Games in the sport of cricket are played over a number of hours or days, making it one of the sports with the longest playing time, though sailing, yachting, road cycling, and rallying are sometimes longer. Typically, Test and first-class cricket matches are played over three to five days with, at least, six hours of cricket being played each day. Limited overs formats of cricket take place in one day, with List A matches lasting for six hours or more, and T20, 100-ball and T10 matches lasting from 90 minutes to three hours. These variations in length of playing time occur because different formats of cricket have different caps on the number of legal deliveries or days that the innings or overall game can go, with games otherwise theoretically having no limit as to how long they can go. Cricket therefore has special rules about intervals for lunch, tea and drinks as well as rules about when play starts and ends. These rules are outlined in Laws 11 (Intervals) and 12 (Start of play; cessation of play) in the Laws of Cricket.

The game is only played in dry weather. Also, as occasionally balls are bowled at over 100 mph (160 km/h) in first-class cricket, the game needs to be played in enough light for a batsman to be able to see the ball. Play is therefore halted when it rains (but not usually when it drizzles) and when there is bad light. Some one-day games and Test matches are now played under floodlights. The first day/night Test match was played between Australia and New Zealand in Adelaide, in November 2015, and was deemed a success, leading to further day/night Tests being scheduled. Day/night Test cricket is played with a pink ball as opposed to the traditional red ball to aid visibility. Apart from some experimental One Day International series in Australia's roofed Marvel Stadium, cricket is played outdoors.

These requirements mean that in England, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Zimbabwe the game is played in the summer.

In the West Indies, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh games are played in the winter. In these countries the hurricane and typhoon season coincides with summer. This has another effect. Games start earlier in these places than in the countries which play cricket as a summer sport. In these countries games start at around 09:30 rather than the 10:30 or 11:00 start time used in England, say, so that play for the day is complete before dusk, which may be as early as 17:30.

A game or day starts when the umpire at the bowler's end calls 'Play'. 'Play' is also called to restart the game after an interval or interruption. Before an interval in or interruption of play, and at the end of a match, the umpire at the bowler's end calls 'Time' and removes the bails from both of the wickets. The bowling side cannot make an appeal for a dismissal after 'Time' has been called.

The game finishes when the first of three things happens:

Notes:

Because of the length of the game, there are a number of intervals that occur in a game of cricket. These are: