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.^[1] 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, he is bowled out) and to score runs where possible.
• Through metonymic usage, the dismissal of a batter is known as the taking of a wicket,^[2]
• The cricket pitch itself is sometimes referred to as the wicket.^[3][4]

In the sport of croquet, wooden or plastic balls are hit with a mallet through hoops embedded in a grass playing court. A croquet hoop is commonly referred to as a wicket in North American English. (Note: the remainder of this page is about the wicket in cricket, not in croquet.)