Cricket is better.....why? Because I'm biased.
But seriously...for those who care, let's dedicate this thread to points that contribute to each game's merits.
Unique differences:
- Cricket is more a batsman's paradise, baseball a pitcher's paradise. As a result, you would look at each one differently, cricket you mainly gauge the game based how many runs a team makes, whereas baseball you mainly expect the pitchers to give up a couple runs. If the pitcher gives up more runs than expected, you more look at it as being 'bad pitching' as opposed to 'great batting'
- When looking at each game's less dominant aspect (bowling for cricket, batting for baseball), there's an element of fluke that is larger in baseball than cricket. Seriously, there are plenty times (i'm not saying majority) where the batsman just hits the ball and it happens to land away from fielders. This happens in cricket too, but to a much smaller extent. Yet the baseballers are credited with briliance, RBIs etc. With cricket, the poor bowler can be sublime, yet he can still get belted around the park with great strokeplay, not necesarily flukes. So yea, I just think there's more of a fluke aspect in baseball than in cricket. Cricket has it's flukes, but it penalizes you much more harshly if you fail (eg. miscued pull shot and you're out, and once you're out, you can't come back on to bat.)
- Variation - There are currently three (3) forms of cricket worldwide: T20, ODI, Test. For baseball it's really just a 9 inning game, or...what....a homerun derby? I'm actually not sure, correct me on this. This shows the versatility of the cricket game. Test matches last 5 days, which shows a level of consistency, guile and concentration that cannot be shown in any baseball game, because they simply are not as long as that. Some say Tests are boring, which is why the ODI and T20 form exists, they are surely entertaining.
- Payroll Roster - Seriously, the majority of players in a cricket team tend to make a valuable contribution in EACH game. there are only a minority amount that doesn't really do much (13th man etc). Baseball however, you have a LARGE team staff that could only possibly contribute like 5 minutes worth to the game. All those pitchers? Relievers that come on for 3 pitches? 1ST base coach? 3RD base coach? I'm not saying that all of these are not needed, but they sure add up to alot in the payroll. So yea...you need to have the economics in your country in a really good spot if you were able to have a supposed 'proper' baseball team.
I've played baseball and cricket and I gotta say that after playing cricket first, baseball was a easier to grasp (in batting). I really cracked some line drives and this was mainly helped by the fact that Full Tosses in cricket (a ball that never bounces on the ground before it reaches the batsman) are a batsman's dream. So for me, batting in baseball is a 5 course meal.
Of course it's different because if you are fooled by a pitch in cricket, you can block, whereas in baseball, you'll have to hit/foul/out. The thing is, with a cricket background, it tends to train you to better adjust to the off-speed pitches that you didn't expect, a bit more. Derek Jeter has a swing style where he gets his wrists in front of his body first then swivelling it around to compensate for any differences to what he expected, and that works pretty decent. Which brings the point, a Cricketer can play baseball, but a baseballer can't play cricket.....hehe you all can take me to task on that one.
Anyhow I could write forever about this, I'll leave the rest up to you.
