Back in the early days of satellite TV I liked to find totally unfamiliar sports on the foreign channels and see if I could figure out the rules just by watching (I watched with the sound off, as the commentary was either in a language I didn’t understand or was generally unhelpful anyway). I recall in particular watching an Indian cricket match for over 4 hours and for the life of me I couldn’t figure out what the hell was happening. I mean, the basic gameplay I could figure out, but it would seem like the score changed arbitrarily and there were breaks and side changes for seemingly no reason. Granted, this was many many years ago, I was young, and most likely smoked a lot of weed at the time, but I was just not getting it. I’m sure I’d probably have a better go of it today.
Anyway…
What do you think would be the most difficult sport to figure out based solely on observation, i.e. knowing nothing about it beforehand and without anyone to explain the rules or procedures to you at all?
I would think American football would be difficult to figure out from observation. Basketball, hockey, and tennis all seem pretty obvious. Baseball would be more complicated but the basic concept of throwing the ball, hitting it with the bat, running around the bases, and trying to touch the runner with the ball are all obvious from watching.
But an uninformed observer watching football would be trying to figure out why players keep running on and off the field, why they keep starting and stopping all the time, why they hand the ball over to the over team, and why they throw, kick, or run with the ball.
I happened to be reading about the bat-and-ball family of games the other day (games such as baseball and cricket), and I came across Romania’s national sport, Oină. Now, admittedly that video is narrated in Romanian, but it looks like one complicated game, and for the life of me I cannot work out the scoring for the batting side (blue, or “albaştrii” in this case).
Having a kid in T-ball right now, it’s pretty obvious that baseball is a difficult sport to understand intuitively. Try to explain it to someone who has no familarity with it; it’s phenomenally complex. Little Nemo notes that “touching the runner with the ball” would make it seems obvious but if you think about it, in a standard baseball game very few runners are actually tagged out. Most outs are made through forces, strikeouts, and catches. Cricket, for more or less the same reasons, is equally hard to grasp.
Football in some senses is easier but in the way it’s played, practically speaking, it would be impossibly hard to an observer to grasp. Similar sports that are more continuous in nature, like rugly or Australian football, might be a bit more intuitive; football, which is very slow and broken up into plays very far apart with team switching, would baffle an uneducated observer.
Object-and-goal games like soccer, basketball, and hockey would be, I think, reasonably intuitive to grasp.
I still don’t know that cricket has rules. It seems to me like it’s a physical manifestation of Mornington Crescent. Field hockey is equally incomprehensible.
American football would be easy to figure out without sound due to all the replays and analysis. You may not understand all of the penalties involved, but the game itself isn’t incomprehensible after repeated viewings.
In the pre internet era, I spent hours watching Australian rules football in the early days of ESPN. I liked watching the sport, but still had a very difficult time figuring out the rules.
Cricket’s the one major sport (internationally at least) that I’ve never erally been able to get a grasp of. I even played it some when I lived in England as a kid, but were playing a simplified, American kid version. I never really did understand the scoring system (or why the bowler always wipes the ball on his crotch before he bowls).
I think the key stumbling block for American football would be the concept of a first down. Once you understand that, I think you’d get most of the rest, but you might well say “hey, the team with the ball just gives up and kicks the ball to the other team every once in a while” without being able to easily figure out why. It would be a lot easier if you were watching a broadcast with the lines on the field as opposed to just watching the game in person.
I don’t know of a similar concept in any other sport.
For baseball, I think you could fairly easily figure out that the batter is trying to hit the ball, that it’s bad for him when it’s caught on the fly, and probably force outs (because force outs at first happen so often). Balls and strikes might be quite a bit less obvious, though, particularly as so many balls are perfectly reasonable looking pitches.
It depends, are you trying to figure it out on your own, or have someone explain it to you? Because I used to think Cricket was indecipherable until i worked with someone from INdia and he actually explained it in terms that made it quite easy to understand (although I will admit, I have forgotten it since I don’t follow it at all).
One reason Soccer is so popular worldwide is that it is one of the simplest sports, get the ball in the goal…no hands.
I don’t understand why people think Cricket is so hard to understand (and I’m an American); you see the ball, you hit the ball; if nobody’s caught the ball yet, you run to the other post then turn around and run back, ad infinitum. If the guy throwing the ball gets it by you and hits the sticks sitting behind you, you’re out. If you hit the ball in the air and it’s caught, you’re out. If you’re out, the next guy takes your place. That’s it.
I understand that part, but there’s weird scoring system that goes along with it based on what part of field the ball gets hit to. That’s what I never really got clear on.
Nope. You score based on how many times you (and the other guy, but oh well) can run back and forth while the fielders get to the ball. (Oh and I guess you get extra points if the ball leaves the field entirely on the fly). It’s kind of like hitting a triple to the gap in left field - you don’t get to go to third base automatically, it’s just that the fielder doesn’t get to the ball any sooner.
Except that there’s that other way to be put out, where they throw the ball at the wicket and the batter dives for the “goal line” (or whatever they call it) with the bat.
As a baseball fan it’s hard for me to get the hang of cricket because I have to unlearn all of the things I know about baseball that don’t apply. Like in baseball when you get on base your time at bat is over, but in cricket you get on base and then if you advance and odd number of bases you come up again, or something.
And the batters stand right in front of the wicket. I presume they have to, but I’m used to guys standing to the side of the plate so they can swing and cover the plate.
When a baseball batter is hit by a pitch, it’s good. When a cricketer is hit by a pitch, it’s either nothing, or he’s out. Very weird to a baseball fan.
Well maybe cricket seems confusing to Americans precisely because it is similar to baseball? It’s the details that make all the difference, like the fact that in cricket you don’t have to run when you hit the ball, or that there are no foul balls. AT heart, they are the same game - defend some kind of target, hit the ball as far as you can, run like crazy to the next safe haven.
Well there is figuring out a sport and FIGURING OUT a sport. As Tom Scud points out, Cricket at its heart is not too difficult. But as Ximenean also points out there are details that would make it confusing. But I think most sports are like that.
Take a sport that is pretty simple…Tennis. Hit the ball back and forth between the lines. Except what is up with that scoring…right. That would take a bit of time to understand I think. And then watching it for the first time, if you are watching singles you might notice get confused y the doubles lines. And is the ball allowed to touch the net, because it seems that on the first time it is hit it isn’t but then afterwards it is? An d so on.
The guy up there just said the whole point was how many times you could run back and forth while the other team retrieves the ball. that was just beginning to make sense to me. Now you say I can just stand there? Or meander instead of running?!?
And then you yourself follow up with “run like crazy to the next safe haven.”
Figure skating. Other than falling down, try to figure out why scores are given and spotting the tiny differences between different moves that all look the same.