SoCalian said:
I have been trying to figure this sport out for about a year, but haven't been able to make any sense out of it. All I know is that there are some sticks, a ball, a flat wooden bat, and I think tea, and I know that England won the Ashes this year, whatever that is. could someone please explain to me the basics of the game. stuff like objective, scoring, positions, time length, ect.
You don't ask much, do you

Here goes. Each team has 11 players. To play the game, one team will bat first whilst one will bowl (pitch) and field. The batting side has two players out on the field at one time. If one of these batsmen is out he is replaced by another batsman until all 11 have gone out to bat. That is the end of their innings. That team will then field and the other side has their turn to bat.
The bowler bowls (ie pitches) the ball at the batsman who tries to hit it out into the field to score some runs. A run is scored when the batsman has hit the ball far enough so that he is literally able to run from one set of stumps to the other. (The stumps are the two sets of three sticks as you call them, set 22 yards apart in the middle of the field). There is no particular limit to the number of balls a batsman can hit - he will keep hitting until either he is out or the end of the innings.
The winner is the team with the most runs at the end of their innings. Typically, the number of runs scored by each team is something like 300 (although it can range from <50 to 700+ in exceptional circumstances.
Some games have just one innings each and are limited to 300 balls being bowled each. These games will take about 7 to 8 hours to play.
Other games have two innings each and have no limit on the number of balls being bowled but have a time limit instead. The pre-arranged time limits usually range from 3 to 5 days play of 6 hours each day. Each day is split into three sessions of 2 hours each. We break for lunch between the first and second session and then have our tea

between the second and third session.
In these games you add the runs scored in each innings together to determine the winner.
The game is played in the middles of a large oval shaped field. There are many, many fielding positions as can be seen on this:
http://www.abcofcricket.com/cfb1/cfb2/cfb3/cfb3.htm
As you can appreciate, this barely scratches the surface of cricket.