wicket

thumb|upright|A wicket In the sport of cricket, the term wicket has several meanings: It is either of the two sets of three stumps and two bails at each end of the pitch. The fielding team's players can hit the wicket with the ball in a number of ways to get a batter out. The wicket is guarded by a batter who, with their bat (and sometimes with their pads, but see the laws on LBW, leg before wicket), attempts to prevent the ball from hitting the wicket (if it does, they may be bowled) and to score runs where possible. Through metonymic usage, the dismissal of a batter is known as the taking of a wicket. The cricket pitch itself is sometimes referred to as the wicket.

==History== thumb|The Young Cricketer by [[Francis Cotes in 1768 features the original two-stump wicket]] The origin of the word is from wicket gate, a small gate. Originally, cricket wickets had only two stumps and one bail and looked like a gate, much like the wicket used in the North American game of wicket. The third (middle) stump was introduced in 1775, after Lumpy Stevens bowled three successive deliveries to John Small that went straight through the two stumps rather than hitting them.