Rounders
Rounders is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams. Rounders is a striking and fielding team game that involves hitting a small, hard, leather-cased ball with a wooden, plastic, or metal bat that has a rounded end. The players score by running around the four bases on the field.
A game of rounders on Christmas Day at Baroona, Glamorgan Vale, Australia in 1913. | |
| Highest governing body | Rounders England (England), GAA Rounders (Ireland), a division of the Gaelic Athletic Association |
|---|---|
| First played | England, 1500s (unified rules 1884) |
| Characteristics | |
| Team members | 2 teams of 6–15 |
Played in England since Tudor times, it is referenced in 1744 in the children's book A Little Pretty Pocket-Book where it was called Base-Ball. The name baseball was superseded by the name rounders in England, while other modifications of the game played elsewhere retained the name baseball. The game is popular among British and Irish school children, particularly among girls. As of 2015, rounders is played by seven million children in the UK.
Gameplay centres on a number of innings, in which teams alternate at batting and fielding. Points (known as 'rounders') are scored by the batting team when one of their players completes a circuit past four bases without being put 'out'. The batter must strike at a good ball and attempt to run a rounder in an anti-clockwise direction around the first, second, and third base and home to the fourth, though they may stay at any of the first three. A batter is out if the ball is caught; if the base to which they are running is touched with the ball; or if, while running, they are touched with the ball by a fielder.