Cricket in Oakland? Everything baseball fans need to know before MLC games at Coliseum

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- The Oakland Coliseum announced it's set to host nine Major League Cricket matches during the 2025 season.

The opening match kicks off June 12, 2025.

While cricket is incredibly popular around the world, American sports fans have not had many opportunities to see the sport first-hand.

The closest American comparison to cricket is baseball, but there are a lot of differences between the sports.

For those Bay Area cricket-curious fans, we decided to compare the two sports to give you a little knowledge to know before you go to your first match.

How Popular is Cricket?

Cricket is widely considered the world's second most popular sport, after soccer, due to its strong following in regions like South Asia, Australia, and the UK, with a global fanbase of around 2.5 billion.

How Cricket Works

Just like baseball, one team bats while the other fields.

While a baseball batting lineup is nine players, a Cricket lineup consists of 11 players.

But instead of pitching, cricket players bowl the ball, which consists of running, throwing, and bouncing the ball once before it gets to the batter.

Both baseball and cricket games consist of innings, where one team bats while the other pitches/bowls.

But where a standard baseball game is nine innings, cricket games can vary (See Formats section below).

In baseball, an inning ends when one team makes three outs either by catching a fly ball, striking a batter out, tagging a batter while they are running the bases, or throwing a ball to a base.

In cricket, an inning only ends when all eleven batters have been called out.

Just like baseball, outs can be recorded by catching fly balls, but instead of tagging or throwing runners out, you smash the wicket.

What is a wicket?

A wicket is like a base in baseball, except not.

A wicket consists of three sticks stuck in the ground (called stumps) connected by two other small sticks (known as bails) that sit on top of the stumps.

There are two wickets on a cricket field, one at either end of the pitch (More to come on that in the Fields section.)

Fielders "take wickets," or record an out, by catching the ball, throwing it at or hitting a wicket with the ball, or knocking off the bails.

When that happens, a batter is out and a new batsman hits.

How does batting work in cricket?

One big difference is that in baseball, there is only one batter on the field at a time.

In cricket, there are two batsmen on the field at the same time. One is called the striker and is the non-striker. The striker is the person actively hitting, but when a hit happens, both batsmen must run.

In American baseball, batters either get a hit, a walk or make an out. Once a baseball batter has done that, their turn is over.

In cricket, if a batter gets a hit, they get to keep batting. In fact, they don't stop batting until they are called out.

It's not uncommon for cricket batters to be hitting for 30-40 minutes at a time, whereas baseball hitters are usually only up for a matter of minutes.

Fun fact: the longest a cricket player has ever batted is 16 hours and 10 minutes.

How do you score in Cricket?

In baseball, batters score by crossing home plate, either because they hit a home run or another batter got a hit and drove them in.

In cricket, a run is scored after a hit is recorded and both batsmen are safely able to run to the opposite wicket, like running to a base in baseball.

If the batsmen can run to the wickets two times, they score two runs... three times... three runs, etc.

Cricket does have its version of a home run as well. If a batter hits the ball over the boundary line (think outfield fence, but a line on the ground) on the fly, it's six runs. If it rolls over the boundary line, it's four runs.

The team with the most runs at the end of the match wins!

How are the fields different?

Cricket and baseball games take place on fields, but sometimes cricket fields are called ovals.

That's because a cricket field is generally oval or circular, whereas baseball fields are often shaped like a slice of pie, with differences for each stadium.

While a baseball field has four bases that form a diamond, with the pitcher in the middle, a cricket field has two wickets in the middle of the field, called 'the pitch' and this is where the batters and the bowler are located.

Different Formats of Cricket

There are many formats of cricket games.

The traditional (and also longest) is a test match. Test matches are played over three to five days with as least six hours of cricket being played each day. Think of this like a baseball series, but instead of three separate games being played, it's just one game.

However, younger audiences complained they could not spare days to watch a single game, so shorter forms of the game were developed.

These included what's known as Twenty20 (T20), 100 ball cricket, and T10 cricket matches that last a more manageable 90 minutes to three hours.

In Twenty20 (T20) cricket, each team bats for a maximum of 20 overs.

An over typically consists of six balls sent to the batsman by the bowler, but that's not always the case.

In 100-ball cricket, there are 10 overs of 10 balls each.

In T10 cricket, two teams play a single innings, which is restricted to a maximum of ten overs (60 legal balls) per side.

When an over has been completed, a new bowler takes over (no pun intended). It's possible for players to bowl multiple times depending on the match format.

So what can you expect at the Coliseum?

Nine total matches will take place at the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, featuring all six of the Major League Cricket's teams.

The tournaments are in the Twenty20 format, with the San Francisco Unicorns kicking off on June 12 against the Washington Freedom, in a rematch of the 2024 Championship game.

Two further home games will take place on June 14 and June 15.

Legendary Australian all-rounder Shane Watson leads the Unicorns as its head coach, with the team captained by Corey Anderson.

The 2025 MLC season will be played across three venues - the Coliseum, Grand Prairie, Texas and Broward County Stadium, Florida.