Comments by "Andy Dee" (@AndyViant) on "American Baseball Fan Reacts to Cricket VS Baseball - Which is Better?" video.
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Straight up it' sounds like a puff piece from ESPN in the worst kind of flag waving yankee way. Full toss cricket bowling in the strike zone so that it's easier for the baseball player, and harder for the cricket player who does not normally play strokes like that at that height? Puh-leeze. Luckily it improves a bit.
The bat size is smaller, yes that's one for baseball. But Batsmen in Cricket are supposed to go out and score 100 runs in a game, not 1 in a game like baseball.
So the expectations are different. Batters in baseball can leave half the balls. In cricket they need to defend against almost every single ball, as in 100 overs or 600 balls there are usually only about 20 "wides" and "no balls".
In cricket there is no "zone". The ball can be bounced. It can be a full toss. It can be bounced at the opponents head, or bowled right up at their feet to crush their toes. You are literally defending your body from injury with that bat. There's no walk if you get hit by a ball. Check out "Bodyline" when english bowlers aimed to hurt Australian batsmen in the 1930's when no one had any protective gear...
Bowling speeds are about the same - peaking out at just over 100 mph. Baseball does slightly have the edge here because they can throw the ball and cricket you cannot. That's factual and measurable.
The pitching distance is shorter in baseball, yes, true too. But not as much as you think. The bowler must land his front foot behind the popping crease at 22 Yards, but that isn't where his arm has to be when he *releases the ball*. He is running in full speed, with his arm fully extended and will bend his back forward in the movement of bowling the ball. So that'll be at least another yard shorter distance from release to batsman.
Bowlers usually finish bowling their delivery about 6 or 8 yards down the pitch.
Reaction times? Baseball is a full toss. It may swing, or deviate in the air a little bit, but you can watch and judge the ball swing from when it leaves the baseball pitcher's hand. Without any external impact it'll continue it's curve. Laws of physics, baby.
But as you saw from the Shane Warne videos, the movement you can get from swing in the air is NOTHING compared to how much the ball can move if it's able to hit a rough, grippy surface like the pitch, you have a lot of angular momentum (spin) on the ball, or if you hit the seam on the pitch. The swing can be in one direction, but the movement off the seam hitting can be another, and the impact of the spin when it hits the ground can be a third direction. Plus as the ball deforms from impact to the pitch it can create extra bounce or slide and stay low. And they bowlers aim for the wear points on the pitch so it isn't bouncing off a flat surface either.
And those impacts and changes in direction happen one or two yards away from the batsman, not from the moment the ball leaves the pitchers hand. So the "reaction time" being based on the ball leaving the bowler's hand in cricket is massively inflating the response time a cricket batsman gets. If the bat wasn't bigger a cricket batsman wouldn't have a chance. In the old days (like 17th Century) teams being all out for 20 runs or so was the norm, when we had cricket bats the size and shape of hockey sticks. We changed the rules and equipment of the sport because honestly that doesn't make for exciting watching.
You watched the Shane Warne videos. Were the batsmen getting much reaction time from the moment the ball hit the pitch and started to turn? Nope. They didn't have even a chance to react.
If he bowled a full toss they'd hit him out of the park every single time. Bouncing the ball makes it much harder, and I'd personally say that facing a bouncer from even a fast - medium bowler at 90 mph+ is the most mentally challenging thing, even if actually facing a bowler like Shane Warne in the right conditions might be harder to hit.
Cricket is definitely played at a serious level by a lot more countries. You have about 14 nations with serious Baseball competitions (including Australia, Philippines, South Korea and Taiwan who's country status is a bit questionable).
Cricket has far more countries with top flight competitions. We nearly have that many International Test Cricket Nations (12), and we don't give out test nation status very easily. Major cricketing nations like West Indies (1928), India (1932) and Pakistan (1952) didn't gain Test status without decades of international cricket tours to prove they were worthy of the honour and the cricket would be at least competitive.
IBAF (International Baseball Federation) has 124 members. Cricket has over 100 ICC (International Cricket Council) members, but includes a lot of more populous countries like India, Pakistan, China, Brazil, Bangladesh, Mexico and of course the United States.
But the scale of that competition? There's currently 91 Countries that are ranked for T20 International Matches. How many does IBAF organize regular international games for? The IBAF is NOTHING compared to the size of the ICC. If the ICC is Major League Baseball, the IBAF wouldn't even rank as a Minor League AA.
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@Cricket Explained there is some possibility of the sport having some Dutch basis as they have a similar word. However, there's been plenty of spelling and linguistic shifts of all these languages, mistranslations, and just plain using of other languages to explain concepts.
There's insufficient proof for any of the theories, but the Dutch one is as sound as any other.
The first recorded references to cricket are spelt very differently - usually creckett, criccett or kricket. The question of course is whether all these similar words (mostly meaning a stick or staff, thus representing the bat a ball was hit with) from similar languages were interchangeable and the sport was played across multiple areas, or within minority ethnic communities and spread out from there. Words like Creag, Cryce, Krick, Cricc, Crique all have very similar meanings. There's obviously some similarities to Hockey (well at least as it is spelt in Dutch) and even Croquet in the names, because all refer to a stick, and cricket is just another version of hitting a ball with a stick, after all.
But as you can see there are many languages that can make a similar claim.
The first references in English it as an adult organised sport date back to around 1550 but it is believed it would have been a disorganised children's sport well before it became the organised team sport of the mid 1500's and then the semi professional sport it became in the 1600's. The first references to something close to Cricket date back to mid 1400's France, but that is probably not linguistically it's origin, more likely Saxon or Dutch, so it is likely it was at least an early 1400's or even 1300's children's game in either England or the Netherlands, and either spread to the French along with migration or trade, or the French name is merely a coincidence due to a similar word.
But it is quite interesting that the first historical reference to a word that looks or sounds very much like Cricket actually comes from France in 1478, especially given the greater similarities between the other Germanic languages than French. Makes you wonder if the source is less Dutch and more Flemish?
However what is clear is the sport as it would have been was very very different to that of the mid 1700's where many of these ball and stick sports were separating with clearly different rules and equipment.
Certainly some of them are likely to have been influenced by or changed by teams deciding rules, as with many sports without central leadership teams decided the rules by agreement between the two captains until the laws of the game were codified. This can be clearly seen in the early history of the various rugby, football and Australian rules football codes.
Clearly cricket has milestones on rules and equipment where other sports could have branched off, and these are at least visible in historical record since the end of the 16th century. Hence it seems more likely Cricket is the source sport, and the others were likely to have branched off from them, not vice versa.
It is pretty easy to see how a dispute on the style of bat could lead to a split between cricket and hockey, and a split between how the bowler should bowl could lead to a split between cricket and rounders and thus baseball.
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