Cricket vs Baseball

[illram]

Double steal? Sacrifice bunt? Messing with pitchers by dancing around on first as if you're going to steal? Running the bases to break up a double play? Sacrifice fly? Alertly advancing to the next base during a pickle or a pickoff? Causing a pickle to allow the other runner to advance? Not advancing if you may get tagged out to avoid a double play? Alternatively, advancing when there is no force but there is no possibility of getting tagged out? The list goes on.

There is loads of strategy in running the bases, along with runners needing to coordinate amongst one another. Running the bases properly is crucial to playing baseball, there is a ton going on out there when you're on base. In fact when I was playing, coming from the perspective of a pitcher who did not bat too much unless I was subbing at 1B or in the OF, running the bases was one of, if not the most, complicated thing I had to do. A baserunner needs to pay constant attention to what is going on.

 

[Camikaze]

Okay, okay. My point was that those seem to be more individual decisions than in cricket. Now, admittedly, baseball running does seem much harder than running between the wickets in cricket (it's a pretty basic thing, mostly because there is no requirement to run at all).

 

[ParadigmShifter]

Once you run in baseball you don't face the pitcher again for ages.

They hardly ever hit the ball.

There are 10 ways to be dismissed in cricket.

 

[lordsurya08]

somebody posted that baseball is brute force. no. completely wrong. baseball is finesse and guile with a dash of power added in.

Have you played baseball? I was played for a season and never touched it again. And it wasn't that I was bad at it - having played cricket, I was a fairly good baseball player.

But baseball is all brute force. There is no "shot placement", no "aiming". Just "slugging". Just hit as hard as you can. If you miss or throw up a catch, that's not too bad, you come back again. In cricket, you have to be a lot more careful. In test matches, you only get two chances at bat. One out changes games. You can't just swing like a maniac. Instead, you face hundreds of balls in a row for hours on end and play a psychological as well as physical game against the other team. You have to be constantly focusing to make sure you don't make even one mistake. It's about endurance, concentration, and skill. Not brute force and "Let me see how hard I can hit it..."

 

[Arwon]

International cricket is "international" in that it is played in commonwealth countries. On a numbers game of number of countries in which Baseball is a major sport, does Cricket beat baseball? I don't think so, but I have never seen the breakdown, and either way it is comparable. In that regard I don't see how it is more "international" than Baseball.

International competition on a prestigious level is different, sure, (in that international events carry more weight in Cricket) but as El pointed out, that doesn't mean international players are not good; they just don't take international competition as seriously because the sport did not develop that way. If players took international competition seriously and showed up for their respective nations in a world competition, the US would by no means be dominant or even be the favorites.

The idea that Baseball is a game of "brute force" is hilarious.

When I say "international" I'm not talking about the fact that there's players from lots of countries running around in the Major League. I'm well aware of that, and at any rate, who cares if there's a lot of Japanese and Dominicans and even a few Australians running around? They're still club franchises in a game best known as "the American past time." Soccer isn't "international" because there's lots of nationalities in the English Premier League, it's international because of the importance of country vs country games.

No, as you guys have spotted, I'm talking about the fact that the highest honour and aspiration in cricket is representing one's country at a Test Match level. It's not about clubs or money (at least not yet). Professional cricket clubs barely exist outside of the Indian 20-20 league. There is no equivalent to the Major League and no equivalent to the World Series and no equivalent to the Yankees.

The single most prestigious, historical event on the cricket calendar is when Australia play England for the Ashes. The strongest, most famous, most respected sides in the world are countries. All the focus is on India, on South Africa, on Australia, on Sri Lanka, on the West Indies, not club franchises or the English county game.

The number of countries playing a sport isn't really of great significance either. Ice Hockey is only taken seriously by a handful of countries but the USA vs Canada matches are still important and respected events. Rugby Union is only played at a world class level by 10 countries (being generous to Scotland and Italy...) and played seriously by maybe 10 more, but it's still a got very robust international representative competition, whose matches are the pinnacle of that sport.

Likewise there are only ten Test Cricket playing countries (with Zimbabwe and Bangladesh barely qualifying and maybe Kenya, Ireland or Afghanistan achieving this status in the future) but international competititon is still virtually the sole focus of cricket.

The club focus of Baseball makes it, in my eyes, less interesting. International country vs country competition is the single best thing about Soccer, about Rugby, and about Cricket, and sports which lack that struggle to hold my interest.

(Except Australian Rules Football, but that's okay because it's the best spectacle in sport and i loves my Sydney Swans.)

 

[dannyshenanigan]

* yeah, I expect a lot of argument on this point from baseball fans, but the truth is that a ball that bounces is much harder to hit than it seems to someone who doesn't play cricket. Though the bowler sacrifices some power when bouncing, he/she can spin, swing, and maneuver the ball in amazing ways. In fact, in the world of cricket, a ball that doesn't bounce is considered to be very easy to score runs off of; it's called a "full toss"

Link to video.

I'll admit I don't know anything about cricket so I don't know how accurate this might be. It does bring up some valid points especially about the cricket bat having an 800% larger surface area. I should also note that the baseball player they used is one of the worst contact hitters ever. He has broke the record for most strikeouts in a season twice. If you were to pick a hitter to be bad at cricket it would be him.

Ideally it would be nice to get the best cricket batter playing baseball against the best pitcher; and the best baseball hitter playing cricket vs. the best bowler. That would give a real answer as to which sport is more difficult.

 

[Arwon]

Yeah, the bat in cricket is all about technique, though. A test of "can you connect bat to ball" is entirely invalid for cricket. Bat's bigger and ball moves a bit slower. The median professional cricketer will not be as physically strong as the median baseball batter.

But it's not a matter of just connecting - you can get bat-on-ball most of the time in cricket even against the world's best bowlers. Blocking is usually relatively easy. The fact that it's easy to block and defend is precisely what creates much of the subtle tactical interplay. The good batsmen are the ones who can precisely control where they hit it, with a wide variety of different strokes (a flat bat and a 360 degree field mean there's no single way to hit the ball - cut shots are entirely different to pull shots or drives) and avoid edging the ball through for easy catches, scoring runs while maintaining a solid blocking defence, and do this to hundreds deliveries over the course of a day.

Likewise, as a bowler, it's not primarily about pace, but manipulating the movement of the ball via swing/curve through the air, placement of the bounce, and exploitation of the seam between the two halves of the ball. The goal, even for the world's fastest bowlers, is not to get it past the batsman just for the sake of it (strike-outs don't exist). Rather it is:

-to place the ball down a consistently good "line" that makes it difficult for a batsman to play an attacking shot (as opposed to a defensive block) and thus keep scoring down and create pressure.

-to get people out by obtaining subtle deviations of bounce direction or aerial swing deviations, so that the ball will either slip through the batsman's defences (getting them out via leg-before-wicket if it hits the legs, or bowled if it hits the stumps) or create edges and mis-timed shots and thus catching opportunities.

Really the bowling tactics are similar to baseball's pace changes, movement deviations and such. Bowlers and pitchers both try to disguise one delivery as another, the goal being to decieve and beat the guy with the bat. The main difference is cricket has extra ball variables. It's like if spitballs were legal. These variables include the raised seam of the ball, the variations produced by the bounce of the ball off the pitch, and the fact that the ball is used many many times. The wearing and tearing of the ball means degredation, which creates a discrepancy in air speed across the smooth and rough sides of the ball which generates swing. These extra variables compensate for the slower speed and are necessary given the easier time batsmen have hitting the ball and defending than in baseball.

Tactics also come, for the bowling side, in field placement. You have 10 players to place around an entire 360 degree arc. That's a wide variety of directions. Wherever you place them, there will be gaps and thus scoring opportunities (if the batsman can target them). You also have to decide which fieldsmen are going to be deep, and defend against big shots, and which are going to be up close to prevent quick sneaky runs and maybe catch a mis-timed shot. Bowling strategy then depends heavily on the field placements and batting is also shaped by it.

 

[Arwon]

Actually, thinking about this a bit more. Cricket people, your opinions!

I think among professional cricketers the best baseballers would be players like Inzamam-Ul-Haq. Physcially powerful batsmen who could play pace well because of their ability to see the ball movement early (since baseball pitching is all ball movement and changes of pace). Possibly even powerful middle-order sloggers like Warne (or Gilchrest)?

I'm not so sure Sachin Tendulkar or Brian Lara, smaller batsmen who were perhaps better against spin, would fare so well.

Bowlers and pitchers I think are too different to be comparable. MAYBE the fastest bowlers who relied more on pace than swing or seam would fare okay (Lee and Akhtar?)? Given the mechanics of the two motions, I would think that if they can bowl at almost 100mph surely they can pitch faster than that.

 

[El Justo]

nice. illram well put old boy.

@lordsurya08
yes, i played baseball in school from age 5 through 18 and have knocked around some in softball (baseball facsimile) and a hardball league. so i can speak on the preparation and thought processes that are involved in the game.

i typically batted leadoff on my teams. the task of a leadoff guy (no.1 in the order) is simple - get on base. it doesn't matter how you get on, just get on. of course, this all means that a smart leadoff guy will typically try to do the following: take pitches, make the pitcher throw you a strike, especially strike one. i'm not up there swinging for the fences. i like to get ahead in the count against him b/c this means his pitches become, mostly, more predictable. so i'm not up there hacking. the pitcher is (i'm surely trying for this) going to throw me 'my pitch', right in my sweet zone as a hitter (or close to it). i want to try and hit the ball hard, yes. but i want to hit it on a line and in a hole between fielders or in the gap between the outfielders. use my speed - flyballs neutralizes speed - so hit it low and try to keep my swing level as if i'm trying to chop down a tree (the same level). this is absolutely conclusive that it's not about "brute force" for some players. while i'll wind up and try to yank or pull a ball every so often, it only really occurs when i'm ahead in the count or if i can swing and hit a ball in my sweet zone.

now, there are other aspects where simply swinging for the fences just isn't a sound strategy at the plate. here is a great example - say a batter leads off the inning with a 2 base double. second guy comes up to bat and in many cases, he'll be asked by his coach to hit it to the right side of the infield, or to the right side in general (infield or outfield) so that the runner at second can advance to 3rd and put himself in position to be on 3rd with less than 2 outs, a very valuable position for any offense. again, no brute force involved. as a matter of fact, the job at hand here is to hit the ball to a certain part of the field, much like cricket i imagine.

i will admit that there are players who simply swing for the fences every time up there. they can be termed 'all or nothing' guys. granted, there aren't many of them on a team, usually no more than 1 or 2 of them. and they do serve a particular purpose (middle of the lineup guy [where most powerful players bat in the order] if he's productive, pinch hitter/substitute if not an every day player). but they are a species unto themselves since most players are usually trying to hit the ball on a line, to an specific area of the field, or to simply drive the ball hard wherever it may land, but typically not power guys. there is a such a thing called a 'gap hitter' in baseball. he may not be the strongest of guys but he can sure as hell hit it into the gaps between the outfielders with an impressive regularity.

with all this said, you should know that there is far more that goes into the strategy of batters. please take this into consideration before passing judgment on the game of baseball

@Arwon
you are comparing apples and oranges here w/ the intl aspect. keep in mind that major league baseball has been in business since the 1870s. there are some teams that have been in continual operation since then. the team i root for has been around since 1883 and have the world record for the most losses ever for any professional sports team in the world, somewhere around 10,200. so the league itself, the club format, is steeped in history. the rivalries between some of the clubs is over 100 years old in many cases. there is no other league in the world that can boast that. to compare this history and the richness and cultural history of baseball with intl matches isn't really fair. i would urge you to go to Fenway Park to watch the Red Sox and Yankees play and see what that atmosphere is like. you need not know one iota about the game of baseball. just soak in the sporting atmosphere and if you're a sport enthusiast, you will just feel it in the air. maybe a Dodgers-Giants game at Chavez Ravine. try wearing a New York Mets cap at Citizens Bank Park in Philly these rivalries are as intense as any intl rivalry, i can promise you that.

 

[Arwon]

I'm a Padres fan, I've seen them play at least a dozen times. They are a depressing side much like the Chargers.

Oh and also: I support a side called the Port Adelaide Magpies who play Australian Rules Football who were founded in 1870 and the Sydney Swans who - as South Melbourne - were founded in 1874. I knows about club traditions! They're fun and stuff, but just can't compare to international competition.

And finally, I'm only moderately into soccer but in terms of club rivalry, I'd contend that the Barcelona Madrid rivalry is clearly the most intense in the world. Boston and New York never fought a civil war against each other and one didn't spend decades oppressing the other.

 

[El Justo]

then intl rivalries are your bag but this doesn't in any way diminish or lessen the excitement of league play and club rivalries.

 

[Camikaze]

@Arwon- I remember towards the end of Gilchrist's (international) career there was a bit of speculation that a big baseball club would pick him up as a specialist hitter, but it never eventuated to anything, probably due to the IPL. The best pitchers would probably be people like Andrew Symonds; those who are really good fielders.

To add to the pace of bowling thing; the person who is widely regarded as probably the best bowler ever is Shane Warne, whose average bowling speed was probably about 85 km h^-1. The fastest bowlers in the world (Lee and Akhtar) have bowled up to 161 km h^-1, whilst the normal speed for a 'fast bowler' is 140km h^-1. Speed is relevant to an extent, but it is nowhere near everything. The reason is largely to do with deliveries like the following:

Link to video.
The ability to bounce the ball, and to have much larger 'zone' you are able to bowl in, allows for much greater variety.

@dannyshenanigan- lol at using an American amateur cricketer and making him bowl medium pace non-spin. That video is full of some much fail. Although, to be fair, if you were to get an Australian version comparing the same thing, it would probably be just as failtastic in the other direction.

 

[Arwon]

Not the Ball of the Century? If only for Gatting's face...

As I said in my earlier, erm, essay... it's like if spitballs and scuffing up the ball were legal. And then some.

 

[Camikaze]

No decent youtube versions, and a couple of metres of spin probably shows it better than a metre of drift and spin back out.

 

[Arwon]

On the other hand, look at what a beamer does to batsmen in cricket. All baseball deliveries are essentially beamers. I can't imagine too many cricketers could play them well. And the distance is slightly shorter too.

 

[ParadigmShifter]

This youtube seems OK for Shane Warne


Link to video.

 

[Camikaze]

Beamers are hard to play because they're out of the blue. Full tosses are relatively easy to play, but that's off spinners. If a batter knew a beamer was coming, they'd deal with it better than if they do in cricket. Although I guess it's a different skill, so it probably would be quite difficult for them.

 

[illram]

From what people are saying about Cricket, it has a lot in common with Baseball.

On the subject of hitting a baseball, hitting is very much about where you connect the bat and the ball and not just swinging really hard. Good hitters consistently connect the sweet spot of their bat with the top half of the baseball and hit line drives, but they also can hit situationally and attempt to put the ball in certain places on the field. It is not just swinging the bat as hard as you can at the ball, that will not get you very far, even if you get lucky and connect. With a wooden bat and a 90 MPH+ ball flying at you it very well might result in injured hands.

Pitching also incorporates more than power pitching. Lots of pitchers rely on pitching to contact (wanting hitters to swing and connect, but hit ground balls or lazy fly balls) and changing speeds. It is not as important for a hitter to swing and miss as it is for them to just swing, and not do much with what they are hitting. Many MLB pitchers do this with great success such as Derek Lowe (ground ball pitcher). Cy Young, arguably the greatest pitcher ever, said "I aimed to make the batter hit the ball, and I threw as few pitches as possible. That's why I was able to work every other day."

From some of the descriptions of Cricket technique, really it sounds similar, but with differences owing to the obvious difference of the bats and the different style of pitching vs bowling.

On pitching vs bowling, from looking at a cricket bowler and a baseball pitchers arms, the motions look very different and I don't think a fast cricketer necessarily translates into a fast baseball pitcher, and vice versa. For one thing the shoulder of the cricketer rotates more like a fast softball pitcher than a baseball pitcher, who uses more elbow rotation in addition to shoulder rotation, and, obviously, does not get a running start. (Not trying to dig a bowler by comparing it to what is predominantly a woman's sport in the US--a fast pitch softball pitcher's pitch is very fast and their rotation on the shoulder is extremely violent and difficult to do, while also putting spin on the softball.) The pitcher is trying to use spin to move the ball, while the bowler looks to be using the ground, spin, and the ball, to make the ball move in a wildly unpredictable location. Is there a cricket bowler who solely tries to bowl the ball past the batter in a straight line, equivalent to a baseball "power pitcher?" If so, we have another analogous thing going on.

On the subject of "can a good cricket bowler pitch faster than a pitcher" or "can a good Baseball hitter hit a cricket ball better" I would imagine that pro players of each sport have mastered the relative techniques of each game, and that in an alternate universe where, say, India and England played a Baseball world series, famous India cricketers would probably develop mechanics similar to Baseball players of this universe, and the limits of human ability we see in either sport would be the same. I.e., you would not see much beyond a 110 MPH fastball and you would not see many people hitting more than 40 HR in a year, beyond the occasional lone exceptions. I feel like the limits of human ability are already reached by each sports professionals, and it is a myth that some other sport gives someone fundamental skills that would mean they could do a different sport better than that sport's best athletes.

 

[Camikaze]

There aren't any bowlers in cricket who try to simply get the ball past the batter, because there is no gain for doing so. And, as I imagine is similar in baseball, bowlers will not be trying to do the same thing all the time anyway. The two keys to bowling are generally referred to as 'line' and 'length', with the former being (if you're looking up a cricket pitch towards the batter) horizontal placement, and the other, vertical placement. The line and length bowlers bowl depends on the situation. Sometimes they are trying to limit the runs the batter can get, sometimes they are attempting to actually get the batsmen out (sometimes through drawing the batsman into a bad but tempting shot, and sometimes through simply giving them an unplayable ball). Beating the bat is always considered to be an indication that the batsman is having a hard time batting, but it doesn't actually achieve anything in itself, unless the ball then goes onto hit the stumps (in which case the batter is out 'bowled') or the pads (in which case the batter may be out 'leg before wicket', meaning that they've missed the ball and their legs have prevented the ball from hitting the stumps). The batsman will often (50% of the time for some batsmen) deliberately leave the ball, because playing at it will involve a greater risk (they might get out, commonly by mistiming the shot and the fielder catching it). I guess this is the equivalent of a 'ball' in baseball. The equivalent of a 'strike' would be the ball that you miss which either bowls you, or gets you out LBW (leg before wicket), but the difference is that this only has to happen once and you're gone.

 

[lordsurya08]

:

now, there are other aspects where simply swinging for the fences just isn't a sound strategy at the plate. here is a great example - say a batter leads off the inning with a 2 base double. second guy comes up to bat and in many cases, he'll be asked by his coach to hit it to the right side of the infield, or to the right side in general (infield or outfield) so that the runner at second can advance to 3rd and put himself in position to be on 3rd with less than 2 outs, a very valuable position for any offense. again, no brute force involved. as a matter of fact, the job at hand here is to hit the ball to a certain part of the field, much like cricket i imagine.

with all this said, you should know that there is far more that goes into the strategy of batters. please take this into consideration before passing judgment on the game of baseball

(end quote)

In other words, the strategy in baseball consists of "hit to ball to the right" or "hit the ball to the left"? In cricket there are 30+ different kind of shots depending on the direction. 30 vs 2...hmm...

I hope I'm not sounding rude in my posts, it's just that I have a very blunt way of speaking, I'm sorry. I don't have anything against baseball personally. I just feel that there's a lot more to do in cricket.