I’m not a huge baseball fan but it is analagous in many ways to limited overs cricket in that a pitchers/bowlers battle in a low scoring game can be every bit as exciting as a run-fest.
Case in point. In a recent one-day international between England and Australia (50 overs), England smashed a new world record of 481 runs, a massive score and good to watch for a while but the game petered-out when it became clear Australia were never going to match it. Fast forward a couple of days an their next match saw Australia score just 205 runs and England only just manage overhaul them in a nail-biting finish.
Speak for yourself. I once went to a Cubs-Cardinals game at Busch Stadium. The temperature at the time of the first pitch, at 7:05 p.m. no less, was about 101. It didn’t drop as the night wore on.
Meanwhile, on the field, no one could get a guy past first base for 11 and a half innings. Finally, in the bottom of the 12th, the Cards got a runner home on a suicide squeeze.
I was never so glad to see the Cubs lose a game in my entire life.
You could have, you know, left the game early… 
I think I’ve left most baseball games in the 7th inning because I beat the traffic for everyone who’s leaving, it’s obvious who will win, and I’m just done. Then again I’m not much of a baseball fan, I will be the first to admit that.
That would have put my friend who rode down with me in a very awkward position w/r/t the hundred-mile trip home.
I will never be able to think of soccer as a serious sport until they do something about flopping. It was bad enough when it was just wimpy looking, but now they’ve gone to a whole new level of lying on the ground and wailing over the briefest physical contact. I just can’t get into a sport when the athletes act like complete wimps, and the structure of the rules actually encourages it.
Basketball???
Even with the commentary I’ve absolutely no clue about the game, let alone tactical considerations. I’m not exagerating when I say “no clue”. Presumably, you’ve become familiar with the game and don’t fully realize that what the players are trying to do is completely unobvious for someone who knows nothing about cricket. Someone launch a ball, and someone else (apparently from the opposing team because they wear different colors, but I’m not absolutely sure) kicks it away, and I don’t know what either is trying to achieve. From time to time, other players (or are they the same?) in a small square run in opposite directions for unknown reasons. Yet other players surround a very big field and apparently do nothing there. I can’t even deduce what makes you score points, or win, or lose.
LOL, you beat me to it.
And that’s not even new, when I was a huge Sonics fan in the 90s, Shawn Kemp was a notorious flopper. If he wasn’t on my home team I’d probably have hated him. (Okay even then I still kind of did.)
The team with the most points (called “runs”) wins. Thats the basics of the game. Go out, get the most runs and then stop the opposition from exceeding it, or after the opposition has gone first, then exceed their amount. Simple.
Each side has 11 players and each gets one chance (“innings”) to score runs and once that innings is over the other side gets a chance to exceed the total while the first side tries to restrict the, to a lower amount of runs in their innings (colliquially called the score).
An innings ends in one of two ways
First when the alloted number of plays expires. One play is one ball being tossed at one of the opposing side (“bowl” called “ball” when considered collectively). One player can bowl at most 6 times before another player has to bowl, and then he can bowl again. This set of six bowls is an “over”. In cricket there are 50 overs per innings, or 300 attempts to bowl.
Second way an innings will end is if all the batsman are out. The batsman are the players in the middle with the bat and are the ones attempting to score. The other side is trying to stop them from scoring, and also get the player “out”. An out amongst other ways is when the ball hits the three verticle sticks in the middle while bowling or if the ball is caught off the bat. If a batsman is “out” he is replaced by the next player and so on. As there must always be 2 batsman on the field, when the 10th man is out, then the innings finishes.
In the game linked the red team (England) has had their innings already and had scored 300 in their innings, the team in green and gold (Australia) is trying to exceed this number, so 301 to win. (do note what exactky the score needed will vary, its just conincidense that England made 300).
When the action picks up, the Australians have reached 271, with 47 overs done or 282 of their alloted 300 balls. Also 9 of the maximum 10 outs have occured, so one additional out and the game is over, and they lose, or if they fail to reach the target of 301 before the remaining balls are finished, they still lose.
Actually, I came up with my own way of explaining cricket to those who understand baseball.
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There’s no umpire to call balls and strikes. Behind the batter are three posts sticking up out of the ground, called the wicket. If the pitcher hits the wicket, the batter is out. It’s rather like when there are two strikes in baseball and the batter is said to be protecting the strike zone. In cricket, the batter is protecting the wicket.
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There’s no foul territory. The batting takes place in the middle of a big, oval field. the batter can hit the ball in any direction.
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When the batter hits the ball, he doesn’t have to run.
The result is this: In baseball outs are routine, like a fly ball or a ground ball to the shortstop who throws to first. But scoring a run is a big deal, and the fans of that team will cheer. In cricket, runs are routine, and a team can score hundreds of them in a game. But outs are a big deal. When a team gets an out, the fans will cheer.
There’s more to it, and I know the terminology is different than I used, but those things were a huge help for me to start understanding cricket.
I grew up in the US. I played soccer when I was younger, but my favorite sport was definitely American football. I later developed an appreciation for baseball. All the while I liked soccer, but in a 3rd favorite sport way. But in my late 20s, I REALLY started to follow and enjoy soccer. It is by far and away my favorite sport. I find American football to be generally dull (some college matchups are fun though due to the different styles teams play) and while I enjoy baseball, nothing matches soccer for me.
And one of the main reasons is the constant tension of trying to get that goal. As people said above, it’s a feature that the game is so low scoring. You are constantly on the edge of your seat (or standing on your tippy toes if at a game) waiting for the goal. The near misses add to the tension and it’s fascinating, when watching two good teams,to see the tactical adjustments to try to get that one (extra) goal.
I don’t watch a lot of basketball, apparently it’s changed for the worse in recent years. Looking at some highlight reels, they’re both absurd but I find the soccer ones marginally more annoying. IMO both sports should be classed with professional wrestling until they clean up their game. And at least professional wrestling doesn’t expect you to believe that all of the action is real.
I won’t lie. Your description of cricket sounds more interesting than baseball. I like the idea of a 360 degree oval-shaped field of play, as opposed to the wedge in baseball. And the impartial measure of knocking over a wicket rather than an umpire’s judgement (which is so outdated; technology can track a ball much better than the human eye and brain does).
I don’t think you’re allowed an opinion unless you’re a 40th level soccer-master.
For a moment of sanity, check out Belgium’s 4th goal against Tunisia. Belgian attacker gets fouled by the keeper, but only has to keep his feet to score. Which he does. Had it been an outfielder committing the foul and the keeper still to beat, flop mode engaged.
I think soccer would be awesome to watch if they got rid of a bunch of the players. There’s just too many of them on the field.
If they brought it down to 6 per side like hockey (3 forwards, two defensemen, and a goalie) with that same size field it would make for some great action.
It’s not quite as impartial as you think. The batter is trying to prevent the ball from hitting the wicket, but he has to do it with his bat. If the ball hits his leg (and they wear big pads on their legs) the umpire has to decide if the ball would have hit the wicket on its own. That doesn’t seem to come up very often, though.
Hey, Futility Closet! I love their podcast.
Cricket is pretty easy to joke about, but I really could have used something a bit more serious when I used to watch it occasionally. Once I figured out that three things I listed above, it started to make some sense.
And have you heard Bob Newhart trying to explain baseball?
Hell, any sport can be boring.
Basketball without dynamic players like Jordan can seem repetitive and boring.
Baseball pitcher’s duels can be boring as hell unless you have really good seats.
Hockey is boring until a fight breaks out.
Football is pretty much always fun to watch. So there is the exception that proves the rule.
But Soccer can be boring as hell 99% of the time, but it is the only sport where you can get an Oscar nomination.
Au contraire, LBW decisions play a part in just about every match. Good thing is with the advent of ball tracking technology, bad decisions can be overturned.
Being a baseball fan all my life, one of the biggest challenges for me in terms of understanding the strategy in cricket was the lingering question of “why doesn’t the bowler just bowl the ball into an area that the batsman simply can’t hit it?”, especially for the limited overs forms of the game. A ball being called unhittable or a “wide” is pretty uncommon, i.e. the “strike zone” in cricket is huge. But then I realized that the extra 6 feet of distance between the stumps (compared to the distance between the rubber and the plate) and the fact that bowled balls are slower than pitched baseballs, and slowed even more by the bounce, gives the batsmen much more time to size up a shot. And full tosses are rarely fast enough to get past a good batsman’s bat.