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 rounded end wooden, plastic, or metal bat. The players score by running around the four bases on the field.[2][3]
 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[1] |
|---|---|
| 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in 1744 in the children's book A Little Pretty Pocket-Book where it was called Base-Ball.[4] The name baseball was superseded by the name rounders in England, while other modifications of the game played elsewhere retained the name baseball.[5] The game is popular among British and Irish school children, particularly among girls.[6][7][8] As of 2015 rounders is played by seven million children in the UK.[9]
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.[6] 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.[6]