It’s surprisingly simple, actually.
A cricket pitch is a long strip. Bowler bowls from one end, batter strikes the bowl from the other. Scoring is done by running from one end of that strip to the other (the unit of scoring is literally called a run). Six legal bowls make an over.
There are two batters in play at each point in time, one at each end of the pitch, and they both must run towards the other end of the pitch (therefore swapping places) to score.
Bruce Edgar had scored 102 runs, was not out (in the same sense as baseball — meaning he was still in play), but, because they either didn’t manage to score any runs, or scored twos, he spent the whole over on the non-striking side of the pitch.
It's surprisingly simple, actually.
The bariet takes a pull at the fumbler, and then one of two things happens: Either he misses, or hits it (towards the flange or along the foul line to the base). There are three spichies who can try to deflect the fumbler, either towards the simulcum or out to the field.
The simulcum is the more audacious play, giving an instant spiel if they succeed in darving the bariet. But it runs a serious risk of a spurn, so unless a spichie is particularly strong, the field is the safer play.
Explaining Cricket to a Baseball fan only makes it worse.
I have tried it many times and failed.
Personally, playing a few games of cricket is the best way to learn the rules of the game.
As an example, in your explanation ( which is good to this lifelong cricket fan from India) your first sentence starts "A cricket pitch..." And when a baseball fan reads it he is probably asking "What is a cricket pitch?"
Unlike the rules for Quidditch I had to reread parts of this to understand it.
So the batter runs towards the bowler? 102 runs? Can a run score more than one? What was the down by 6 thing? It's not really that simple?
It’s surprisingly simple, actually.
Basically, there's three grabbers, three taggers, five twig runners, and a player at Whackbat. Center tagger lights a pine cone and chucks it over the basket and the whack-batter tries to hit the cedar stick off the cross rock. Then the twig runners dash back and forth until the pine cone burns out and the umpire calls hotbox. Finally, you count up however many score-downs it adds up to and divide that by nine.