Cricket has been around for hundreds of years in Northern Europe. Some experts think that the game probably started as a very simple game of one player throwing the ball and another hitting it. It didn’t really develop into what we know as cricket until around the 1500s. English missionaries then brought the game to Samoa in the 1800s, where it changed even more. The Samoan version of Cricket is called Kilikiti. The basics of the game are the same as cricket. Each side has a wicket, which is basically three wooden sticks with two wooden sticks balanced on top of them located at each end of the rectangle field. The goal is to score points by running from one end of the field to the other. The bowler tries to knock the top pieces (bails) off the wicket of the other team to get the batsman out. The batsman tries to protect the wicket and run to score points.
• To play, they use a hard rubber ball covered in Pandanus leaves, which are like palm leaves.
• The ball is usually smaller than an English cricket ball.
• Their wickets are taller.
• They have a bowler and wicket keeper at each end, which makes the game faster.
• In the traditional games, players only wear a traditional Polynesian dress called a lava-lava, which is a rectangular cloth worn like a skirt.
• Modern players may wear more modern clothes and protective gear. 
• The bats are called pates.
• Pates can be up to 1 meter long, though most players use smaller ones.
• Each player can carve his or her own pate. They have two straight sides that meet like a triangle and one curved side that is used to hit the ball.
• English cricket bats are flat.
• There is no limit to team size; often entire villages will compete against each other.
• Some competitions between villages last for days and often include singing and dancing.
• Teams are called Au.
• Another very important part of the game is “sledging,” a kind of competitive cheering that the teams and fans perform to encourage their team and tease their opponents.
Originally the rules of Kilikiti were very flexible. It was just a game in which villages would come together and compete. Now it has become more standardized with universal rules, but at its core, it is a game for everyone to enjoy. Villages all over the nation still hold weeklong festivals playing against
