

Badminton

Badminton is a sport for two or four people. The game is either one player against one player or a team of two players against another team of two players. Players use rackets to hit a shuttlecock over a net.

The aim of the game is to hit the shuttlecock over the net in a way that the other player or pair cannot hit it back properly before it hits the floor. Every time this is done, the player or pair gets one point. They also get to serve. The first player or pair to reach 21 points wins a game. The winner of the match is the first to win 2 sets.

Badminton traces its history to a game called George Cajoles, which was played in Pune, India in the 19th century by the British military officers stationed there. This game was taken by retired officers back to England where it developed and quickly grew in popularity.

In 1877, the first set of written rules were arranged by the newly formed Bath Badminton Club. The All England Open Badminton Championships, the first badminton competition in the world, was held in 1899. Badminton has been an Olympic sport since 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona. Although badminton originated in England, it is mainly played in countries of Asia such as China, Indonesia and the Republic of Korea that now dominates this sport.

Basketball

Basketball is a handball game usually played by two teams of five players on the court. A basketball is a spherical object that rolls and bounces. The objective is to get the ball through a hoop mounted high on a backboard at back end. It is a very popular sport worldwide, played with a round and usually orange ball that bounces. Basketball players mainly use skills such as dribbling, shooting, running, and jumping.

The game is played between men's teams or between women's teams. Basketball has been played in the Summer Olympic Games since 1936. The shot clock rule started in 1954. The first basketball game took place in 1892, where the court was half the size of what it is today.

In early December 1891, James Naismith, a Canadian physical education teacher at Springfield College in Springfield, Massachusetts invented an indoor game called basketball. He invented the sport to keep his students from becoming bored during the winter. Naismith wrote the basic rules and then nailed a peach basket onto a 20-foot tall pole. Unlike modern basketball hoops, the bottom of the peach-basket was still there, so after a point was scored, somebody had to get the ball out of the basket with a long stick. Over time, people made a hole at the bottom of the basket so the ball could go through more easily.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Original Wikipedia article.