Baseball isn’t cricket and cricket isn’t baseball. They are second cousins twice removed.
Telford Vice / Cape Town
PEOPLE living in the United States whose heritage does not stem from a society where cricket is a major sport might wonder what has been going in Dallas, Lauderhill and Nassau County for the past 15 days and will continue until Sunday. And bang in the middle of the baseball season, no less. Questions, they’ll have a few.
Why do people in other places play this bastardised baseball instead of the real thing? Why does the strange game have the same name as an insect? Why do some of its adherents consider baseball to be corrupted cricket? Why do cricket fans think games matter more when they are played by teams representing countries rather than franchises?
Why are cricket bats flat? Why aren’t batters compelled to run every time they hit the ball in front of them? Why are they allowed to run when they hit the ball behind them?
Why is the ball not delivered to batters from a standing start? Why is the idea to bounce the ball in front of the batter? Why do you change pitchers after only six balls? Why don’t you change the pitcher if their first two balls sail for home runs? Why do you rotate the place you pitch from? Why must your arm stay straight when you’re pitching? Why are some pitchers’ deliveries so slow?
Why is the strike zone denoted by bits of wood? Why is it sometimes one strike and you’re out? Why isn’t it four balls outside of the strike zone and you walk to first base? Why don’t you walk when you’re hit by a pitch? Why is there only one base? Why can’t up to four members of the batting team be on the field at the same time? Why are there so many runs?
Why does only one member of the fielding team wear gloves? Why is there a fuss about whether a fielder has touched the boundary when the ball is close by? Why don’t fans keep the ball when someone hits it into the crowd?
Why isn’t the inning — yes, singular — over when three batters are out? Why doesn’t the umpire stand behind the catcher? Why don’t players argue with the umpire enough to be ejected from the game? Why do managers never appear on the field to argue with the umpire? Why don’t coaches come out to advise struggling pitchers?
Despite common factors like wooden bats and leather balls, some modes of dismissal, and a similar set of required skills, baseball isn’t cricket and cricket isn’t baseball. They are second cousins twice removed. The definitive difference between the two sports is about who controls the rhythm of play. In baseball, it’s the pitcher. In cricket, it’s the batter.
Baseball bats are round, making it far more difficult to meet the ball solidly. To hit the ball fairly, and thus being allowed to head for first base, means sending it within the 90-degree v formed by the foul lines. Hitting it into that area forces you to run towards first base, no matter how easily the ball might be fielded. All of which puts batters at a distinct disadvantage.
A baseball batting average of .300 is considered excellent. That means the game’s best batters fail to reach base by hitting the ball safely — between the foul lines, and without being caught or put out at a base or home plate — in fewer than two-thirds of their plate appearances. Clearly, pitchers rule this roost.
Because cricket bats are flat, because batters have the choice whether or not to run after they hit the ball, because they can hit it all around the wicket and still run, because they only have to reach the other end of the pitch to score a run — not go all the way around the diamond — they are in charge in cricket.
A good cricket innings can last hours, yield hundreds of runs, and consume even more balls. Hanif Mohammed spent 970 minutes — more than 16 hours, or theoretically long enough to play more than five entire T20s — scoring 337 for Pakistan against West Indies at Kensington Oval in January 1958. Balls faced were not counted then, but in time terms it remains the longest Test innings. The longest recorded MLB at-bat — the equivalent of an innings — belongs to Brandon Belt, who lasted 21 pitches in 13 minutes for the San Francisco Giants against the Los Angeles Angels in Anaheim in April 2018. The potted purgatory ended when he was caught in right field.
Still, there are alluring connection points between baseball and cricket. Both games go on for significantly longer than most other sports. Both move to more or less the same tempo, T20 perhaps excepted. The seam is as important on a baseball as it is on a cricket ball, but on a baseball it looks like a stitched, raised version of a tennis ball’s curvilinear pattern. Cricketers, like baseball players, wear caps and helmets.
The grip and delivery of a pitcher’s curve ball is almost identical to that of a finger spinner’s standard turning delivery. The idea, in baseball, is for the ball to break downward through the air and veer slightly away from a righthanded batter. Without bouncing, of course. If it does bounce and the batter swings and misses anyway, that’s a strike.
Keshav Maharaj almost found out what happens when finger spinners don’t land their deliveries in Nassau County on Monday. Assigned to defend 10 in the last over of South Africa’s men’s T20 World Cup game against Bangladesh, he produced three full tosses. Baseball fans wouldn’t have blinked at that. South Africa’s supporters blinked hard.
Thanks to two catches in the deep by Aiden Markram — one of them a brilliant running, leaping effort — Maharaj got away with it and his team won by four runs. Again, baseball watchers wouldn’t have been impressed. Outfielders take catches like that in every game, sometimes crashing into walls — mercifully padded — as they do so. And then, often, they have to fire off a throw to one of the bases or home plate to try and stop an advancing runner.
Mostly, cricket is not baseball and baseball is not cricket. Americans have had seven T20 World Cup warm-up games — three of them washed out — and 10 matches in the tournament proper to parse the differences, point out the similarities, and ponder the peculiarities. They will have six more before the action moves to the Caribbean exclusively on Monday.
Might some of the curious among them, particularly if they are not of South Asian or West Indian heritage, or anywhere else cricket has a firm foothold, keep watching next week? Maybe that will depend on how their MLB teams are doing.
If you’re a fan of the New York Yankees, the Cleveland Guardians, the Seattle Mariners, the Philadelphia Phillies, the Milwaukee Brewers or the Los Angeles Dodgers — who lead their respective divisions as the halfway mark of the 162-game regular season approaches — the ongoing T20 World Cup probably won’t feature in your viewing schedule. But if you root for the Tampa Bay Rays, the Chicago White Sox, the Oakland Athletics, the Miami Marlins, the Pittsburgh Pirates or the Colorado Rockies — the bottom clubs — you might stay tuned in.
Because, whether you’re into baseball or cricket, or bastardised baseball or corrupted cricket, everyone loves a winner.
Cricbuzz
Bulletproof Truth 