Cricket vs. Baseball: What's bigger?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Redirected from this thread.

Is cricket a bigger sport than baseball? Let’s take a look at the stats:

International participation: the IBAF has 112 member countries, the ICC only 98 (counting affiliate? members). The IBAF sanctions the World Cup of Baseball as well as junior tournaments and is the official Olympic sanctioning body for competition. USA Baseball, in association with MLB, the MLBPA, Nippon Professional Baseball and the Korea Baseball Association is holding the first World Baseball Classic next month, which will be the first international tournament to feature players currently on Major League rosters. The XXXVI Baseball World Cup was held in Holland in September of 2005, and featured teams from 16 nations including the USA, Cuba, Korea, the Czech Republic, Brazil, Panama, China and Spain.

The ICC sanctions the Cricket World Cup along with its associated junior tournaments, the last of which was held in South Africa in 2003 and featured 12 nations.

Professional competition: Professional baseball leagues exist in many countries, including not only baseball powers such as the U.S., Mexico, Venezuela and Japan but also in such countries as Holland and Italy. I am unaware of any professional cricket leagues, but I imagine they do exist (examples would be greatly appreciated.)

So, what’s the opinion of the SDMB? Is cricket really a bigger sport than baseball?

2

Here is the Wikipedia article on one day cricket which I what I was advocating for the Olympics.

Here is the Wikipedia article on the ICC trophy.

Anyway, I’m going with cricket. I love baseball, but Major League Baseball in the United States is the big deal. Can anyone honestly say that an all star team of MLB player wouldn’t destroy any other team in the world?

3

Just wait about 2 weeks and look at the team the Dominican Republic runs out there. Their lineup is so deep, they could go Pujols-Ortiz-Ramirez-Guerrero-Tejada-Sosa as the 3-8 guys. That’s why the WBC is going to be so interesting to watch: it’s not a given that the United States is going to win.

4

But most countries’s best players play in MLB. So why is that surprising? Only Japan really retains a lot of MLB-star-level players in its own league and even they are losing stars to MLB.

5

There is significant interest in cricket in India. It has a population of over a billion, so that must significantly skew the “bigger” concept (however measured) towards cricket.

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To give you an idea what “significant interest in cricket in India” means, I was there when India was playing Australia. At Barrista (there version of Starbuck’s) there was a television showing the one day international. You could go and sit and watch it for the price of a coffee. Outside the windows - where you could kind of catch a glimpse of the tv if you didn’t have the money for a coffee - the crowd was about 15 deep. For most of the day.

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Sadly, this only illustrates how rare the opportunity is to watch a TV in India relative to elsewhere. When the “price of a coffee” is too much to get them inside, I find it hard to argue that their audience is as large as the US/Mexico/Japan’s.

India is effin’ huge, but that population doesn’t mean anything if they don’t or can’t attend or watch games.

8

Measuring popularity as ‘those able to watch televised games’ seems very arrogant and western-centric. Counting those following the game is fairer, and I think cricket wins on this one. Plus, Bangladesh & Pakistan combined add another cricket-dominated population matching that of the USA.

‘Professional leagues’ - while fully-professional club cricket exists in several countries, there’s big domestic competitions in all cricket-dominated nations. Again, excluding any that aren’t fully-professional is making assumptions which revolve around the wealth of a country rather than the popularity of a sport.

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Does strength of fanaticism count? Cricket is almost a religion in the West Indies.

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I doubt there are as many TVs in India as in more developed countries, particularly the US or Japan, which seem to be the mainstays of baseball, so that’s hardly a valid comparison: the price of a coffee may well be beyond many people’s reach, too.

11

Which is bigger is a very tricky question. As a fan of both I’m sure we all agree that cricket is better.

12

I vote for cricket. I’ve never even seen a baseball game outside TV/Movies.

Plus there’s more variety in cricket -test, one-day, 20/20 (although the last is a farce)

I think of baseball as a US game. That perception isn’t changed by my knowledge of the contributions of Japan, DomRep, Cuba etc, BTW.

13

Indian perspective to follow…

Supposedly, there were about 63 million TV sets in India back in 1997. Since the economy has done pretty well, I’m guessing a ton more have come into use in the decade since. Nonetheless, the US and Japan have more TV sets than this. However…

One can’t discount the collectivism of Indian society. In the US, you have about 4 or 5 people watching one TV set. That is, one nuclear family per TV set. In India (and Pakistan and Bangladesh and Sri Lanka), you’re likely to have the entire extended family, two sets of neighbours, and the local street urchins peering in at the window watching the matches from the same set (especially so for the lower middle-class of society). In terms of sheer numbers, most assuredly there are more people watching cricket than baseball, if only on account of how bloody big India and Pakistan combined are.

And then there’s the radio phenomenon. People who don’t have TVs in the South-Asian countries are glued to radios listening to the ball-by-ball match commentary. In offices, in little no-name restaurants, at hawker-stalls, in wet markets, on commuter trains and buses, everywhere. Absolutely everywhere. Hundreds of thousands of people sitting around a radio cheering or cursing as the commentators speak. I know how strange this must sound to a first-worlder, but well, that’s life in the third-world.

Of course, I haven’t even mentioned the non-South Asian nations yet. England, Australia, the Windies, NZ, Zimbabwe, SA, the middle-east bloc, and whoever else I’ve forgotten.

In terms of tournaments, there are international Test Cricket Series (36 tours in 2006) going on all the time. For One-Day International (ODI) Cricket, there’s the World Cup, the ICC Trophy, Champions Trophy, Intercontinental Cup, the Super Series, and the U/19 World Cup. Then there’s the normal ODI tours (random country visits random country). Finally, there’s the internal league matches. I know India and England have cricket league matches. Not so sure about other nations.

Coming to money, well, I’m really not sure what kind of sponsorships baseball teams get, but apparently, the Indian cricket team rakes in about $90 million (US) annually, which is not too shabby. Better than the Brazilian soccer team anyway. I’m guessing the sport wouldn’t be receiving such attention if it wasn’t really, really big.

On the whole, barring further evidence to the contrary, I’m fairly certain cricket is the ‘bigger’ sport.

14

Now you mention this phenomenon, I realise I’ve seen it happen among Indian and especially Pakistani groups in Britain, too, with large numbers gathered to watch one TV. In this case, it’s perhaps not the lack of access to a TV, but to one with the right satellite channels to receive the match in question.

15

I think a part of this comes from location. Baseball is a HUGE sport in the Western hemisphere. Latin America adopted baseball in a big way and MLB adopted them back. Somewhere around half the major league players have some tie to latin america at this point.

Europe? Africa? Not so much. Asia’s well represented with the Pac Rim.

But outside those regions it wouldn’t surprise me at all that cricket is dominant. Baseball’s a better game, get me, but there’s room for all.

16

I really think this nails it.
Cricket has a larger following of people.
Baseball has a larger following of countries.
Neither compares to Soccer for Countries and Population.

BTW: Baseball is my favorite Sport.

Jim

17

Same deal here, but in reverse. Cricket is something that people have heard of, but few have ever seen it or know anything about it.

Baseball is real popular in Cuba, Canada, Mexico, Central America, Venezuela, Japan, South Korea, The U.S., and the The Dominican Republic.

Cricket is a big deal in much of the former British Empire.

I can’t think of any country where both sports are popular. Maybe in some Caribbian nation, but I can’t think of one off the top.

It’s tough to say which is “bigger.”

18

Baseball is not even the biggest sport in the US, I hink realistically it may be the bioggest sport in only a handful of Carribean nations.

Cricket is the biggest sport in India and Pakistan.

19

I though in Aussie both Cricket & Baseball were popular but neither is the top sport.

Jim

20

An African cricket or a European cricket?