Google Doodle Celebrates Cricket Tournament

This is What’s Trending Today.

The National Basketball Association season came to an end on Monday night. The Golden State Warriors defeated the Cleveland Cavaliers for the NBA championship.

But sports fans around the world have something else to cheer about this week. The 2017 International Cricket Council Champions Trophy tournament is taking place in the United Kingdom.

Eight countries started the event on June 1. Four teams remain. On Wednesday, England plays Pakistan in one semifinal. In the second semifinal on Thursday, Bangladesh plays India.

India won the last tournament, in 2013.

The semifinal winners meet for the championship on Sunday at the cricket ground known as The Oval in London.

To celebrate the competition, the search engine Google launched an interactive cricket “doodle” on its homepage. While it was seen in many countries earlier this month, the doodle first appeared on the U.S. homepage on Tuesday.

Internet users can click on the doodle to play a cricket game between crickets and snails. The crickets are at bat and the snails are fielding and bowling.

Players control the batsman with a computer mouse. The ball may go straight to the snails in the field, or in the air and past the boundary for six runs. The game congratulates players every time they score 50 runs or hit a six.

People seem to be enjoying the doodle. Some even wrote on Twitter that they cannot stop playing the game. One person called the game “addictive,” and another said she was “obsessed.”

I assume the Google Doodle is of Cricket today...which I do not understand, but is very addictive to play!

— Nicole Schuman🍕 (@Buffalogal) June 13, 2017
Others said the doodle helped them understand the rules of cricket.

In a statement Tuesday, Google said that the cricket game was its smallest interactive doodle ever. It works well even in places with slower mobile networks.

And that’s What’s Trending Today.

I’m Dan Friedell.

Dan Friedell wrote this story for VOA Learning English. Ashley Thompson was the editor.

What is your highest score in the Google cricket match? We want to know. Write to us in the Comments Section or on our www.hxen.net .