Hell, we have a dedicated cricket ground here in little ole Tallahassee. The story is that the Mayor was in one of our larger parks and saw people playing cricket on a temporarily converted (IIRC) soccer field. He got intrigued, stayed to chat, and ended up collecting contact information for the organizers. He then got the City Parks department and got a cricket pitch added to a new park they were working on. The park opened in February.
The group that plays there is primarily Indian immigrants, but there are others who join in.
Baseball is my first love and will always be my favorite sport, but this take is flat-out wrong, and you will realize this if you took the time to watch a few T20 matches. I say T20 (which is the version that the new US league plays) because the whole match lasts 3.5 hours so is close to MLB games (prior to the pitch clock). If you then move on to One Day matches, and eventually test matches, then you will know that cricket is just as complex as baseball some ways, and far more complex in others.
Perhaps batting and bowling/pitching are more complicated in cricket, but I’m not sure that complexity makes it better. Baseball adds a new phase of the game (base running) that is more limited in cricket. I admit you do still have the decision on whether to press for a run (or more runs) based on the game state, and particularly if you need to keep the stronger batter in the crease, but I’m not sure that those strategic decisions can overcome the sheer excitement of a stolen base attempt.
YMMV.
I am in fact aware of all of this, and even enjoy quite a bit of it - especially the unbalanced partnerships at the end of matches when the batting side is doing everything they can to keep the strong hitter in.
I still maintain that having more “at bats” (meaning more variety in who is hitting and more chances for the best hitters to bat), makes for a better game.
I think to some extent cricket has acknowledged this with T20 and ODI styles of play.
Like I said, I knew it would be an unpopular take with cricket fans.
I have watched quite a bit of cricket (mainly in college with students from India, and mainly of the test variety). I would just say, in my defense, that I never said baseball was “more complex” or even “as complex” as cricket. I will fully concede that in many ways cricket is more complex. There are many subtleties and detailed strategy involved in making it through the longer forms of the game, and I can appreciate those to some extent.
I still maintain (as an admitted partisan of baseball) that there are inherent reasons why kids in Colombia, for example, with no particular ties to the US or the UK, decided en masse to play baseball and not cricket.
But I will give a reluctant nod to the counter-argument that post-WWII, with US bases and soldiers all around the world, “post-War colonialism” may be just as much of a cause as the inherent beauty and symmetry of the most perfect sport in the world.
Baseball games are regularly promoted as duels between the two starting pitchers, who never actually play against each other. So that the game’s balance, where the batter getting on base is a novelty and cause of much jubilation by the home crowd.
Your observations are one of somebody who has only ever eaten vanilla ice cream. And as such the subtle variations are within the vanilla ice creams production, the breed of the cow, what forage they are being fed, the different technical processed? Is it served in cup or with a specialist ice cream bowl and ladle? Which is the skill of an epicurean. It a legitimate perspective.
The basic set-up of baseball is that every pitch is identical. The infield dimensions are identical. The infield surface is identical. The ball is identical, having not touched any surface and had the sheen being removed by rubbing it with mud taken from the same spot in the Delaware. Sure, context changes. Are there guys on base? What is the game position? But “its 2 out, runner on 1st, here comes the 2-0 pitch” and all the aficionados in the dugouts and grandstands know what the batter and pitcher are is trying to do. Everybody in the crowd wants to be the guy who is calling the play, not the guy at the plate.
But for most of the game, it’s a pitcher vs a lone batter who’s strategy is waiting for one of the half dozen or so pitches they face to whack it over the back fence, and failing.
For 90% of the game, the excitement in the crowd is generated by the guy on the Wurlitzer.
Just as a non contextual comparison. In the current Ashes series between England and Australia. Usman Khawaja from AUS has batted for 6 innings. At three venues which are different in dimensions and character. Has faced 908 deliveries all of which have bounced off a hard rolled surface from bowlers from 155kph to 75kph. He has faced just 6 different balls. And when one delivery hits him on the body, he faces the next delivery. But there’s no Wurlitzer.
I’m not an expert, but is the global reach of baseball not being a little overstated in this thread?
As far as I can tell it’s popular in 2 main areas outside the USA - Spanish speaking countries around the Caribbean, and Japan/South Korea. Geographical proximity has a lot to do with the former, Wikipedia stating “Baseball was introduced to Cuba in the 1860s by Cuban students returning from U.S. colleges and American sailors who ported in the country.”
US culture obviously influenced Korea and Japan in various ways throughout the 20th century.
Outside of those areas, is there anywhere that baseball would be significantly more popular than for example rugby union is outside of its top dozen countries?
My immediate first thought would be the Netherlands, but I think a lot of those players are actually from Dutch Caribbean colonies.
I think it’s pretty popular in Italy too (as is basketball, of course). I can’t speak to whether it’s more widely played that ruby there though. I know Italy sent a team to the WBC.
Germany has both a professional baseball league and rugby union league but I can’t speak to their relative popularities. Germany does rank #19 internationally according to WBC (for what that is worth).
…and so is cricket by these standards. There are 104 member countries of the ICC. Its played on every continent. It isn’t just a game played in the commonwealth. The Netherlands qualified for the next cricket world cup. If by “expanding beyond the borders” includes sports like baseball for goodness sakes, then you have to include cricket as well.
But soccer has expanded in a way that isn’t like basketball or baseball or cricket. It’s in its own league here, IMHO. Billions of fans watch the game. And you really don’t need much more than a group of people and a soccer ball if you want to have a game. You don’t need pads, or a diamond, or a hoop.
…it isn’t a matter of “pretending it is popular” in those countries. Its more about not pretending that cricket and baseball and basketball and most other team sports are stronger in some countries than others, and there is nothing really mysterious or particularly amusing about why this has happened.
…why do you continue to argue against points I never made? I haven’t said cricket is “positively huge in North America.” I haven’t implied it. I haven’t even hinted at that. But it is a sport that has “expanded beyond its borders” in the same way as other sports have.
If number of fans is the metric, then cricket trounces over both baseball and basketball.
But that isn’t the metric, because accurate numbers here don’t appear to exist, as can be seen by the disparity between your numbers and mine. The question was about “expanding beyond its borders”, and cricket, baseball and basketball are all on relatively even footing here IMHO.
Your original point was that soccer stands alone as the only sport that exports well “outside the borders.” Now you are saying that cricket also exports well, as if that’s what you meant all along.
I said nothing about better at all. I love rugby and football equally and one is clearly more complicated than the other.
Chess is simple compared to many board games I play but I’d never suggest any of those were “better”.
Cricket has caught on in the US. There’s an amateur level and HS /prep coed teams around the country. I like the co-ed effort wonder if that’d be feasible professionally
Maybe itll really kick off in interest give it time
Sports fanatics imo want to know what do the bookies think?
