From Wikipedia:
Earnings in English county cricket are significantly smaller with a minimum wage of £20,000 per year
From MLB.com
• Major Leagueminimum salary will increase to $380,000 in 2007, $390,000 in 2008, $400,000 in 2009 and to a cost-of-living increase in 2011
Man, what are all these great cricket players doing with their lives? They must really love the sport.
Oh, come now. Do you really think that every cricket player is just so incredibly skilled that he’s capable of playing the field in Major League Baseball, only he could do it without a glove? Is that really the argument here?
Cricket and baseball are different sports. The baseball is moving much faster than a cricket ball does. For one thing, cricket batsmen aren’t even swinging for maximum velocity much of the time. Comparing a ball that’s guided with a paddle-like bat to a ball that’s smashed with a maximum effort swing with a baseball bat is just not a reasonable comparison. And even when they are swinging to really rip it, if a cricket ball goes 300-plus feet, it’s a remarkable drive. When a baseball goes 300 feet, it’s a routine flyout. That’s because baseballs are hit harder. And that’s why catching a cricket ball isn’t the same as catching a baseball, and why you couldn’t just stick a cricketer in at shortstop, only without a glove, and expect him to do anything but get severely injured.
The part about not putting baseball down (which the OP also included) is hilarious, like baseball players are all handicapped or something and you’re worried about hurting the fans’ feelings. Nobody’s worried that you’re putting baseball down. The problem is that you’re turning cricketers into superhumans when in reality that youtube video is 90% soft pop-ups and humpback liners which in baseball would indicate that the batter didn’t make very good contact with the ball. Baseball players would probably do just fine handling those balls barehanded, too. That doesn’t mean cricketers could do the same with a batted baseball.
Ridiculous. The greatest baseball plays are remarkable, as are the greatest cricket plays- the baseball play in question would easily fit into clips of the greatest cricket plays I’ve seen, including the one posted earlier. If you don’t find those cricket plays remarkable, then what is?
I made a very similar play once when I was about 11. short stop, batter hits a smoking fast line drive up and to my right, there was no way to get my glove on it so I stuck my hand up and caught it, then threw the runner on first out (dude had no idea how he was even out)…then dropped to the ground in a rather large amount of pain, nothing broken but my entire hand swelled up pretty bad and I missed the rest of that game and I think the next.
I made the catch the way you would if you were trying not to hurt yourself, mostly I let the ball drive my entire arm backwards then whipped it forward for the throw to first. there is no way to snag a fast moving baseball out of the air bare handed and not get hurt. if they do it all the time in cricket then I suggest finding out the kinds of speeds involved. My bet is they are much lower in cricket.
Sorry, I had my plays mixed up.
The play I should have been commenting on was the Ozzie Smith barehand play from 1978. Well, I simply do not believe that plays of that calibre are commonplace in cricket. To move that fast, that quickly, dive, barehand a ball that has taken a sudden and unforeseeable bounce in a different direction and that was travelling at 70-80 miles an hour, and then immediately jump up and make a perfect 100-foot throw with tremendous force… no, I don’t believe that happens a lot in cricket.
Cricket balls and baseballs travel about the sam speed. For comaprision the fastest baseball pitch ever recorded is 105 mph compared to the fastest cricket bowler who clocked 101 mph. Of cpourse that’s the speed the ball leaves a player’s hand and not the bat. However when a cricket player hits a six the ball the cricket ball has to travel approximately the same distance as when a baseball player hits a home run.
So all in all your dealing with simlair balls travelling at simlair speeds and as I said a cricket ball is actually both harder and denser (and also slightly heavier) than a baseball. That’s why I do not believe baseball golves are absolutely necessar for protection.
At mt school in England one of our games masters actually had a liking for baseball and as a result we played softball in our games lessons. As I’m sure your aware a softball is harder than a baseball and also heavier than both a cricketball and a baseball. Whilst obviously occasional players are not going to be getting massive speeds on a softball (though on the other hand there were some quite adept cricket players who could lob the ball at fair pace) we always played this without gloves and I would not say on balance a fast moving cricket ball is still more dangerous than a fast moving softball.
Well obviously your talking about an exceptional play, but from what I’ve seen of the games that sort of thing happens far more in cricket.
They’re not.
They’re absolutely necessary to consistently make plays. Baseball gloves offer the hand very little in the way of protection (catcher’s mitts do, but they’re different.) If you take a baseball right in the palm of the glove it’s going to hurt you.
Baseball gloves aren’t designed to protect your hand, they’re designed to catch the ball. If you took away gloves, hand injuries probably wouldn’t go up that much, but fielding would be a lot worse. Presently major league players make about 99 of every 100 plays (the records show about 49 of 50, but many plays are not counted as assists or putouts, and so aren’t figured into fielding percentage) successfully - in other words, errors are exceptionally rare. No team in the major leagues averages an error a game. They use the gloves to achieve THAT.
I don’t care how good you think cricket players are; put them on a major league diamond with no gloves and they ain’t fielding .980.
Though as I said I’ve played softball,I’ve never actually played with a glove so I really can’t comment one way or the other. It ois very, very easy to fumble a cricket ball and I do npt doubt that bseball gloves do make catching easier, though I’m still with the OP in not being convinced to such an extent it is always preferable to use your glove in all situations as cricket players do make very difficult catches quite capably without them.
I’m not saying cricket players are better, that said from what I experince I have catching for me is not the most impressive part of baseball. The ‘good’ catches in cricket are generally more spectecular than the ‘good’ ctahes in baseball.
If you really want an area where baseball is more impressive than cricket, that is in the batting,it’s harder to hit a ball cleanly with a basbeall bat than it is with a cricket bat, even if batting in cricket does involve more of a tatical element.
No it doesn’t. From either wicket (10 m from center) to the dead-center boundary of a cricket pitch is 250 - 330 ft (78 - 103 m). The shortest allowable distance from home plate to the outfield wall in baseball is 290 feet, but most parks are 300 - 330 feet on the foul lines and 400 - 440 ft dead center. A baseball that flies 30 meters past the boundary of Melbourne cricket ground is a flyout to centerfield in Minute Maid Park.
Batted balls in MLB typically leave the bat traveling around 100+ mph. I couldn’t find any data for cricket ball exit speeds, but given the differences in batting style and swing mechanics between the two sports, I’d be surprised if it were anywhere near that fast.
The boundary at Melbourne, which appears to be the biggest cricket ground there is, is about 280 feet at the farthest point from the center of the ground. That means the longest distance you ever need to hit for a six - not like an average distance, or the minimum – is about 280 feet. 280 feet is about 50 feet shorter than the shortest distances at most baseball ballparks. The shortest home run that’s been hit all season this year in baseball is 323 feet. The longest was 486 feet.
That’s a substantial difference in speed off the bat, even if the balls that are hit for sixes are a fair approximation of the speed of the typical fielded ball, which I don’t think they are to the same extent in cricket as in baseball.
(edit - yeah, whoops)
Whilst I certainly do not doubt that typically and maximally a baseball will leave the bat faster than a cricket ball, the speed is not that great.
Here’s a comaprision between the size of Minute Maid Park, Melborune Cricket Ground and minimum sized pithces:
A fast ball hit with the sweet spot can leave a cricket bat quite feasibly at around 90 mph+.
The cricket pitch is just as large, but the batter is batting in the middle of it. A baseball batter is batting sixty feet from one end, and hitting across the entire field.
It’s simply not possible that cricket balls could be hit as hard if the longest hits are going 280-300 feet when baseball’s longest hits are much, much further, and a 300-foot fly ball is a rather unremarkable failure for a batter. It’s plain physics; a ball hit 380 feet must be leaving the bat much faster than one hit 280 feet, unless the latter ball is imbued with some fascinating aerodynamic properties.
Batted balls in the major leagues travel MUCH faster than 100 miles per hour - reasonably strong major league hitters will hit the ball faster than 110. That is freaking fast. By way of comparison, an extremely fast pitcher will get the ball to about 100. I challenge any human on earth who is not insane to catch an aroldis Chapman fastball with his bare hands; it’s insanity. No one would do it. They hit the ball faster than that.
So have I, but I’ve also had my hands turned black and blue from attempting to take said catches. Broken fingers probably would have resulted from them if they’d been hit any harder.
This is precisely the opposite reaction observed in a cricket fan I know who was brought to a baseball game. He acknowledged the powerful batting, but was not amazed. Outfielders calculating and intercepting the arcs of flies, however, and middle-infield defensive relays, he found astonishing.
Having played both sports at Club level, I find these arguments futile but …
I think you are on the money there …
but less so here …
If I was taking Chapman fastball I’d want a bloody solid glove, and every bit of body armour legally available. I suspect any catcher who tried to use just a fielders mitt would be similarly derided. But if I was fielding at cover or midwicket, probably closer than shortstop and a catch hit at me I’d expect to take it clean, and I’d be rubbished if I grassed it. But I’d probably only get a couple like that in a season. If they were coming like that every couple of overs/at-bats, then there’d be gloves worn in cricket.
If you are fielding “in front of the bat” you get a whole lot of cues as to if/when/how the ball is coming your way before the ball is actually hit. It makes a profound difference. I could field at gulley (square with the bat), but really struggled in slips.
It was freakishly insane to stand at slip taking catches off Jeff Thompson’s bowling too. Ian & Greg Chappell didn’t put many down. (fwiw both played state level baseball, Ian was selected as All-Australian catcher twice, Greg’s son Jon was signed by the Blue-Jays in 2002) But the guy who took most of the deliveries, keeper Rod Marsh had additional padding stitched into his gloves and still broke fingers.
If there was one guy who could make a valid judgement (but I don’t think he ever has), it would be Mike Young (Youtube interview)who came to Australia as a baseball coach and ended up fielding coach for the national team.
No, I don’t recall anyone making such a argument. Mainly because it would stupid to do so.
Someone pointed to that specific catch as being remarkable in baseball because of taking it barehanded. I said that taking a ball of that speed while diving in cricket was not unusual. Doesn’t happen every game of course, but regularly enough for it to be given nodded approval rather than adulation.
Then someone said it was the throw that was remarkable, Again, getting to you feet and firing in 100+ ft accurate throws is fairly common in cricket. Sometimes the fielder doesn’t throw to a catcher but instead aims at the stumps which, depending on angle, can be a target 1.5 inches to 9 inches across.
So I’d say the skill levels needed to be a high performer in either sport is fairly equal (as one would expect)
I don’t disagree with any of that. I was wondering what was special about that particular catch.
As for shortstop, that appears to be a lot further from the batter than the shorter positions in cricket. I would imagine that the extra distance would even out the reaction times needed and the skill levels required. Ultimately, for a given speed catching a baseball is equivalent to catching a cricket ball. For those catches right out on the perimeter the speed will be the same anyway.
It all evens out.
You are imagining slights where none are intended. I admire all players of sport at the top level. I have no doubt that skill levels and “toughness” are all equal.
Cricketers are used to catching barehanded, baseball players are not. Hence the reason that original take didn’t seem remarkable. That is all.
You are calling Frank Thomas crazy, sir.
That’s the original Frank Thomas, the one who played for the Pirates, Reds, Mets, cubs, Phillies, Braves, and Astros, not the phony who DHed for the ChiSox, who had a standing bet that he could catch barehanded ANYONE’s best fastball at 60’6"–he claims in his autobiography to have accepted many bets from MLB players and never to have lost one of them.
Because of the other Frank Thomas, this is hard to link to, but there is an allusion here to him taking $100 from Willie Mays, who probably had the best throwing arm in the game in 1957.
I still don’t get it. I am talking about one particular play. I don’t think it would be smart to make bare handing the ball your default move if you have the luxury of wearing a glove. But second base is 42 yards from the plate. You field that far from the batter, in the outfield, in cricket and you are playing defense. Most great cricket catches occur closer to the batter than the pitcher is in baseball. And the ball bounced, it wasn’t a line drive.
It would just be an easier play than backhanding the ball into the glove. Simple, painless, injury free but because Cano, or anyone else apparently, is willing to try something different he can’t do it. With practice he could.
Later in the same game A-Rod bare handed a slow roller down the line, presumably to save the transfer time from glove to throwing hand and made the play at first. The game finished with Brent Lillibridge making two plays that would have been impossible without a glove.
Because Cano, like most players, successfully makes 98-99 percent of all make-able plays, “easiness” of using a glove or not for a given play is irrelevant. Cano will do what he is most comfortable doing to make the play. If he praticed bare handing more, perhaps he would be more comfortable doing it, and would do it more often, but since he doesn’t have a problem completing plays that would be “easier” to bare hand, why should he waste his practice time perfecting a technique which will result in less profit than practicing the things that he specifically needs improvement on?
