explaining cricket to an American, or baseball to a Brit? I’m an American FWIW.
There was recently a lengthy article on ESPN.com that kind of detailed this. They were pushing Cricket something fierce for theWorld Cup, detailing what Cricket is and what it means to India. The writer was from the Southern part of America, and enjoyed college football. I don’t recall him saying he figured out the nuances, but I believe he figured out enough to follow the game.
I’d suggest that there is a greater degree of subtlety and nuance with cricket but the basics for both games should readily understandable in 15 minutes.
Baseball is probably the most “immediate” game to pick up, A cricket 20-20 not far behind. A full blown 5 day test match is a different beast altogether.
Many Brits will have played the game of rounders at school, which is pretty similar to baseball. The main difference is that in rounders you get just one ball and must run regardless, so there is no need for a system of strikes.
This is what I was thinking. Plus, the U.S. tends to put out a lot of entertainment that is watched overseas, and some of that entertainment mentions baseball or even shows it. So I believe Brits are more likely to have a passive knowledge of baseball than Americans would cricket.
Oh, and the idea of a game that can last several days is pretty foreign to Americans, while one that lasts a just a day is not foreign to Brits. In fact, as an American, I still don’t get the multiple days.
I suppose it’s not that different from the baseball practice of playing the same opponenet several times in succession during the regular season, something that does not happen in our sports unless the two teams coincidentally play each other in different competitions, as in the case of Manchester City vs. Stoke (FA Cup final on Saturday, and playing each other in the league tomorrow).
Incidentally, just looking at the MLB schedules, I strikes me how full the baseball calendar is. The Indians, for example, are playing on 27 out of 30 days in June, including a stretch of 13 successive days! I hadn’t realised that the play almost every day.
Speaking as an American who grew up with baseball and has never actually played nor watched a full game of cricket, I still think cricket inherently makes more sense. What’s the pitcher (or bowler, I think they’re called?) doing? He’s trying to knock over the wicket. What’s the batsman doing? He’s trying to defend the wicket. Now try explaining the equivalents in baseball so simply.
Agree with Chronos. Baseball is a pain in the ass to explain. Cricket makes so much more immediate sense.
Finally, something I can answer definitively, as an American who played cricket for many years in the UK (and I’m starting up again next month in Canada).
I never had much trouble explaining the game itself to other Americans. The most difficult part was really the scoring system. Once they got the hang of the concept that there were no foul balls, and what a four and a six were, most of the rest was easy. I suppose LBW is a confusing law, but really it’s the only confusing and controversial one.
Baseball to the British, though…certainly harder, but not impossible. There’s a folk/children’s game called rounders which is played commonly in England, and it’s very similar to baseball with a few rule changes (the only time I played it, we played one bounce and out, same as baseball originally was).
I think that baseball is harder to explain because over 100 years of play it’s become so insular. Everyone’s playing for that tiniest of edges to beat their opponents. Also, and I hate to say it as a baseball fan, but it’s become rooted in tradition. Americans denigrate cricket because they think it’s hidebound and a relic of the old days, but in truth no sport in the world has seen more innovation over the past 20 years. If baseball had changed as much as cricket over the past 20 years we might looking forward to the Three-Inning World Series this year. But those two factors make it harder to explain to outsiders. An insular world doesn’t take kindly to off-beam questions. When outsiders ask questions like “Why don’t teams sometimes put four people in the outfield?” or “Why is the #4 hitter always the power hitter when Baseball Between the Numbers says you should bat your best hitter #1?” and all they get back is “Because that’s the way it’s always been done”…not to mention truly crazed issues like “Why do you have two equivalent leagues with different rule sets and teams in the same cities who almost never play against each other?”
So, there’s that.
But you want a real challenge…try explaining American football to someone from the UK. I never managed, in seven years of trying.
These are subtleties, though. I’m not sure that a baseball newbie needs to understand them, any more than a cricket noob needs to appreciate that the opening batsmen are not necessarily the best batsmen in the team, say, or to understand the role of “nightwatchmen” in the batting order. You can still follow a game reasonably well without knowing any of that stuff.
I suppose that’s true. But the subtleties are what keeps one coming back to watching a sport, and the more you watch a sport, the more you’ll understand.
Yes it is, especially if you grew up with it and think it makes sense. Years ago I worked in the middle east where the American ex-pats had formed a women’s softball league. The British women wanted to participate and asked me to be their coach.
It was sobering to discover how often I couldn’t explain why a certain rule existed. It was late in the season before any of my girls could navigate the basepaths without specific, step-by-step directions from the bench.“Why should I go BACKWARDS on a fair hit after I’m most of the way to the next safe base?”
Cricket seems pretty straightforward by comparison.
I think that baseball teams put their best slugger at #4 in the order in the hopes of a grand slam, no? Not that it makes much difference, over the course of a game: The folks earlier in the order will get at most one more at-bat than the others, and the lineup is probably going to end up different for each inning.
Depends on how you define “much,” but the folks earlier in the order getting more at-bats is a very important consideration and why the top of the order is generally stacked with better hitters and guys with high OBPs vs the bottom of the order.
To expand, The “traditional” line-up wisdom is you put your fastest guy/highest on-base percentage guy first, a good contact hitter second, your best batter overall (in terms of contact and power) third, your slugger fourth, maybe another power guy at #5, and then whoever you got left the rest of the way down, usually ending with the pitcher at #9 (if you’re in a league that plays real baseball, not what passes for it in the AL. ;)) I haven’t been following baseball closely in the last few years, so I have no idea if conventional wisdom has changed. Of course, the line-ups are subject to the manager’s whims, and I know some guys (like LaRussa) like batting pitchers 8th and even 7th.
I wonder if the sabremetrics people have their theories on what the “ideal” batting order is.
By comparison cricket batting line-ups are much more flexible, in that captains/coaches have the freedom to send in whoever they want at the fall of each wicket.
Traditionally in test matches the openers (first two batsmen) are supposed to be solid technicians who can defend their wickets against the initial attack by the fast bowlers, no. 3 (first drop) is the most able batsmen in the team, 4-6 are specialist batsmen (or competant all-rounders, wicketkeepers) expected to score well and then 7-11 are the bowlers.
However this is subject to change as the match progesses depending on the circumstances. For example, a captain seeking quick runs to force a result might send in a lower-order slogger to up the run rate. Or if a wicket is lost late in the day a half way decent no.9 might take the wicket ahead of the usual no.4 as a ‘night watchman’ to see out the last few overs and preserve the better batsman for tomorrow.
The advent of limited overs cricket saw a rethink of this approach particularly after Sri Lanka won the 1996 World Cup by sending out two sloggers as their openers and scoring at hitherto unprecedented rates (I simplify but not by much).
As for 20-20, who knows? Essentially it’s a matter of flailing away and riding your luck.
The sabermetricians have concluded that batting order has little effect on runs scored.
Interesting. Not at all what I would have expected given that the top of the order is going to have more at-bats per average as the bottom of the order.
I believe the result Jeff is referring to isn’t that it doesn’t matter at all, but that any non-idiotic order is not going to be much below the optimal (for some reason the number 2% increase in runs scored is stuck in my mind but I don’t have time to find a cite right now).
The optimal line-up is basically to stack your order in descending OBP.
I also think at least one “sabre” guy showed that the pitcher-eighth lineup actually was an improvement since it increased the odds of getting somebody one base in front of your best hitters - but that might have been limited to that particular team, which had a punchless but high-OBP guy batting 8th at the time.
2% seems significant to me, at least worth thinking about anyway. How many runs does a team get in a season? 500-600 odd? Another 10-12 runs a season would be worth a win or two wouldn’t it?