Wicket

This article is about the cricket term. For the American term for croquet hoops, see Croquet. For the web application framework, see Apache Wicket. For other uses, see Wicket (disambiguation).Most of the time, the wicket is one of the two sets of three stumps and two bails at either end of the pitch.The wicket is guarded by a batsman who, with his bat, attempts to prevent the ball from hitting the wicket. The origin of the word is from the standard definition of wicket as a small gate. Historically, cricket wickets had only two stumps and one bail and looked like a gate. The third (middle) stump was introduced in 1775. The size and shape of the wicket has changed several times during the last 300 years and its dimensions and placing is now determined by Law 8 in the Laws of Cricket, thus