Cricket...

*sigh* The pitch is rectangular, the ground is oval

stone monkey, that is the worst piece of attempted pedantry i've ever seen

and there is only one Oval. (well, two if we're counting the one in barbados)

wait a minute we ARE condescending pricks.

:-D

let us now be welcoming and let the people taste cricket howsoever they wish

oh baseball fans also need to understand this point: the batter and pitcher are both in the CENTER of the playing field! there are no foul balls. so hitting it behind you is just as good as hitting it in front of you. mindbending.

*sigh* that's CENTRE not CENTER

hitting it behind you is liable to have you caught by the wicketkeeper or the slips, though.

(the slips stand in an arc around from the wicketkeeper to the side you're facing when you're in your batting stance)

haha tom

unless they are a leg slip.

mate, sometimes even I don't understand leg slip

(newbies, leg slip is a very archaic position and it's never used EVER. unless alastair cook is batting.)

cricket is sort of like if american football teams were allowed unlimited chances to advance 10 yards -- and you could score in either end zone

Now you've lost me

in the interests of transatlantic comity, here is an interesting page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_between_cricket_and_baseball

(the slips stand in an arc around from the wicketkeeper to the side you're facing when you're in your batting stance)

I prefer to face the bowler myself.

Cricket's bowlers are grouped into different categories based on their bowling style—pacemen, seamers, off-spinners (or finger-spinners), leg-spinners (or wrist-spinners)

Uhhhhhhh, where is SWING bowling? Oops, forgot to sigh... *sigh*

swing is just a feature of pace bowling

How do you define "pace bowling" tho? I mean, if you're going to separate seamers from pacemen? You don't have to be a pace bowler to swing the ball, any more than you have to be a pace bowler to seam the ball surely?

Tom it's wikipedia, just add "and so on" to that list

pacemen, seamers

does not compute, there are genuinely quick bowlers who also seam it about, e.g. makhaya ntini

Tom it's wikipedia

Yes, silly me

Well that list is kind of bollocks.

There are Fast Bowlers 80-9, Mediums and Slow bowlers (who are 99% spinners)

Fast and Medium pacers can exploit swing.

With some bowlers, swing is all they've got, hello Matthew Hoggard

Sorry, that was a but unfair on Hoggy

You leave Hoggy alone....

The Bowlers Holding The Batsmans Willey

This is the lamest sport in the world apart from that thing the US calls football that stops every five seconds.

amirite?

hoggard bowled beautifully on our last tour of india in non-swinging conditions; his length was superb, his line consistent, and he developed an ability to cut the ball (essentially, spin it at pace; it doesn't turn much but it can be very effective)

i wonder what heave ho makes of pakistan's many cricketing controversies, like the oval forfeiture last year, or the reprieves handed out to 'drug cheats' shoaib akhtar and mohammed asif (who's shaping up to be a bowling great). i wonder who his favourite players are, in fact. mohammed hafeez, perhaps? or possibly danish kaneria?

Mohammed Asif is brilliant

p.s. i'd never have kicked pakistan out of world cricket for any of their offences. some people have something against them, but i think they liven the sport up like you wouldn't believe. it's NEVER dull on or off the pitch with the green army around

there's something v. similar in baseball called a "cut fastball" or "cutter", which is almost as fast as a normal fastball but has movement on it

taking sides: chad bradford vs lasith malinga for wackiest ball release action in sport?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutter_(baseball)

haha steve also don't forget kent tekulve... or josh papelbon, seen here:

http://www.kieranchapman.net/images/weblog/joshpapelbon.jpg

In cricket, defeating the batsmen through ball deviations is achieved both through the air and off the pitch (sometimes both, if you're a top-quality spinner). How does baseball manage to have such a variety of different deliveries when the legal target is so small and the ball can't bounce?

It doesn't

argh ffs my beloved worcestershire have lost to durham, now we'll be relegated for sure ;_;

not sure i understand the question? pitching deliveries in baseball are actually pretty uniform except for a few weird outliers; the real differences come in the type of grip a pitcher will use, which affects how the ball spins in the air, and hence its flight. you're right that the strike zone a very small target compared to cricket, which makes high-quality pitching, well, very difficult. and because a baseball bat is smaller than a cricket bat - and cylindrical rather than flat - high-quality batting is also very difficult. and because you have to hit the ball in front of you rather than behind you or to the side, and because if you do hit it in front of you you have to run whether you want to or not, baseball is famously known as a game of failure (sort of like soccer), and very low-scoring. you don't have the luxury of pounding out run after run (like in basketball). one slip-up and you can screw the whole game.

Baseball = pitcher's sport
Cricket = batter's sport

... roughly speaking

I am baffled.

Cricket can also be a game of failure, although more for batsmen than for bowlers. If a bowler bowls three bad balls, he can always come back and take wickets, but if a pitcher does so, the stakes are higher for each individual error.

ok, i am baffled now too (i have no idea what "taking wickets" means, nor "bad balls" - explain!!)

what i mean about failure is, in baseball you don't see a batter reaching base, say, 100 times per game

the very best batters in baseball make an "out" on more than half of their chances

Taking a wicket means getting a batsman out! I mean, a bowler getting a batsman out... by bowling him out... not by running him out or any other method. A bad ball is just a poorly delivered ball, e.g. a full toss or a long hop (sorry, that's going to confuse matters moe)

But then I don't know what "the very best batters in baseball make an "out" on more than half of their chances" means either

Taking a wicket means getting a batsman out! I mean, a bowler getting a batsman out... by bowling him out... not by running him out or any other method. A bad ball is just a poorly delivered ball, e.g. a full toss or a long hop (sorry, that's going to confuse matters moe)

... that's better

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Playing-Hard-Ball-Cricket-Baseball/dp/0349116660/

^^^ good book

Cricket is pretty damn tedious, I think.

I hated it when I was at school. The football, eh, soccer coach wanted no-one on the pitch who wasn't interested in the game, so he sent us "bad at sports" kids(which was like 5 of us) to the school swimming pool, with the girls in the class. Somewhere in his fucked up brain he thought this was some kind of emasculating punishment, LOL. It wasn't. It was fucking great. Later on, they sussed out what was (cough) going on and the girls got sent off to play netball or some such thing, we football hataz still went to the pool, but they let us play with the canoes! It was fucking awesome! (not as good as the girls though, obv)

The cricket coach was "inclusive", the bastard. This meant that if you had the good sense not to give (1) fuck about this tedious ritual, you'd get to stand somewhere in the distance as a "fielder", and once about every four weeks, a ball would land nearby, and you'd try to catch it, this fucking rock-hard leather thing would belt into yr hand @ 78mph or something and you'd be like YAAAARGH FUKCER and you'd drop it, and the coach would yell at you. Or you'd catch it, and the batsman would fuck you over in playtime.

Fuck crix0ret, srsly.

There hasn't been enough drinking on this thread for any of it to make sense yet.