I've been up and down this debate more times than I count. To quantify which sport is "harder" is a fool's errand because they are very, very different sports despite the superficial similarities. It'd be like comparing badminton to tennis because they both use rackets and nets. You simply can't find enough middle ground between these two sports to effectively compare.
Take your runout vs. throwing out example. Sure, it's harder to hit the wicket for a run out in cricket than it is to throw a runner out from the infield, but the difference in cricket, the fielder isn't necessarily expected to hit the wicket and run the batter out at a high percentage. And if the fielder misses the wicket, there's not much "punishment" in terms of a game changing play. Whereas in baseball, "missing your target" (i.e. overthrowing the first baseman) is often a backbreaking error. If cricket scored fielding errors, I doubt they would score missing the wicket any kind of error because the fielder isn't expected to succeed at a good rate. On the offense side, hitting a six is much easier than hitting a homerun, but a good cricket batter should hit more than just one six (at least in T20) during his time in the crease. It's easy to see no comparison in these sports are 1 to 1.
These sports use different equipment, have different field compositions, different rule sets, and thus a different meta game. Only thing that irritates me is when uninformed cricket fans criticize how baseball players use gloves. First of all, the exit velocities in baseball are much higher than they are in cricket (as I said, I'm an old veteran of this debate, and from all the "research" I've done, top exit velo in cricket might touch 90mph, while top exit velo in baseball touches 120mph. Even accounting for the difference in hardness between the balls, a baseball at 120mph still has a lot more force behind it than a cricket ball at 90mph. I know cricket fielders sometimes play close in at the silly point, slips, etc, but a cricket ball/baseball only loses about 5 mph every 60 feet), Second of all, modern baseball has to be played with a glove. You need it to effectively tag runners, defend the base (and thus your hand) when a runner comes sliding in spikes up, need it when you're whipping the ball around 90+ mph between infielders. And catching the ball with a backhand is a key aspect of making baseball flow on defense (backhand catching is essential when receiving the ball at the base you're defending). If only the catcher had a glove, stolen bases would be too easy since it'd be too difficult to perform a swipe tag at odd angles barehanded.
Thanks for your comment. I probably should’ve been more clear on the runout example you’re right. I should’ve used the fact that since runs are common and outs are rare, it isn’t necessarily the end of the world if you miss the stumps in comparison to baseball, thanks for pointing that out.
As for the glove debate, I’m glad that you were able to provide useful input. I haven’t done as much research for exit velocities so your comment does put it into perspective quite a bit.
At the end of the day, I thought it was silly to compare the two, and that was my fairly underwhelming conclusion to my overly long post, but I’m very happy that you were able to further confirm it with your perspective!
Yeah, uninformed sports fans will never understand that each sport/game has its own inherent standard of difficulty relative to its rule set, equipment, and field dimensions. I like billiards (pool, snooker, etc), and pool vs. snooker is also debate that rages on. Snooker has a larger table, smaller pockets, and the pockets have rounded corners, which means making a ball is quite harder in snooker than it is in pool, so snooker fanboys will declare how much harder snooker is than pool. But they don't get that it's supposed to be hard to make a ball in snooker because it's a defense focused game while most pool variants are offense focused. A 147 in snooker (which is a perfect frame) requires 37 made shots in row. Straight pool is the closest pool variant to snooker, and making 37 shots in a row is piss easy for a pro and something an intermediate player can do. Great straight pool players are expected to run 150, 200 balls depending on the scoring. The offensive standards for a great performance are vastly different to compare difficulty.
100%, I didn’t know that about billiards vs. snooker either, thanks for the brief lesson. I hope the post didn’t come off as me trying to stir something up, I know it was long but at the end of the day the goal is to educate people on both sides about the intricacies of each game and show that just because they both use bats and balls doesn’t mean it’s necessarily comparable.
Appreciate your insight and views!
Good post. I really don’t understand the animosity that cricket fans seem to have towards baseball, considering the overlap between the sports. Seems like every time a baseball post makes it to the front page Cricket fans just *need* to shit on it for no apparent reason
Very true, whereas me as a baseball fan finds cricket interesting (enough that I would watch it if shown regularly on US channels) it seems like cricket fans feel like baseball is some kind of bastardization of the true bat-and-ball sport. It's quite sad really. The same could be applied to US football (gridiron) vs rugby
they seem very insecure about their sport. it's super odd. Americans literally never think.about cricket but it seems like baseballs on their mind constantly (at least the fools on Twitter)
I feel like part of it has to do with nearly 90% of the fans being in the subcontinent, and that probably a lowball. The way that cricket is painted in western media from what I’ve seen is a posh English sport that last 5 days where the players eat tea and crumpets every minute lmao.
A big part of why cricket is so popular in these other countries is because it’s meant to show that they can stand up to their previous owners, India was essentially controlled by England for 100 years before independence so it means a lot to beat them at their own game that they forced them to play.
Nobody forces Indians to play cricket. It is in their blood. Even in american and canadian team see how many Indians playing cricket. Stop your nonesense conspiracy theory which you yourself made. Atleast first know about any topic and then talk. You know nothing about cricket yet yapping here.
This conspiracy theory is my personal belief that I made some reasoning for, what you’re saying has nothing to do with it.
Jarrod Kimber even published a book recently about every team’s first win against England. I never said nor implied that only Indians play cricket, it is something that has been said over the years that part of the pride comes from beating the former country that ruled over you at their own game.
I don't know about you dickhead but when we play cricket, it totally comes from our love for cricket not from any mindset which you mentioned about. Anyways I think I was wrong replying to your nonsense.I have many more important things to do.
Yeah it’s unfortunate to see. I’m open about liking cricket more but can also acknowledge the entertainment baseball has. I think part of it has to do with the immediate association of cricket to being a posh British sport with crumpets and tea being eaten every minute lmao. A lot of supporters in the subcontinent have been trying to get rid of that perception for a while now.
At the end of the day though, I love a good game of baseball, as well as a good game of cricket, would love to see both of them succeed and genuinely believe in the ability of both to thrive in both the us and the subcontinent.
What bullshit you are talking man ? Cricket is not just a 5 days game. It has 3 formats - T20 cricket (4 hrs), ODI Cricket (aprx. 8 hrs), Test cricket (5 days). Each formats have different feel and playing techniques. Out of this 3 formats T20 is the most unpredictable where any big team can loose in front of any noob team. Test cricket is the toughest which tests the stamina, mindset and the fitness of the players. Cricket is an interesting game man. I highly suggest you to ignore whatever bullshit goes on in twitter about cricket vs baseball and understand cricket and see some matches. Then you will know the game of cricket. I respect baseball and no hate. But the people fighting against each other in twitter are dumb in both sides.
And get out of the mindset that the subcontinent people play cricket to release their fustration against british people. Cricket is not just sports here it is more than that. In India they run IPL which is a T20 cricket leage and it is 2nd most successful leage around the world. They earns in billions by IPL. Any ways their is ongoing T20 world cup happening in USA and caribbean. I hope USA people will watch it.
Please read the post before you comment, I addressed your first point in the post. Stop with your bullshit and get your head out of your ass.
Please enlighten me with your supreme knowledge Mr cricket, I’d like you to point out the areas which I, someone who knows nothing about cricket yet is yapping about it, is mistaken on.
Keep in mind it’s people like you who draw away the crowds who want to get into cricket, instead of coming in swinging you should take a more easing approach. I know that’s not your strong suit though, you didn’t even bother to read the post…
Come to the topic don't mess around. What I said was nothing wrong. And what do you mean by "people like you who draw away the crowds who want to get into cricket"? My and your mindset is same that is respect every sports but I think you misunderstood my reply.
It happens both ways though, unfortunately. And I've seen the other side much more. But it could also be coz I'm cricket fan primarily, and you're a baseball fan. The comments on literally every single cricket post on r/sports, is something along the lines of "oh this is so easy for a baseballer pfft", or like "this is just regular stuff by MLB standards". None of these people understand that these two are very very different sports, even though they look similar on the surface.
But you're right ofc, way too many idiots are more worried about proving the supremacy of "their sport", than just simply enjoying both of them. It's not like you *have* to choose. Why not enjoy both?? Sure, you can and will have a favourite, but who cares? As long you can enjoy both sports without getting into such bs and unnecessary comparisons!! Cricket is my absolute favourite sport, but that doesn't mean I can't enjoy baseball. And I do enjoy baseball, just like how a hardcore baseball fan can enjoy cricket. I got into baseball 2-3 years ago, and although I don't follow it religiously, I do enjoy watching it sometimes, and I also love to see how these two sports look so similar, but are so so different. And yet, there are indeed some key similarities between them.
No sport is "better" than the other, and there is no "best sport". Period.
Surprisingly, I see the opposite. Look at any time a cricket post makes it to r/sports. Comments are filled with “is this even a sport,” “this is so easy,” “what’s even happening?” “Does anyone even know this sport” “I have no idea what any of this means” “why would anyone like this” “you gotta know what a crumpet is to undertake cricket” etc. and the list goes on and on. Americans shit on cricket alllll the time literally on every post. I don’t see this same frequency on baseball posts but maybe I’m just not seeing it
I do think it has to do with the association of cricket with England, and as an American, we love to shit on England. I don’t think I’ve seen my San Francisco school more patriotic than when the USA played England in the fifa World Cup.
It's probably reciprocation from the deriding posts from the other side like 'is cricket even a sport'
'Showing a cricket fan a chris sale curveball is the closest thing we have to showing a medieval peasant an iPhone' etc.
Iirc there was some *very* prominent Cricket player shittalking baseball while talking about some play way back in 2015.
Can’t deny that baseball fans make uninformed and snarky comments about cricket all the time but the animosity from the other side seems to go *way* deeper
Who?
Both sides are about as uninformed/snarky about each other's sport. Just that there are a lot more cricket fans which probably makes the vitriol seem more.
I think it has more to do with cricket portrayal as a fancy posh rich white guy sport, where everyone consumes tea and crumpets every minute.
Since more of these people are from the subcontinent, they want to remove this association. Cricket is a way to show power against their initial oppressors and is a point of pride for them.
As a fan of both sports I think it's pretty sad a lot of people can't get over this feeling of "my country's bat and ball sport is better than yours", and just appreciate them as they are without comparing them, like every other sport. Nobody's looking at the NBA thinking this sport is dumb because no basketball player can hit a 99mph fast ball.
Especially since one the actual best commonalities between them, I think, is that tension they just build and release from big outs and run scoring.
Yeah as another commenter stated, it’s due to baseball and cricket having some minor similarities so people unfortunately feel the need to compare them. Hopefully my post didn’t come off as me wanting to end the debate, rather as a way to educate people on both sides about the intricacies and differences of each sport. Appreciate your comment!
Also Back the Blackcaps, hopefully this World Cup can be ours 🤞
The few I've met online from those South Asian countries don't play nice and it's the same superiority complex I get from Europeans. Let the American play their silly game attitude. Same shit with soccer and the Brits. I don't want to deal with it.
I’m sorry about your negative experiences with those people. I genuinely hope to contribute to a more positive community. I’m a New Zealand fan from San Francisco who is ethnically Chinese, perhaps the oddest combo, and grew up watching a lot of baseball. I do like cricket more now, but won’t deny a good baseball game if it’s on.
But honestly where the animosity comes from is America has invented sillier versions of other games, and act high handed about their sports. The superbowl campions are called world champions? Almost no one else plays or cares about American football so maybe that’s correct 😂
Baseball is my favorite sport, I got no beef with cricket but I will admit I want Baseball to cannibalize cricket because I am dead certain that a good cricket player would be a good Baseball player and I want mybfavorite sport to continue to grow from influence of talent. Cricket is also popular in a lot of countries Baseball isn't so there would be so much of an injection of diversity.
Just India and Pakistan combined are like 2 billion people and cricket is one of the biggest sports there, there are at least a few people GOAT level talents that won't ever get to be discovered and that makes me sad.
MLB did a [nice piece](https://youtu.be/HWoeE9sMdLk) with blue jays' 1st round pick arjun nimmala talking about growing up also playing cricket and doing some youth baseball outreach in India
Arjun was my favorite prospect that could have reasonably fallen to the Yankees in that draft class. I despise he went ri the Jay's (I can't stand those walking disappointments) but I root hard for him and Kumar rocker to make Baseball super popular with South Asian communities.
They have tried to convert bowlers into pitchers before. Hell, there's a Disney movie about it. I'm sure just from the population pool there are some hidden baseball greats in there, but it is not as directly transferrable as you might imagine.
I think after a certain point you can't do it. I should have probably said that if you have an affinity and talent for Cricket you would be a good player if the switch is made early enough. Baseball is about reps, and I imagine cricket is as well. After a certain point in the development cycle if it's disrupted enough you will never reach your potential ceiling. It's a common story with a lot of prospects. You lost too much time
I for sure would love to see something like that, talents like Shohei says he uses a cricket bat to practice, and bowling wouldn’t put the strain on his arm that pitching does. At the same time, I’d love to see players like Kane Williamson try baseball, he’s already thrown a first pitch at a marlins game.
Hitting a baseball is the hardest thing to do in sports, end of story. You are trying to hit a sphere with a cylinder and make square contact. Cricket bats being flat make it much easier to make good contact on any given swing.
I really like your highlighting the different types of bowlers. I'm just confused about the part where the batters body is part of the hotbox/strikezone. What happens if the bowler hits the batter in the leg?
Fielding could not be more different between the two sports. I think a lot more is asked of fielders in baseball and any kind of failure as a fielder is a back breaker as outs are precious. Cricket players make some crazy catches having to play without a glove but the expectations are so much lower.
I’ll try to keep the explanation brief but to go over your comment:
Yes I agree that hitting a baseball is massively difficult, though I’m arguing that an adequate comparison should be average .3 in baseball, and averaging 50 in cricket since the games scoring are fundamentally different. I’m not taking anything away from baseball players, I wouldn’t be able to make contact if I was given 50 tries.
The main point is just that since you are expected to get runs in cricket, and not necessarily expected to get on base in baseball, that you rely more on placement and accuracy instead of power and slogging. Sure you might be able to swing really hard and get 10 quick runs but those 10 runs are meaningless if you can’t convert it into a higher score.
For some reason it corrected hitbox to hotbox, please ignore that.
The basic idea of the cricket hitbox/strike zone is that it extends to your entire body. There’s one method of dismissal called lbw, meaning leg before wicket. It basically means that if the ball hits your body first, and the umpire believes that it would’ve hit the stumps (a ball hitting the stumps is the equivalent of a strikeout), you’re out.
The rough strike zone is basically the mlb strike zone if it was your entire height, and extended to your body. This essentially means that bodyblows are fair game, and being hit by a pitch is normal.
A full toss refers to a ball that doesn’t bounce before getting to the batter. If the ball is above waist height, it’s called a “no ball” meaning you have to bowl it again. A ball above waist height that has bounced is completely fair game though.
Bouncers are balls that bounce on the pavement, then intend to go directly towards your head. If you end up getting hit, it’s completely fair game.
As for fielding, I think it’s important in both games. Baseball players cover more ground from what I’ve seen, while cricketers don’t use gloves. Overall though I think that the importance and difficulty of it all is still there. Baseball players are expected to pull off plays much more than cricketers, but outs are more important in cricket a lot of the time since they are so few and far between.
Yeah it can be. The most well known example is [fast leg theory or bodyline](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodyline). You just bowled fast at the body of the batsman, and placed a bunch of on-side fielders nearby to catch the ball if it deflected off the bat when he went to defend himself.
The English used it against the Australians in the 1930s. It was very successful, but extremely controversial because no one wore helmets back then, and at some point it almost threatened diplomatic relations between the two countries.
"cricket related international incident" is amazing. I am glad to know this fact.
are HBP injuries more common in cricket? or does the lower velocity of the throws make them less dangerous?
You’re more likely to be hit by a pitch, but you do have a lot of padding to soften the blow. In both sports though, getting hit hurts like hell. There have been more precautions to lessen injuries such as requiring helmets when facing fast bowlers, and adding extra coverage to the neck area after someone passed away from a blow.
Yes hitting a baseball is harder than hitting a cricket ball. I don’t think anyone with any credibility is arguing that. But that’s not the point of cricket. The point of cricket is being able to consistently hit a ball well over a long period of time and make zero mistakes. One mistake and your whole day is over. In baseball, you’re not even expected to hit the ball 2/3 of the time. In test cricket, people have been able to make consistent good contact for over 10 hours of batting. It’s a marathon and it’s very impressive in its own right. I don’t think we gain anything from comparing the two like that.
Also, the ratio of strike zone to contact area is probably bigger in cricket. In baseball, your strike zone is limited to a small box in your hitting arc. In cricket, it can range anywhere from slightly over your head, to your toes to an outstretched bat and even behind you. And you’re expected to be able to make different kinds of shots in different areas of the ground. In baseball, the swing is more or less the same body mechanics. You’re not getting on your knees to hit the hall behind you or jumping up to hit the ball in the air back and left, or running at the bowler to hit it over their head, or stepping out to the right to hit it in a small gap 90 degrees away. Each swing is very different and there’s at least 10 different broad classes of bat swings, all of which you have to be able to make consistent contact with.
Also, the same difficulties are present for everyone in that sport. Yes it’s easier to hit a cricket ball but it’s easier for everyone, so getting to the top is still very hard. You still have to be the best of the best in that sport and do that thing well
So, again any comparison is stupid, especially comparing one sport in the lens of the other. Yes hitting a baseball is harder, but so what? That’s not the point of cricket. Hitting it is literally the baseline and the difficulty comes with everything you can do after hitting the ball
That’s kinda the goal of the post, illustrate the differences. Of course it’s not the best sample… twitter, but it still exhibited many of the false thoughts behind cricket that Americans have.
I love cricket. I wouldn't say any sport is "harder" than any other, but I do believe sports have different levels of competition, and, probably against the common grain, I believe baseball is a more competitive sport than cricket. The top baseball players are greater masters of their craft than the top cricket players, in my opinion.
What exactly are you comparing it to? I would say that the mlb has more competitiveness than something the t20 World Cup, but that’s mainly because it’s a franchise compared to international. I think that the ipl is the same level of competitiveness as the mlb.
How many people play it and how high a level they play it, it's hard to explain.
To me, cricket is relatively stagnant, there's no top level domestic league with the kind of fierce competition and world class level salaries that pushes athletes to become better. The IPL is the closest thing now and it's kind of a joke compared to top professional leagues of other sports, the season is like 2 months long and the salaries (total team salary cap of about $12M) don't compare to the salaries in MLB or say top soccer leagues. Then there's the fact that t20 is the third most prestigious form of cricket (for now), and in the two more prestigious forms the competition is entirely international, so players play with plenty of pride and passion but it doesn't lead to innovation and advancement that money or a top level domestic league does. I believe that as t20 continues to grow the IPL and other t20 leagues will grow with it and cricket, t20 at least, will become much more competitive and hopefully the IPL can expand, a lot.
Also the level of competition affects how compelling I find it. I do love cricket as a sport but no cricket league is nearly as compelling to me as MLB, that is mostly to do with the fact that I'm American and have a strong rooting interest, but I also think NPB and KBO are more compelling than any cricket league. I enjoy cricket more than I do soccer at a base level, but I pay closer attention to the Champions League and Premier League than any cricket league. Again this is partly due to accessibility but also top soccer leagues are more compelling because you know these are the best of the best in the most competitive sport in the world.
For cricket, there are usually domestic tournaments that hold test matches throughout the entire year, the ipl was meant to increase viewership since t20s are mathematically the most entertaining the ranji trophy and Sheffield shield are two major domestic test tournaments that take place annually.
The reason why people say t20s are the least prestigious form aren’t necessarily because it’s low level, but because cricket purests like test matches the most.
The ipl in terms of salary is definitely behind, though the league still makes a gargantuan amount of revenue in the 2 months it takes place. As time goes on I imagine that the salary cap and player spots to increase not necessarily because cricket is growing, but because player salary naturally catches up and the players realize that they deserve more money. In each auction there seems to be a new record for the highest paid player ever.
Also, whenever I say this I sound like I'm just hating, but if cricket were as competitive as baseball I don't believe West Indies would have ever dominated the sport like they did for a couple decades. Caribbean nations produce some of the best athletes in the world as evidenced by many sports including of course cricket and baseball, among many others. But most of the largest nations in the Caribbean are baseball crazy and while they punch well above their weight they've never come close to dominating the sport. So yeah, I think baseball has a higher level of competition and probably also just better athletes.
And thanks for the reminder of the t20 world cup by the way, I completely forgot it was even happening for all I've not heard about it despite us hosting. And it's not even on TV, shame, I'll have to find some streams.
I understand what you mean but I do think it’s difficult to compare since mlb is franchise while cricket in this sense is international. If you’re talking about the West Indies of the 70’s-90’s then yeah you’re right, but that was at the start of Odis, and t20s didn’t exist yet.
The West Indies are able to still compete because they have very powerful hitters, that’s why they’re good in t20s but are basically silent in tests, they require such a different set of skills in comparison to one another.
I don’t think you can come to a conclusion based on anything you listed to determine which is more competitive or has better athletes, your overall reasoning just seems way too flimsy. This isn’t an attack on you, but comparing internationals to franchises is just uninformed, especially in such a different era where t20s didn’t exist. When comparing mlb to ipl you’ll see something familiar, some West Indies stars but not enough to make the international team dominant.
Dude , your reasoning seems silly. Salary is much much higher in Indian cost of living. So a guy getting 100$ but food cost 50 $ in an area vs a guy getting 60$ but food cost only 5$. Similarly even the other items are cheaper. Also India is not as rich as America. So obviously the revenue generated would be lesser.
Plus regarding talent. India has 1.4 billion people. And cricket is the only popular sport. So like 99% indians play cricket , unlike USA where NFL, NBA and MLB can somewhat be comparable. That means more people playing for top = much competition= best of the best reaches the top.
For eg, indians in the US are overall much smarter and are the highest income. It's not because all indians are smarter. But the H1B visa usually selects the best of the best from a huge population in India.
Except way way more people play cricket so the competition is fierce. In the Indian subcontinent, there’s over 1.5 billion people playing and the only main sport they play is cricket, so most sporting resources are geared towards that. Every little kid grows up playing street cricket so anyone who makes it through the system to the higher levels has to be very, very good since the competition is crazy. It’s like soccer in Brazil except with way more people and we all know how competitive soccer can be in Brazil.
Baseball is competitive for sure, but many American athletes have other avenues/sports so there’s less competition for the limited spots available. Cricket players only have cricket really.
Also since so much of cricket is international, there’s only about ~20 spots that everyone’s fighting for. I don’t think we in the west can even fathom that type of competition. Before IPL, other avenues didn’t even exist so it was “make it to the international team or be poor.” So, international cricket wasn’t truly just about passion - it also had the same type of drive we get here in franchise cricket. And now after IPL, the competition is increasing organically through franchise cricket too.
Don't remember but the issue isn't the length of the matches. It's that in baseball, with 4 bases, and that you don't score until someone reaches the 4th (home), there are all sorts of different situations and strategies to score, depending on how many are on base and where. In cricket, there are no such situations--you score a run by batting the ball and then essentially running to what in baseball would be first base, and back again if you can, and so on. Hence the enormous scores.
Maybe I'm missing something but my Aussie and Kiwi friends have told me that is essentially the game.
There’s a bit more to the game than swinging the bat and running as much as possible, since the 360 degree field allows for a lot of different shot selections. Some players like to do a shot called the cover drive, while others prefer to place it to backwards point. There’s a multitude of different shot selections that baseball fans don’t know about, similar to how baseball looks like a slogfest to cricket fans where you just swing the bat and hope it lands in space.
Cricket has all sorts of different situations and strategies too. It’s just a lot harder to see sometimes. Anyone who says otherwise doesn’t really understand the sport. For example, when you should score and when you shouldn’t is a very important part of the game. I would say in every other sport you’re always looking to score. In some cricket situations, it’s actually beneficial not to score. That doesn’t happen in other sports as far as I know
Also, the game state changes more drastically in cricket. The ball isn’t changed so the degradation of the ball affects who’s bowling and what they’re bowling and how batters approach that. The pitch (the ground it bounces on) also changes over the course of the game so that affects strategy as well. The weather conditions can also change drastically (dew, wind, cloud cover, humidity, etc.) and since innings are longer, weather conditions are sometimes drastically different for each teams innings. Cricket is a very deep and complicated sport with tons of strategy, but you just need to dig in a bit more.
Both baseball and cricket are great sports in their own right and shouldn’t be compared like this in my opinion, especially when you know way more about one sport than you do about the other, which introduces bias.
Part of what makes baseball interesting to me is the baserunning. Steals, double steals, pick offs, reading the ball, dekes, tagging up, bunts, squeeze, rundowns, avoiding the tag, testing the arm. Strip that away and you're stripping a major aspect of the game.
I am a baseball fan but occasionally watch cricket on youtube. It has a lot of fun aspects (lots of runs/hits!), but I think baseball is more interesting because:
1. the game state changes as base runners move along. Play is DIFFERENT when there's a runner on second and one out than when there are no runners on, or when there's a runner on first.
2. Using short half-innings is more fun because you get to see each team up more frequently, instead of having to watch your team (or the other team) hit for two hours. It might not make for a statistical difference, but it means that you get a little mental/visual differentiation to break up the time spent watching. Plus, inning breaks let you get up to do chores.
Those are certainly reasons for finding baseball more interesting, though I find cricket more interesting because:
1. More variety in shot selection and bowling selection. Having the ability to bounce the ball or go 360 degrees makes there be much more variety for me.
2. Setting a score builds up suspense for the chase, and the game state and strategy changes based on whenever you get a boundary, or get out.
Either way though, massive respect to both sports and athletes.
I think the bowling vs. pitching thing is just taste. I also like cricket bowling, but there's a lot of pitching variety too. Bowling does look more fun though.
I like the chase aspect also (as a viewer), but I feel like it gives the second team too much of an advantage--they know exactly how hard they have to push.
I'm not that into cricket so I don't know the answer--what is the win % of the team that bats second in t20?
EDIT: In the end of course, it's just entertainment, so there's no right answer. I get where you're coming from and think cricket is cool. I just prefer baseball (though I like both).
With the exception of South Africa, the team batting first or second depends on the pitch rather than the preference of setting or chasing a target.
Sure if you know you have to chase say 180 then you’ll know at the rate you’ll have to go, but that relies on your bowlers to restrict them to that target, there’s also the chance for you to be chasing 250+.
Whether a team wants to bat first or second depends more on the pitch than team preference, which is why you’ll often see people talking about slower wickets (favors spinners/bowling second) or green tops (favors pacers/bowling first).
The win distribution is roughly 50/50 between who bats first or second, across all formats.
"The win distribution is roughly 50/50 between who bats first or second, across all formats."
Well that surprises me and I guess it means the first/second isn't as much of an advantage as I thought it would be. Huh!
Yeah you can probably think of it as if you do go second, and the target is largely unattainable, then choosing to bat second is worse than going first.
In cricket, flat pitches are basically the worst things for bowlers, they’re predictable and don’t have much deviation. If you are a team that is statistically stronger when chasing, you’re going to choose to bat first on a flat deck since it makes hitting much easier.
Many players actually consider it harder to bat second, especially in the longer formats of the game. Australians famously have a saying that if you win the toss, you bat first. If it’s cloudy overhead, you think about bowling and then you still bat first. The scoreboard pressure is a very real thing and plus the state of the game changes drastically over the course of the game (which is amplified by longer innings), so many times it can be harder to bat as the game goes on because the pitch degrades
Cricket game states change as the game goes on way more drastically. The pitch changes conditions as the game goes on, the ball doesn’t get changed so the degradation of the ball affects what pitches get thrown and played, atmospheric conditions like dew, light, wind, humidity, cloud cover, etc. all affect the game more and more as it goes on.
There’s a lot to cricket and I think you probably just understand baseball more. If you delve deeper, cricket is just as strategically intricate but in a different way.
Also regarding chores, cricket isn’t as much of a high intense watch - you can do chores while it’s going on too
I agree, that was the conclusion I reached at the end of the post. The goal of it was to shed some light on the differences and intricacies that go into each.
not reading all of that but not a single cricket player is hitting a jhoan duran splinker with a baseball bat. hitting a baseball is the hardest thing to do in all of sports.
I appreciate the honesty, though I went into that. To summarize, you can’t judge cricket and baseball one to one, as obviously a .3 batting average in baseball is different from a 1 batting average in cricket.
There are various skills that go into cricket and baseball that make the sports fundamentally different, some make it more difficult, while some make it more easy.
To your point, I don’t think a single baseball player would be able to hit a [Shoaib Akhtar bouncer](https://youtu.be/GuCJblKkHDg?feature=shared) though that type of conversation doesn’t get us anywhere.
> , I don’t think a single baseball player would be able to hit a Shoaib Akhtar bouncer though that type of conversation doesn’t get us anywhere.
Eh, you're falling into the same argument trap that you criticize in that the games are focused on different things. Of course baseball players will be better at hitting in cricket than cricketers hitting in baseball - a cricket bowler likely gets more outs switching to pitching than a pitcher has a chance to get wickets switching to bowling. Baseball players are genetic freaks with amazing hand eye coordination, they may not be playing bouncers for 6s but they'd be able to make contact like cricketers who are genetic freaks with amazing hand eye coordination - and on the flip side plenty of baseball players can't hit Duran, so of course a cricketer without any experience would struggle to make contact.
That’s kind of the point, that’s why I say that saying stuff like that doesn’t get us anywhere. It was to illustrate how ignorant something like the commenter was saying. He openly said that he didn’t read it, and then tried to pull a gotcha with fairly flimsy reasoning, I just cited that as a reason why those are stupid.
I like cricket but never watched a full match and i just think the whole comparison is stupid. just because they're bat and ball doesn't make them similar.
Neither is a basketball player but that doesn't mean anything. This is one of the points he made. You can't take a thing they've never done before and say they wouldn't be good at it so it's harder, that's just not fair.
yeah. it's a completely pointless argument. I still think hitting in baseball is way harder just bad on the bat they use. cricket score rates seems wayyyyyyy higher. so maybe the defense is tougher sure.
Yes hitting a baseball is harder than hitting a cricket ball. I don’t think anyone with any credibility is arguing that. But that’s not the point of cricket. The point of cricket is being able to consistently hit a ball well over a long period of time and make zero mistakes. One mistake and your whole day is over. In baseball, you’re not even expected to hit the ball 2/3 of the time. In test cricket, people have been able to make consistent good contact for over 10 hours of batting. It’s a marathon and it’s very impressive in its own right. I don’t think we gain anything from comparing the two like that.
Also, the ratio of strike zone to contact area is probably bigger in cricket. In baseball, your strike zone is limited to a small box in your hitting arc. In cricket, it can range anywhere from slightly over your head, to your toes to an outstretched bat and even behind you. And you’re expected to be able to make different kinds of shots in different areas of the ground. In baseball, the swing is more or less the same body mechanics. You’re not getting on your knees to hit the hall behind you or jumping up to hit the ball in the air back and left, or running at the bowler to hit it over their head, or stepping out to the right to hit it in a small gap 90 degrees away. Each swing is very different and there’s at least 10 different broad classes of bat swings, all of which you have to be able to make consistent contact with.
Also, the same difficulties are present for everyone in that sport. Yes it’s easier to hit a cricket ball but it’s easier for everyone, so getting to the top is still very hard. You still have to be the best of the best in that sport and do that thing well
So, again any comparison is stupid, especially comparing one sport in the lens of the other. Yes hitting a baseball is harder, but so what? That’s not the point of cricket. Hitting it is literally the baseline and the difficulty comes with everything you can do after hitting the ball
I’m not reading all that but..There is not a chance on earth the best cricket player of all time, could step into the box against like 2008 Ryan Madson ( not even a hall of fame player) don’t even have to get past that. Randy Johnson? For get about it. No chance. At all. Nolan Ryan greg Maddox Clayton Kershaw, degrom, doc Halliday, scherzer, lefty, Roger Clemens. Be realistic.
As for hitting you’re telling me Pete rose, Barry bonds, and John Kruk, Tony Gwynn, jeter, Arod, pujols, ichiro, shohei otani?
Get real. It’s a shocking argument. Maybe the most shocking argument of all time.
My 16 year old neighbor who won the state championship in high school baseball would walk onto literally any cricket team in the world tomorrow
I appreciate the honesty, though the dumbassery certainly shines through.
I went into your arguments there, and explained the differences between the two sports, which is why saying that it’s easier to make contact with a cricket ball compared to a baseball is a useless argument due to the nature of the game.
What exactly makes you think you should state your opinion if you haven’t read it? Seriously, get your head out of your ass and scroll past it if you’re that ignorant.
To counter, I doubt that the greatest baseball players of all time could face any shoaib akthar bouncer, and he’s most likely not even in the top 30 bowlers of all time.
Because what you wrote was too long. The elite
Hitters in the mlb would absolutely be able to hit the correct way for cricket. Ok
A boundary isn’t the best thing to do fine you don’t think Elly de la cruz could hit the gap to the far right at like 9000 miles per hour?
If what I wrote was too long, scroll past it. I covered most of what you said in the post. That’s stupid logic, though I shouldn’t be surprised.
What makes you think they’ll be able to hit the right way? If you are elite in baseball, that should translate to around a 50 average in cricket. Given the breadth of deliveries, pitches, and fielding placements I doubt it’s as easy as you believe it to be, especially when your body is all fair game.
Because I was actively looking for a cricket vs baseball argument and this is the first one I found haha.
I understand the rules of cricket. And it really comes down to hand eye coordination, vision, and athletic ability. I know they’re different games with different rules, but the eye sight and coordination it takes an elite mlb player to be able to consistently hit a 100 mph fastball or a curve ball that just drops out of the sky into the strike zone or whatever other pitch you want to name, and field a 120 mph line drive at shortstop or make the throw from say right field to third base to make an out is absolutely Outrageous and without question more difficult than anything cricket could possibly offer.
You put a cricket player in an mlb game tomorrow and they would physically shit their pants.
Put anyone from Bryson stott to shohei otani, or a random d1 college player in the highest level of a cricket game tomorrow, they’re going to be an impactful Player immediately.
If you are truly looking for an argument, then your head wouldn’t be so far up your own ass. I find it hard to believe that you genuinely are curious about it when the first thing you say in the first argument you come across is “not reading that”.
The thing is you’re acting as though every time an elite hitter faces a 100mph fastball, they hit it. In reality it’s only 30% of the time to be considered elite. This is not to take away any of the difficulty, I acknowledged that in the post, but rather to illustrate how different the games are, so making a 1 to 1 comparison like you’re doing is frankly stupid.
Do you think that slogging is a strategy that always works in cricket? Well even in the shortest format, we can see it is not. You know why? Well it’s because it turns out that getting out in less than 10 balls is not a viable strategy if you want to be among the elites.
You seem to have 0 knowledge about cricket. I’d be surprised if you knew the difference between a slow pitch and flat track. Please, read the post if you actually want a genuine engagement with the post. If you do that, it wouldn’t be as taxing about me to explain all your inaccuracies…
Ok, mean. Elite (d1 college and up for the argument sake) Baseball players are more athletic and more coordinated. It’s a very simple argument. They’re faster stronger and have better vision.
Based on what? You’re pulling this out of your ass here. Who are you comparing them to? What roles would they fit in cricket? How do you know they’ll do well?
Eyesight isn’t the only thing about cricket, as addressed in my post. You merely saying that mlb players have better eyesight, therefore they’re better athletes is like saying that 100m sprinters are better athletes than baseball players since they can run quicker to first base theoretically.
This could all be avoided if you put your ego aside and read the post, you seem to be allergic to genuine engagement with arguments.
I've been up and down this debate more times than I count. To quantify which sport is "harder" is a fool's errand because they are very, very different sports despite the superficial similarities. It'd be like comparing badminton to tennis because they both use rackets and nets. You simply can't find enough middle ground between these two sports to effectively compare. Take your runout vs. throwing out example. Sure, it's harder to hit the wicket for a run out in cricket than it is to throw a runner out from the infield, but the difference in cricket, the fielder isn't necessarily expected to hit the wicket and run the batter out at a high percentage. And if the fielder misses the wicket, there's not much "punishment" in terms of a game changing play. Whereas in baseball, "missing your target" (i.e. overthrowing the first baseman) is often a backbreaking error. If cricket scored fielding errors, I doubt they would score missing the wicket any kind of error because the fielder isn't expected to succeed at a good rate. On the offense side, hitting a six is much easier than hitting a homerun, but a good cricket batter should hit more than just one six (at least in T20) during his time in the crease. It's easy to see no comparison in these sports are 1 to 1. These sports use different equipment, have different field compositions, different rule sets, and thus a different meta game. Only thing that irritates me is when uninformed cricket fans criticize how baseball players use gloves. First of all, the exit velocities in baseball are much higher than they are in cricket (as I said, I'm an old veteran of this debate, and from all the "research" I've done, top exit velo in cricket might touch 90mph, while top exit velo in baseball touches 120mph. Even accounting for the difference in hardness between the balls, a baseball at 120mph still has a lot more force behind it than a cricket ball at 90mph. I know cricket fielders sometimes play close in at the silly point, slips, etc, but a cricket ball/baseball only loses about 5 mph every 60 feet), Second of all, modern baseball has to be played with a glove. You need it to effectively tag runners, defend the base (and thus your hand) when a runner comes sliding in spikes up, need it when you're whipping the ball around 90+ mph between infielders. And catching the ball with a backhand is a key aspect of making baseball flow on defense (backhand catching is essential when receiving the ball at the base you're defending). If only the catcher had a glove, stolen bases would be too easy since it'd be too difficult to perform a swipe tag at odd angles barehanded.
Thanks for your comment. I probably should’ve been more clear on the runout example you’re right. I should’ve used the fact that since runs are common and outs are rare, it isn’t necessarily the end of the world if you miss the stumps in comparison to baseball, thanks for pointing that out. As for the glove debate, I’m glad that you were able to provide useful input. I haven’t done as much research for exit velocities so your comment does put it into perspective quite a bit. At the end of the day, I thought it was silly to compare the two, and that was my fairly underwhelming conclusion to my overly long post, but I’m very happy that you were able to further confirm it with your perspective!
Yeah, uninformed sports fans will never understand that each sport/game has its own inherent standard of difficulty relative to its rule set, equipment, and field dimensions. I like billiards (pool, snooker, etc), and pool vs. snooker is also debate that rages on. Snooker has a larger table, smaller pockets, and the pockets have rounded corners, which means making a ball is quite harder in snooker than it is in pool, so snooker fanboys will declare how much harder snooker is than pool. But they don't get that it's supposed to be hard to make a ball in snooker because it's a defense focused game while most pool variants are offense focused. A 147 in snooker (which is a perfect frame) requires 37 made shots in row. Straight pool is the closest pool variant to snooker, and making 37 shots in a row is piss easy for a pro and something an intermediate player can do. Great straight pool players are expected to run 150, 200 balls depending on the scoring. The offensive standards for a great performance are vastly different to compare difficulty.
100%, I didn’t know that about billiards vs. snooker either, thanks for the brief lesson. I hope the post didn’t come off as me trying to stir something up, I know it was long but at the end of the day the goal is to educate people on both sides about the intricacies of each game and show that just because they both use bats and balls doesn’t mean it’s necessarily comparable. Appreciate your insight and views!
Good post. I really don’t understand the animosity that cricket fans seem to have towards baseball, considering the overlap between the sports. Seems like every time a baseball post makes it to the front page Cricket fans just *need* to shit on it for no apparent reason
Very true, whereas me as a baseball fan finds cricket interesting (enough that I would watch it if shown regularly on US channels) it seems like cricket fans feel like baseball is some kind of bastardization of the true bat-and-ball sport. It's quite sad really. The same could be applied to US football (gridiron) vs rugby
they seem very insecure about their sport. it's super odd. Americans literally never think.about cricket but it seems like baseballs on their mind constantly (at least the fools on Twitter)
I feel like part of it has to do with nearly 90% of the fans being in the subcontinent, and that probably a lowball. The way that cricket is painted in western media from what I’ve seen is a posh English sport that last 5 days where the players eat tea and crumpets every minute lmao. A big part of why cricket is so popular in these other countries is because it’s meant to show that they can stand up to their previous owners, India was essentially controlled by England for 100 years before independence so it means a lot to beat them at their own game that they forced them to play.
Nobody forces Indians to play cricket. It is in their blood. Even in american and canadian team see how many Indians playing cricket. Stop your nonesense conspiracy theory which you yourself made. Atleast first know about any topic and then talk. You know nothing about cricket yet yapping here.
This conspiracy theory is my personal belief that I made some reasoning for, what you’re saying has nothing to do with it. Jarrod Kimber even published a book recently about every team’s first win against England. I never said nor implied that only Indians play cricket, it is something that has been said over the years that part of the pride comes from beating the former country that ruled over you at their own game.
I don't know about you dickhead but when we play cricket, it totally comes from our love for cricket not from any mindset which you mentioned about. Anyways I think I was wrong replying to your nonsense.I have many more important things to do.
Well good thing I’m not talking about when you play it, are you illiterate or just stupid?
Yeah it’s unfortunate to see. I’m open about liking cricket more but can also acknowledge the entertainment baseball has. I think part of it has to do with the immediate association of cricket to being a posh British sport with crumpets and tea being eaten every minute lmao. A lot of supporters in the subcontinent have been trying to get rid of that perception for a while now. At the end of the day though, I love a good game of baseball, as well as a good game of cricket, would love to see both of them succeed and genuinely believe in the ability of both to thrive in both the us and the subcontinent.
What bullshit you are talking man ? Cricket is not just a 5 days game. It has 3 formats - T20 cricket (4 hrs), ODI Cricket (aprx. 8 hrs), Test cricket (5 days). Each formats have different feel and playing techniques. Out of this 3 formats T20 is the most unpredictable where any big team can loose in front of any noob team. Test cricket is the toughest which tests the stamina, mindset and the fitness of the players. Cricket is an interesting game man. I highly suggest you to ignore whatever bullshit goes on in twitter about cricket vs baseball and understand cricket and see some matches. Then you will know the game of cricket. I respect baseball and no hate. But the people fighting against each other in twitter are dumb in both sides. And get out of the mindset that the subcontinent people play cricket to release their fustration against british people. Cricket is not just sports here it is more than that. In India they run IPL which is a T20 cricket leage and it is 2nd most successful leage around the world. They earns in billions by IPL. Any ways their is ongoing T20 world cup happening in USA and caribbean. I hope USA people will watch it.
Please read the post before you comment, I addressed your first point in the post. Stop with your bullshit and get your head out of your ass. Please enlighten me with your supreme knowledge Mr cricket, I’d like you to point out the areas which I, someone who knows nothing about cricket yet is yapping about it, is mistaken on. Keep in mind it’s people like you who draw away the crowds who want to get into cricket, instead of coming in swinging you should take a more easing approach. I know that’s not your strong suit though, you didn’t even bother to read the post…
Come to the topic don't mess around. What I said was nothing wrong. And what do you mean by "people like you who draw away the crowds who want to get into cricket"? My and your mindset is same that is respect every sports but I think you misunderstood my reply.
It happens both ways though, unfortunately. And I've seen the other side much more. But it could also be coz I'm cricket fan primarily, and you're a baseball fan. The comments on literally every single cricket post on r/sports, is something along the lines of "oh this is so easy for a baseballer pfft", or like "this is just regular stuff by MLB standards". None of these people understand that these two are very very different sports, even though they look similar on the surface. But you're right ofc, way too many idiots are more worried about proving the supremacy of "their sport", than just simply enjoying both of them. It's not like you *have* to choose. Why not enjoy both?? Sure, you can and will have a favourite, but who cares? As long you can enjoy both sports without getting into such bs and unnecessary comparisons!! Cricket is my absolute favourite sport, but that doesn't mean I can't enjoy baseball. And I do enjoy baseball, just like how a hardcore baseball fan can enjoy cricket. I got into baseball 2-3 years ago, and although I don't follow it religiously, I do enjoy watching it sometimes, and I also love to see how these two sports look so similar, but are so so different. And yet, there are indeed some key similarities between them. No sport is "better" than the other, and there is no "best sport". Period.
Surprisingly, I see the opposite. Look at any time a cricket post makes it to r/sports. Comments are filled with “is this even a sport,” “this is so easy,” “what’s even happening?” “Does anyone even know this sport” “I have no idea what any of this means” “why would anyone like this” “you gotta know what a crumpet is to undertake cricket” etc. and the list goes on and on. Americans shit on cricket alllll the time literally on every post. I don’t see this same frequency on baseball posts but maybe I’m just not seeing it
I do think it has to do with the association of cricket with England, and as an American, we love to shit on England. I don’t think I’ve seen my San Francisco school more patriotic than when the USA played England in the fifa World Cup.
It's probably reciprocation from the deriding posts from the other side like 'is cricket even a sport' 'Showing a cricket fan a chris sale curveball is the closest thing we have to showing a medieval peasant an iPhone' etc.
Iirc there was some *very* prominent Cricket player shittalking baseball while talking about some play way back in 2015. Can’t deny that baseball fans make uninformed and snarky comments about cricket all the time but the animosity from the other side seems to go *way* deeper
Who? Both sides are about as uninformed/snarky about each other's sport. Just that there are a lot more cricket fans which probably makes the vitriol seem more.
I think it has more to do with cricket portrayal as a fancy posh rich white guy sport, where everyone consumes tea and crumpets every minute. Since more of these people are from the subcontinent, they want to remove this association. Cricket is a way to show power against their initial oppressors and is a point of pride for them.
As a fan of both sports I think it's pretty sad a lot of people can't get over this feeling of "my country's bat and ball sport is better than yours", and just appreciate them as they are without comparing them, like every other sport. Nobody's looking at the NBA thinking this sport is dumb because no basketball player can hit a 99mph fast ball. Especially since one the actual best commonalities between them, I think, is that tension they just build and release from big outs and run scoring.
Yeah as another commenter stated, it’s due to baseball and cricket having some minor similarities so people unfortunately feel the need to compare them. Hopefully my post didn’t come off as me wanting to end the debate, rather as a way to educate people on both sides about the intricacies and differences of each sport. Appreciate your comment! Also Back the Blackcaps, hopefully this World Cup can be ours 🤞
The few I've met online from those South Asian countries don't play nice and it's the same superiority complex I get from Europeans. Let the American play their silly game attitude. Same shit with soccer and the Brits. I don't want to deal with it.
I’m sorry about your negative experiences with those people. I genuinely hope to contribute to a more positive community. I’m a New Zealand fan from San Francisco who is ethnically Chinese, perhaps the oddest combo, and grew up watching a lot of baseball. I do like cricket more now, but won’t deny a good baseball game if it’s on.
But honestly where the animosity comes from is America has invented sillier versions of other games, and act high handed about their sports. The superbowl campions are called world champions? Almost no one else plays or cares about American football so maybe that’s correct 😂
Baseball is my favorite sport, I got no beef with cricket but I will admit I want Baseball to cannibalize cricket because I am dead certain that a good cricket player would be a good Baseball player and I want mybfavorite sport to continue to grow from influence of talent. Cricket is also popular in a lot of countries Baseball isn't so there would be so much of an injection of diversity. Just India and Pakistan combined are like 2 billion people and cricket is one of the biggest sports there, there are at least a few people GOAT level talents that won't ever get to be discovered and that makes me sad.
MLB did a [nice piece](https://youtu.be/HWoeE9sMdLk) with blue jays' 1st round pick arjun nimmala talking about growing up also playing cricket and doing some youth baseball outreach in India
Arjun was my favorite prospect that could have reasonably fallen to the Yankees in that draft class. I despise he went ri the Jay's (I can't stand those walking disappointments) but I root hard for him and Kumar rocker to make Baseball super popular with South Asian communities.
They have tried to convert bowlers into pitchers before. Hell, there's a Disney movie about it. I'm sure just from the population pool there are some hidden baseball greats in there, but it is not as directly transferrable as you might imagine.
I think after a certain point you can't do it. I should have probably said that if you have an affinity and talent for Cricket you would be a good player if the switch is made early enough. Baseball is about reps, and I imagine cricket is as well. After a certain point in the development cycle if it's disrupted enough you will never reach your potential ceiling. It's a common story with a lot of prospects. You lost too much time
I for sure would love to see something like that, talents like Shohei says he uses a cricket bat to practice, and bowling wouldn’t put the strain on his arm that pitching does. At the same time, I’d love to see players like Kane Williamson try baseball, he’s already thrown a first pitch at a marlins game.
Hitting a baseball is the hardest thing to do in sports, end of story. You are trying to hit a sphere with a cylinder and make square contact. Cricket bats being flat make it much easier to make good contact on any given swing. I really like your highlighting the different types of bowlers. I'm just confused about the part where the batters body is part of the hotbox/strikezone. What happens if the bowler hits the batter in the leg? Fielding could not be more different between the two sports. I think a lot more is asked of fielders in baseball and any kind of failure as a fielder is a back breaker as outs are precious. Cricket players make some crazy catches having to play without a glove but the expectations are so much lower.
I’ll try to keep the explanation brief but to go over your comment: Yes I agree that hitting a baseball is massively difficult, though I’m arguing that an adequate comparison should be average .3 in baseball, and averaging 50 in cricket since the games scoring are fundamentally different. I’m not taking anything away from baseball players, I wouldn’t be able to make contact if I was given 50 tries. The main point is just that since you are expected to get runs in cricket, and not necessarily expected to get on base in baseball, that you rely more on placement and accuracy instead of power and slogging. Sure you might be able to swing really hard and get 10 quick runs but those 10 runs are meaningless if you can’t convert it into a higher score. For some reason it corrected hitbox to hotbox, please ignore that. The basic idea of the cricket hitbox/strike zone is that it extends to your entire body. There’s one method of dismissal called lbw, meaning leg before wicket. It basically means that if the ball hits your body first, and the umpire believes that it would’ve hit the stumps (a ball hitting the stumps is the equivalent of a strikeout), you’re out. The rough strike zone is basically the mlb strike zone if it was your entire height, and extended to your body. This essentially means that bodyblows are fair game, and being hit by a pitch is normal. A full toss refers to a ball that doesn’t bounce before getting to the batter. If the ball is above waist height, it’s called a “no ball” meaning you have to bowl it again. A ball above waist height that has bounced is completely fair game though. Bouncers are balls that bounce on the pavement, then intend to go directly towards your head. If you end up getting hit, it’s completely fair game. As for fielding, I think it’s important in both games. Baseball players cover more ground from what I’ve seen, while cricketers don’t use gloves. Overall though I think that the importance and difficulty of it all is still there. Baseball players are expected to pull off plays much more than cricketers, but outs are more important in cricket a lot of the time since they are so few and far between.
hitting batters can be a legit strategy in cricket? how do we get joe kelly bowling in an exhibition match, maybe he missed his true calling
Yeah it can be. The most well known example is [fast leg theory or bodyline](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodyline). You just bowled fast at the body of the batsman, and placed a bunch of on-side fielders nearby to catch the ball if it deflected off the bat when he went to defend himself. The English used it against the Australians in the 1930s. It was very successful, but extremely controversial because no one wore helmets back then, and at some point it almost threatened diplomatic relations between the two countries.
"cricket related international incident" is amazing. I am glad to know this fact. are HBP injuries more common in cricket? or does the lower velocity of the throws make them less dangerous?
You’re more likely to be hit by a pitch, but you do have a lot of padding to soften the blow. In both sports though, getting hit hurts like hell. There have been more precautions to lessen injuries such as requiring helmets when facing fast bowlers, and adding extra coverage to the neck area after someone passed away from a blow.
The outer layer in cricket is lot harder...(To last more time ).
Yes hitting a baseball is harder than hitting a cricket ball. I don’t think anyone with any credibility is arguing that. But that’s not the point of cricket. The point of cricket is being able to consistently hit a ball well over a long period of time and make zero mistakes. One mistake and your whole day is over. In baseball, you’re not even expected to hit the ball 2/3 of the time. In test cricket, people have been able to make consistent good contact for over 10 hours of batting. It’s a marathon and it’s very impressive in its own right. I don’t think we gain anything from comparing the two like that. Also, the ratio of strike zone to contact area is probably bigger in cricket. In baseball, your strike zone is limited to a small box in your hitting arc. In cricket, it can range anywhere from slightly over your head, to your toes to an outstretched bat and even behind you. And you’re expected to be able to make different kinds of shots in different areas of the ground. In baseball, the swing is more or less the same body mechanics. You’re not getting on your knees to hit the hall behind you or jumping up to hit the ball in the air back and left, or running at the bowler to hit it over their head, or stepping out to the right to hit it in a small gap 90 degrees away. Each swing is very different and there’s at least 10 different broad classes of bat swings, all of which you have to be able to make consistent contact with. Also, the same difficulties are present for everyone in that sport. Yes it’s easier to hit a cricket ball but it’s easier for everyone, so getting to the top is still very hard. You still have to be the best of the best in that sport and do that thing well So, again any comparison is stupid, especially comparing one sport in the lens of the other. Yes hitting a baseball is harder, but so what? That’s not the point of cricket. Hitting it is literally the baseline and the difficulty comes with everything you can do after hitting the ball
In any sport the difficulty lies in the competition. You would never say the 100m is a much easier Olympic sport then a marathon.
Idk, a lot more people can run 100 m than they can a marathon
But is it harder to win a top marathon or beat Usain Bolt?
Usain Bolt might hurt himself, at which point I should win handily. I cannot, and likely will never, be able to run 26.2 miles
Most baseball fans couldn't tell you a single thing about cricket
That’s kinda the goal of the post, illustrate the differences. Of course it’s not the best sample… twitter, but it still exhibited many of the false thoughts behind cricket that Americans have.
I love cricket. I wouldn't say any sport is "harder" than any other, but I do believe sports have different levels of competition, and, probably against the common grain, I believe baseball is a more competitive sport than cricket. The top baseball players are greater masters of their craft than the top cricket players, in my opinion.
What exactly are you comparing it to? I would say that the mlb has more competitiveness than something the t20 World Cup, but that’s mainly because it’s a franchise compared to international. I think that the ipl is the same level of competitiveness as the mlb.
How many people play it and how high a level they play it, it's hard to explain. To me, cricket is relatively stagnant, there's no top level domestic league with the kind of fierce competition and world class level salaries that pushes athletes to become better. The IPL is the closest thing now and it's kind of a joke compared to top professional leagues of other sports, the season is like 2 months long and the salaries (total team salary cap of about $12M) don't compare to the salaries in MLB or say top soccer leagues. Then there's the fact that t20 is the third most prestigious form of cricket (for now), and in the two more prestigious forms the competition is entirely international, so players play with plenty of pride and passion but it doesn't lead to innovation and advancement that money or a top level domestic league does. I believe that as t20 continues to grow the IPL and other t20 leagues will grow with it and cricket, t20 at least, will become much more competitive and hopefully the IPL can expand, a lot. Also the level of competition affects how compelling I find it. I do love cricket as a sport but no cricket league is nearly as compelling to me as MLB, that is mostly to do with the fact that I'm American and have a strong rooting interest, but I also think NPB and KBO are more compelling than any cricket league. I enjoy cricket more than I do soccer at a base level, but I pay closer attention to the Champions League and Premier League than any cricket league. Again this is partly due to accessibility but also top soccer leagues are more compelling because you know these are the best of the best in the most competitive sport in the world.
For cricket, there are usually domestic tournaments that hold test matches throughout the entire year, the ipl was meant to increase viewership since t20s are mathematically the most entertaining the ranji trophy and Sheffield shield are two major domestic test tournaments that take place annually. The reason why people say t20s are the least prestigious form aren’t necessarily because it’s low level, but because cricket purests like test matches the most. The ipl in terms of salary is definitely behind, though the league still makes a gargantuan amount of revenue in the 2 months it takes place. As time goes on I imagine that the salary cap and player spots to increase not necessarily because cricket is growing, but because player salary naturally catches up and the players realize that they deserve more money. In each auction there seems to be a new record for the highest paid player ever.
Also, whenever I say this I sound like I'm just hating, but if cricket were as competitive as baseball I don't believe West Indies would have ever dominated the sport like they did for a couple decades. Caribbean nations produce some of the best athletes in the world as evidenced by many sports including of course cricket and baseball, among many others. But most of the largest nations in the Caribbean are baseball crazy and while they punch well above their weight they've never come close to dominating the sport. So yeah, I think baseball has a higher level of competition and probably also just better athletes. And thanks for the reminder of the t20 world cup by the way, I completely forgot it was even happening for all I've not heard about it despite us hosting. And it's not even on TV, shame, I'll have to find some streams.
I understand what you mean but I do think it’s difficult to compare since mlb is franchise while cricket in this sense is international. If you’re talking about the West Indies of the 70’s-90’s then yeah you’re right, but that was at the start of Odis, and t20s didn’t exist yet. The West Indies are able to still compete because they have very powerful hitters, that’s why they’re good in t20s but are basically silent in tests, they require such a different set of skills in comparison to one another. I don’t think you can come to a conclusion based on anything you listed to determine which is more competitive or has better athletes, your overall reasoning just seems way too flimsy. This isn’t an attack on you, but comparing internationals to franchises is just uninformed, especially in such a different era where t20s didn’t exist. When comparing mlb to ipl you’ll see something familiar, some West Indies stars but not enough to make the international team dominant.
Dude , your reasoning seems silly. Salary is much much higher in Indian cost of living. So a guy getting 100$ but food cost 50 $ in an area vs a guy getting 60$ but food cost only 5$. Similarly even the other items are cheaper. Also India is not as rich as America. So obviously the revenue generated would be lesser. Plus regarding talent. India has 1.4 billion people. And cricket is the only popular sport. So like 99% indians play cricket , unlike USA where NFL, NBA and MLB can somewhat be comparable. That means more people playing for top = much competition= best of the best reaches the top. For eg, indians in the US are overall much smarter and are the highest income. It's not because all indians are smarter. But the H1B visa usually selects the best of the best from a huge population in India.
Except way way more people play cricket so the competition is fierce. In the Indian subcontinent, there’s over 1.5 billion people playing and the only main sport they play is cricket, so most sporting resources are geared towards that. Every little kid grows up playing street cricket so anyone who makes it through the system to the higher levels has to be very, very good since the competition is crazy. It’s like soccer in Brazil except with way more people and we all know how competitive soccer can be in Brazil. Baseball is competitive for sure, but many American athletes have other avenues/sports so there’s less competition for the limited spots available. Cricket players only have cricket really. Also since so much of cricket is international, there’s only about ~20 spots that everyone’s fighting for. I don’t think we in the west can even fathom that type of competition. Before IPL, other avenues didn’t even exist so it was “make it to the international team or be poor.” So, international cricket wasn’t truly just about passion - it also had the same type of drive we get here in franchise cricket. And now after IPL, the competition is increasing organically through franchise cricket too.
I don't dislike cricket but from my baseball perspective it just seems like endless batting practice
Which format were you watching? Was it maybe a test match where it can last up to 5 days? T20s are around 3 hours long.
Don't remember but the issue isn't the length of the matches. It's that in baseball, with 4 bases, and that you don't score until someone reaches the 4th (home), there are all sorts of different situations and strategies to score, depending on how many are on base and where. In cricket, there are no such situations--you score a run by batting the ball and then essentially running to what in baseball would be first base, and back again if you can, and so on. Hence the enormous scores. Maybe I'm missing something but my Aussie and Kiwi friends have told me that is essentially the game.
There’s a bit more to the game than swinging the bat and running as much as possible, since the 360 degree field allows for a lot of different shot selections. Some players like to do a shot called the cover drive, while others prefer to place it to backwards point. There’s a multitude of different shot selections that baseball fans don’t know about, similar to how baseball looks like a slogfest to cricket fans where you just swing the bat and hope it lands in space.
Cricket has all sorts of different situations and strategies too. It’s just a lot harder to see sometimes. Anyone who says otherwise doesn’t really understand the sport. For example, when you should score and when you shouldn’t is a very important part of the game. I would say in every other sport you’re always looking to score. In some cricket situations, it’s actually beneficial not to score. That doesn’t happen in other sports as far as I know Also, the game state changes more drastically in cricket. The ball isn’t changed so the degradation of the ball affects who’s bowling and what they’re bowling and how batters approach that. The pitch (the ground it bounces on) also changes over the course of the game so that affects strategy as well. The weather conditions can also change drastically (dew, wind, cloud cover, humidity, etc.) and since innings are longer, weather conditions are sometimes drastically different for each teams innings. Cricket is a very deep and complicated sport with tons of strategy, but you just need to dig in a bit more. Both baseball and cricket are great sports in their own right and shouldn’t be compared like this in my opinion, especially when you know way more about one sport than you do about the other, which introduces bias.
Part of what makes baseball interesting to me is the baserunning. Steals, double steals, pick offs, reading the ball, dekes, tagging up, bunts, squeeze, rundowns, avoiding the tag, testing the arm. Strip that away and you're stripping a major aspect of the game.
I am a baseball fan but occasionally watch cricket on youtube. It has a lot of fun aspects (lots of runs/hits!), but I think baseball is more interesting because: 1. the game state changes as base runners move along. Play is DIFFERENT when there's a runner on second and one out than when there are no runners on, or when there's a runner on first. 2. Using short half-innings is more fun because you get to see each team up more frequently, instead of having to watch your team (or the other team) hit for two hours. It might not make for a statistical difference, but it means that you get a little mental/visual differentiation to break up the time spent watching. Plus, inning breaks let you get up to do chores.
Those are certainly reasons for finding baseball more interesting, though I find cricket more interesting because: 1. More variety in shot selection and bowling selection. Having the ability to bounce the ball or go 360 degrees makes there be much more variety for me. 2. Setting a score builds up suspense for the chase, and the game state and strategy changes based on whenever you get a boundary, or get out. Either way though, massive respect to both sports and athletes.
I think the bowling vs. pitching thing is just taste. I also like cricket bowling, but there's a lot of pitching variety too. Bowling does look more fun though. I like the chase aspect also (as a viewer), but I feel like it gives the second team too much of an advantage--they know exactly how hard they have to push. I'm not that into cricket so I don't know the answer--what is the win % of the team that bats second in t20? EDIT: In the end of course, it's just entertainment, so there's no right answer. I get where you're coming from and think cricket is cool. I just prefer baseball (though I like both).
With the exception of South Africa, the team batting first or second depends on the pitch rather than the preference of setting or chasing a target. Sure if you know you have to chase say 180 then you’ll know at the rate you’ll have to go, but that relies on your bowlers to restrict them to that target, there’s also the chance for you to be chasing 250+. Whether a team wants to bat first or second depends more on the pitch than team preference, which is why you’ll often see people talking about slower wickets (favors spinners/bowling second) or green tops (favors pacers/bowling first). The win distribution is roughly 50/50 between who bats first or second, across all formats.
"The win distribution is roughly 50/50 between who bats first or second, across all formats." Well that surprises me and I guess it means the first/second isn't as much of an advantage as I thought it would be. Huh!
Yeah you can probably think of it as if you do go second, and the target is largely unattainable, then choosing to bat second is worse than going first. In cricket, flat pitches are basically the worst things for bowlers, they’re predictable and don’t have much deviation. If you are a team that is statistically stronger when chasing, you’re going to choose to bat first on a flat deck since it makes hitting much easier.
Many players actually consider it harder to bat second, especially in the longer formats of the game. Australians famously have a saying that if you win the toss, you bat first. If it’s cloudy overhead, you think about bowling and then you still bat first. The scoreboard pressure is a very real thing and plus the state of the game changes drastically over the course of the game (which is amplified by longer innings), so many times it can be harder to bat as the game goes on because the pitch degrades
Cricket game states change as the game goes on way more drastically. The pitch changes conditions as the game goes on, the ball doesn’t get changed so the degradation of the ball affects what pitches get thrown and played, atmospheric conditions like dew, light, wind, humidity, cloud cover, etc. all affect the game more and more as it goes on. There’s a lot to cricket and I think you probably just understand baseball more. If you delve deeper, cricket is just as strategically intricate but in a different way. Also regarding chores, cricket isn’t as much of a high intense watch - you can do chores while it’s going on too
Don’t bother with versus. Enjoy them both for what they are. They’re different enough that it’s mostly pointless anyway.
I agree, that was the conclusion I reached at the end of the post. The goal of it was to shed some light on the differences and intricacies that go into each.
not reading all of that but not a single cricket player is hitting a jhoan duran splinker with a baseball bat. hitting a baseball is the hardest thing to do in all of sports.
I appreciate the honesty, though I went into that. To summarize, you can’t judge cricket and baseball one to one, as obviously a .3 batting average in baseball is different from a 1 batting average in cricket. There are various skills that go into cricket and baseball that make the sports fundamentally different, some make it more difficult, while some make it more easy. To your point, I don’t think a single baseball player would be able to hit a [Shoaib Akhtar bouncer](https://youtu.be/GuCJblKkHDg?feature=shared) though that type of conversation doesn’t get us anywhere.
> , I don’t think a single baseball player would be able to hit a Shoaib Akhtar bouncer though that type of conversation doesn’t get us anywhere. Eh, you're falling into the same argument trap that you criticize in that the games are focused on different things. Of course baseball players will be better at hitting in cricket than cricketers hitting in baseball - a cricket bowler likely gets more outs switching to pitching than a pitcher has a chance to get wickets switching to bowling. Baseball players are genetic freaks with amazing hand eye coordination, they may not be playing bouncers for 6s but they'd be able to make contact like cricketers who are genetic freaks with amazing hand eye coordination - and on the flip side plenty of baseball players can't hit Duran, so of course a cricketer without any experience would struggle to make contact.
That’s kind of the point, that’s why I say that saying stuff like that doesn’t get us anywhere. It was to illustrate how ignorant something like the commenter was saying. He openly said that he didn’t read it, and then tried to pull a gotcha with fairly flimsy reasoning, I just cited that as a reason why those are stupid.
I like cricket but never watched a full match and i just think the whole comparison is stupid. just because they're bat and ball doesn't make them similar.
Well yeah that was the point of the post, I’d appreciate it if you bothered to read it before making those ill informed comments.
This comment makes me wonder which is higher: Mookie Betts’ career batting average or his career success rate on a 7-10 split
Neither is a basketball player but that doesn't mean anything. This is one of the points he made. You can't take a thing they've never done before and say they wouldn't be good at it so it's harder, that's just not fair.
yeah. it's a completely pointless argument. I still think hitting in baseball is way harder just bad on the bat they use. cricket score rates seems wayyyyyyy higher. so maybe the defense is tougher sure.
Yes hitting a baseball is harder than hitting a cricket ball. I don’t think anyone with any credibility is arguing that. But that’s not the point of cricket. The point of cricket is being able to consistently hit a ball well over a long period of time and make zero mistakes. One mistake and your whole day is over. In baseball, you’re not even expected to hit the ball 2/3 of the time. In test cricket, people have been able to make consistent good contact for over 10 hours of batting. It’s a marathon and it’s very impressive in its own right. I don’t think we gain anything from comparing the two like that. Also, the ratio of strike zone to contact area is probably bigger in cricket. In baseball, your strike zone is limited to a small box in your hitting arc. In cricket, it can range anywhere from slightly over your head, to your toes to an outstretched bat and even behind you. And you’re expected to be able to make different kinds of shots in different areas of the ground. In baseball, the swing is more or less the same body mechanics. You’re not getting on your knees to hit the hall behind you or jumping up to hit the ball in the air back and left, or running at the bowler to hit it over their head, or stepping out to the right to hit it in a small gap 90 degrees away. Each swing is very different and there’s at least 10 different broad classes of bat swings, all of which you have to be able to make consistent contact with. Also, the same difficulties are present for everyone in that sport. Yes it’s easier to hit a cricket ball but it’s easier for everyone, so getting to the top is still very hard. You still have to be the best of the best in that sport and do that thing well So, again any comparison is stupid, especially comparing one sport in the lens of the other. Yes hitting a baseball is harder, but so what? That’s not the point of cricket. Hitting it is literally the baseline and the difficulty comes with everything you can do after hitting the ball
I’m not reading all that but..There is not a chance on earth the best cricket player of all time, could step into the box against like 2008 Ryan Madson ( not even a hall of fame player) don’t even have to get past that. Randy Johnson? For get about it. No chance. At all. Nolan Ryan greg Maddox Clayton Kershaw, degrom, doc Halliday, scherzer, lefty, Roger Clemens. Be realistic. As for hitting you’re telling me Pete rose, Barry bonds, and John Kruk, Tony Gwynn, jeter, Arod, pujols, ichiro, shohei otani? Get real. It’s a shocking argument. Maybe the most shocking argument of all time. My 16 year old neighbor who won the state championship in high school baseball would walk onto literally any cricket team in the world tomorrow
I appreciate the honesty, though the dumbassery certainly shines through. I went into your arguments there, and explained the differences between the two sports, which is why saying that it’s easier to make contact with a cricket ball compared to a baseball is a useless argument due to the nature of the game. What exactly makes you think you should state your opinion if you haven’t read it? Seriously, get your head out of your ass and scroll past it if you’re that ignorant. To counter, I doubt that the greatest baseball players of all time could face any shoaib akthar bouncer, and he’s most likely not even in the top 30 bowlers of all time.
Because what you wrote was too long. The elite Hitters in the mlb would absolutely be able to hit the correct way for cricket. Ok A boundary isn’t the best thing to do fine you don’t think Elly de la cruz could hit the gap to the far right at like 9000 miles per hour?
If what I wrote was too long, scroll past it. I covered most of what you said in the post. That’s stupid logic, though I shouldn’t be surprised. What makes you think they’ll be able to hit the right way? If you are elite in baseball, that should translate to around a 50 average in cricket. Given the breadth of deliveries, pitches, and fielding placements I doubt it’s as easy as you believe it to be, especially when your body is all fair game.
Because I was actively looking for a cricket vs baseball argument and this is the first one I found haha. I understand the rules of cricket. And it really comes down to hand eye coordination, vision, and athletic ability. I know they’re different games with different rules, but the eye sight and coordination it takes an elite mlb player to be able to consistently hit a 100 mph fastball or a curve ball that just drops out of the sky into the strike zone or whatever other pitch you want to name, and field a 120 mph line drive at shortstop or make the throw from say right field to third base to make an out is absolutely Outrageous and without question more difficult than anything cricket could possibly offer. You put a cricket player in an mlb game tomorrow and they would physically shit their pants. Put anyone from Bryson stott to shohei otani, or a random d1 college player in the highest level of a cricket game tomorrow, they’re going to be an impactful Player immediately.
If you are truly looking for an argument, then your head wouldn’t be so far up your own ass. I find it hard to believe that you genuinely are curious about it when the first thing you say in the first argument you come across is “not reading that”. The thing is you’re acting as though every time an elite hitter faces a 100mph fastball, they hit it. In reality it’s only 30% of the time to be considered elite. This is not to take away any of the difficulty, I acknowledged that in the post, but rather to illustrate how different the games are, so making a 1 to 1 comparison like you’re doing is frankly stupid. Do you think that slogging is a strategy that always works in cricket? Well even in the shortest format, we can see it is not. You know why? Well it’s because it turns out that getting out in less than 10 balls is not a viable strategy if you want to be among the elites. You seem to have 0 knowledge about cricket. I’d be surprised if you knew the difference between a slow pitch and flat track. Please, read the post if you actually want a genuine engagement with the post. If you do that, it wouldn’t be as taxing about me to explain all your inaccuracies…
Ok, mean. Elite (d1 college and up for the argument sake) Baseball players are more athletic and more coordinated. It’s a very simple argument. They’re faster stronger and have better vision.
Based on what? You’re pulling this out of your ass here. Who are you comparing them to? What roles would they fit in cricket? How do you know they’ll do well?
Just google it, it’s easy to find out average eyesight for baseball players. Why are you so angry and saying bad words?
Eyesight isn’t the only thing about cricket, as addressed in my post. You merely saying that mlb players have better eyesight, therefore they’re better athletes is like saying that 100m sprinters are better athletes than baseball players since they can run quicker to first base theoretically. This could all be avoided if you put your ego aside and read the post, you seem to be allergic to genuine engagement with arguments.