Games in the sport of cricket are played over a number of hours or days, making it one of the sports with the longest playing time, though sailing, yachting, road cycling, and rallying are sometimes longer. Typically, Test and first-class cricket matches are played over three to five days with, at least, six hours of cricket being played each day. Limited overs formats of cricket take place in one day, with List A matches lasting for six hours or more, and T20, 100-ball and T10 matches lasting from 90 minutes to three hours. These variations in length of playing time occur because different formats of cricket have different caps on the number of legal deliveries or days that the innings or overall game can go, with games otherwise theoretically having no limit as to how long they can go. Cricket therefore has special rules about intervals for lunch, tea and drinks as well as rules about when play starts and ends. These rules are outlined in Laws 11 (Intervals) and 12 (Start of play; cessation of play) in the Laws of Cricket.
___List_A_cricket_q.jpg)
>>>PUT SHARE BUTTONS HERE<<<
Playing time (cricket) in the context of Forms of cricket
Cricket is a multi-faceted sport with different formats, depending on the standard of play, the desired level of formality, and the time available. One of the main differences is between matches limited by time in which the teams have two innings apiece, and those limited by number of overs in which they have a single innings each. The former, known as first-class cricket if played at the senior level, has a scheduled duration of three to five days (there have been examples of "timeless" matches too); the latter, known as limited overs cricket because each team bowls a limit of typically 50 overs, has a planned duration of one day only. A separate form of limited overs is Twenty20, originally designed so that the whole game could be played in a single evening (3 hours), in which each team has an innings limited to twenty overs.
Double innings matches usually have at least six hours of playing time each day, with formal intervals on each day for lunch and tea, and additional brief informal breaks for drinks. There is also a short interval between innings. Limited overs matches often last at least six hours, with similar intervals and breaks, whilst the more streamlined Twenty20 matches are generally completed in under four hours. T10 cricket is a newer version of the game, based on the principles of other limited overs formats, but with only 10 overs per innings, and the total playing time limited to 90 minutes.