The best film about cricket is Lagaan, which is also the best Bollywood musical. It tells you everything you need to know about cricket and India .

The best song about cricket is When An Old Cricketer Leaves The Crease by Roy Harper, which tells you everything you need to know about cricket and England.

But my point was that the need to advance around the bases creates a whole host of complexities in baseball. These include, to begin with, stolen bases, sacrifices, choices between one-run and big-inning strategies, double plays, runners’ decisions about how far to try to advance, intentional walks, the sequencing of the batting order, the positioning of some of the fielders, and probably others.

It’s rare in baseball that you’ll get a pitcher pulled just by holding out for enough balls that the runs are walked home, or the pitch count gets too high. In cricket, you can get a captain to pull a bowler (temporarily) by playing aggressively enough to ratchet up the total, or by playing defensively enough to diminish the chance of losing your wicket. Etc.

Actually, forcing the pitcher, especially the starter, to throw lots of pitches is an element of batting. And the fact that players, including the pitcher, cannot re-enter after leaving adds another issue to deal with.

Not really.

Remember that in baseball the absolute best hitter ever (in terms of on-base average) got up to the plate, then ended up going back to the dugout more times than not. Across the league, hitters get out twice for every time they end up on base.

In cricket, you’re facing a variety of bowlers for an extended period of time, from both ends of the pitch. The condition of the ball changes. The condition of the pitch changes. The condition of the outfield changes. You also have to know, every time you play a shot, whether there’s a run (or more) available, based on who’s fielding the position. (That changes.)

A batsman also has to weigh the strategies based upon time and opportunity. It’s rare in baseball that you’ll get a pitcher pulled just by holding out for enough balls that the runs are walked home, or the pitch count gets too high. In cricket, you can get a captain to pull a bowler (temporarily) by playing aggressively enough to ratchet up the total, or by playing defensively enough to diminish the chance of losing your wicket. Etc.

If cricket rewarded people who scored one run (or four runs, for that matter) it might be different. But it rewards people who score lots and lots of runs over extended periods of time, with somewhat more limited opportunity to sit on their arses and spit sunflower seeds when they’re not due up.

What’s so confusing about “silly point” and “short square leg”?

You have two sides, one out in the field and one in. Each man that’s in the side that’s in goes out, and when he’s out he comes in and the next man goes in until he’s out. When they are all out, the side that’s out comes in and the side that’s been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out.

When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in. There are two men called umpires who stay out all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out. When both sides have been in and all the men have been out, and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game.

You seem to know a great deal more about cricket than baseball . . .

My better half played both cricket and baseball and he says that they are nothing like each other, so trying to compare doesn’t really work. Robin Williams once said that he thought cricket was just baseball on valium though, so you decide.

http://arunan.50webs.com/proj2.html

If the bowler bowls too high or too far left or right, the batsman gets free runs scored as ‘wides’, and the bowler has to bowl an extra ball to complete the over. But there is nothing special if a bowler does this too many times in a short period of time.

Do they trot back and forth, a la baseball, or just put up the score?

The score is added without requiring them to run it explicitly.

hitting the ball hard is a pretty good idea in cricket also

Actually most of the time batters are trying to play ‘ground balls’ – getting out is a very bad thing in cricket, where in baseball it is the normal case (about 2/3rds of the time from memory). You have to make good decisions as to when to play risky shots because of this.

BTW, why are they called “test matches?” is it simply because the length makes them testing?

There is no unambigious definition, it is one of those things that comes from the game before it was fully organised.

Batting in baseball certainly has strategic elements. Does cricket have a concept that compares to a base on balls?

For the game as a whole, I think the very need to advance around the bases in order to score would make strategy more complex than in cricket.

And judging from the video, which admittedly more than doubled my knowledge of the game (I finally learned what “hitting for six” means, among other things. Do they trot back and forth, a la baseball, or just put up the score?), hitting the ball hard is a pretty good idea in cricket also.

BTW, why are they called “test matches?” is it simply because the length makes them testing?