delericho
Legend
It's more an English thing than UK-wide - although there is a Scottish team (and I expect there are also Welsh and Northern Irish teams), very few people up here play to any extent. And anyone who is serious about the sport almost inevitably has to head south to play.
I do know one guy who plays at a semi-serious but still amateur level. Not sure if that counts, though, since he's originally from India.
It's not so hard, at least at its core. Team 1 gets an innings to try to accumulate as many runs as possible, then Team 2 have their innings, then Team 1 has a second innings, then Team 2... and at the end of 5 days they declare it a draw and play again some other time.
The "5 days and then it's a draw" thing is an exaggeration, but not by all that much. The rules of the game give conditions for winning the game, but if the time limit for the game expires before then, it's a draw - it doesn't matter who was 'winning' at that point, or even if the outcome was a foregone conclusion. The game is either won decisively, or it's a draw. This means that if (as is quite common) the 5-day test match loses a day or two due to rain, it's almost certainly a draw. And it also gives rise to some strategic play where a team might be getting beaten by a vastly superior team and so rather than trying to win the game, they instead try desperately just to cling on, to run down the clock, and to get a draw.
At least, that applies to test match cricket, which plays out over 5 days. There are other formats which have different rules (generally designed to reduce the number of draws). But my grandfather is a test match purist, so I've never really been exposed to them.
