*A baseball glove is efficient. *
True. And were gloves legal in cricket for fielders, the players would likely wear them. When I play baseball, I use a glove because I’m catching a ball thrown/hit hard much more frequently.
*A bare-handed third baseman would never make the plays a gloved player can make. *
True, in that the glove extends the reach. So you could reach further to the glove side and reaching up. To the non-glove side you could probably reach further if you dived with the bare hand.
*I don’t know who these cricketers are but if they tried it against major league hitters, I’m pretty sure they would have broken bones in their hands. *
Not true.
Given that a baseball and cricket ball have similar weight, that they can be throw/bowled at very similar speeds and a cricket bat is heavier than a baseball bat, then physics would indicate that if anything you can hit a cricket ball harder than a baseball.
I could be wrong, but I’d have to see it.
If you wish to learn, then I guess the onus is on you.
I wouldn’t rank these as “best of all time” but they are pretty good.
I would presume the “hardest” catch in baseball would be when the ball is driven back at the pitcher because that’s what 60ft rather than the 90ft to third base. In cricket you can stand as close to the bat as you want, provided you or your shadow aren’t encroaching on the pitch. During the first 15 overs of a one-day-international only two players can be outside the 30 yard fielding circle, and at least 2 must be in “close catching positions” which would usually be 10-15 yards away.
Outfield and catches in front of the bat are much more straightforward than slips catches (behind the bat). Unfortunately I don’t think any American sport has an equivalent to this so the only way you’ll get an idea of what is involved it to get out and try it.
The key difference is that when catching with a mitt your hand is still or moves towards the ball in order to close the pocket. Try that without a glove and 1) you’ll drop it and 2) it will bloody hurt. When you catch bare handed your hands must have “give”. You let the ball come into your hands. A simple analogy is trying to catch a tennis ball on a tennis racket without the ball bouncing off the strings.
The best info that I can find online with a quick Google is that hit baseballs travel at up to 135mph (Cite) while a cricket ball can be delivered at up to 120mph (Cite), but that is before it gets to the batsman, I couldn’t find anything about speeds after being hit.
Third base is about 60 feet from the batter (Cite), while silly point is probably less than 10 feet away, but when’s the last time you saw a silly point fieldsman take a catch off a solidly struck ball - it’s always the looping bat-pad chance…
I’ve played cricket. IIRC, the ball actually gets hit towards a fielder about once every four hours or thereabouts, so the biggest danger is falling over asleep during a match.
We played in what was the equivalent of high school gym class, so it was a sloppy affair. I remember catching the ball with the hand moving away. It also seemed like the ball was never really hit directly at anyone. Nothing at all like the screaming liners in baseball.
A very select few bowlers have been measured at over 160kph (100mph). None have gone over 102 mph. The faster recorded goes to Pakistan’'s Shoab Aktar at but that was measured at the time of release. Jeff Thompson (Aust) was time at a shade less than that in the 70’s but that was measured after it had bounced and passed the stumps at the batsmens end.
There may have been bowlers faster than Thompson before, though unlikely. There have been none faster since.
I never suggested that only the pros hit screaming liners. And I mentioned that it was gym class just to show that I had tried cricket, albeit on a very low level.
As requested… might I point your attention to the fellow at the 6 second mark on thisvideo. Now, **that **is a tackle. Sure… the guy isn’t the size of a rhino which for some reason seems to be important to the fans of the girlier sports mentioned here… but then, without a helmets that full speed elbow to the face is pretty effective from a smaller guy.
Yeah thats a great point. Amateur rugby is still the game for all shapes and sizes that the sport used to pride itself on.
I think the whole tackles looking harder thing stems from two relatively light guys firing themselves at each other and somethimes bouncing off each other. Professional tackles are probably more controlled and all about preventing the tackled player from off loading the ball.
As for the debate in the thread, apples and oranges really. In rugby hits are about stopping forward progress and setting up the next ruck. In football its all about getting the player to the ground. So american football lends itself to reckless lunges by defenders to bring the ball carrier down. In rugby you want to bring him down but not before you push him backwards and make it easier for your side to ruck over him.
Also i’m sure a long snapper or a centre snapping in the shotgun runs the same risk of neck injury as a prop or hooker in the scrum.
So yeah both equally physical and entertaining sports in their own ways. I’ll leave the bat game debate to the rest of ye, although I’m rooting for cricket since us Irish are marginally better at that.
It’s not just the tackles, but the rucks. Professional teams defending a ruck are careful not to over commit. They’ll let two guys go into defend and leave everybody out wide. Amateur teams will pile more guys in. You’ll get guys doing massive run ups and smashing head first into the rucks. Studs flying etc. You just don’t see that in International Matches (for instance) any more, as everybody is so well drilled.
Unfortunately, MLB tightly controls their video, so I couldn’t really find video of hard hit liners to third. But this video is of the line shot A-Rod hit back to the pitcher, hitting the pitcher in the head. I know I would not want to catch that ball bare-handed anytime before it hit the ground.
Yeah, that was a respectable self-protecting high-check. If it had been the NFL, though, the tackler would have hit him just as hard, but would have led with his shoulders or head to the midsection, then driven with the legs all the way to the ground.
Pads do nothing but enable harder hits, people. Get it through your skulls.
From a technical standpoint, you’ll notice that the really nasty tackles in my linked video are under similar circumstances as in yours. They tend to be clean-up tackles when a receiver is totally exposed and extended, and the safety comes over at full speed to attempt to dislodge the ball when a corner is beaten. This happens in every football game, probably 10-20 times.
I should point out, by the way, that I am in no way denigrating AFL or rugby. They’re both tough, hard-hitting sports. I merely object to the silly notion that American football is somehow less hard-hitting.
A lifelong Rugby League fan here, if it makes a difference.
I love how any football comparative threads always seem to quickly degenerate into name calling.
If you want to get into who hits harder, I think you have to realistically give it to the NFL boys. And that is down to the differences in the games which has produced different body types on the players.
In league, even a front row forward has to have a reasonable level of aerobic fitness to be able to keep up a fairly frentic pace for ~20 minute periods. Whereas the NFL guys are focused burst players, getting maximum output for 10-20 secs at a time repeated only 3-4 times in short succesion.
We’ve seen some stats for that in the the thread already, it’s easy at just a glance to see that NFL players are generally bigger, more muscular than a League or Union player. Becasue they need very little aerobic fitness.
The other big thing is tackleing style in the different codes,
Outliers outside (e.g. the occasional shoulder charge in league), Your average tackles are both designed to stop the ball carrier but,
in NFL as soon as they hit the ground that’s it, end of play so NFL tackles are generally more ‘kamikaze’ if you will, throwing the whole body at the runner,
Whereas in league, you need to finish the tackle still holding the runner, otherwise he is entitled to get back up and run, and you also want to slow the resulting play the ball as much as possible, and this can be accomplished by some limited ‘wrestling’ in the tackle. All aims which generally speaking preclude an ‘all-in’ tackle approach (as mentioned - excluding the occasional shoulder charge - which is banned in Union now I believe)
Quite a few rugby players wear some padding these days. It’s much lighter and softer than American Football pads and helmets, and is mainly designed to stop abrasions. They still have to run around for more than 12 seconds at a time before having a nice sit down though.
This is the main reason I would make the argument that rugby is the better game. American football has no flow; every time something exciting happens, everyone stops, walks away and talks it over. It’s also a little strange that every football team is actually two teams: offense and defense.
