Baseball and cricket are the best-known members of a family of related bat-and-ball games. While many of their rules, terminology, and strategies are similar, there are many differences—some subtle, some major—between the two games.
Other present-day bat-and-ball games include softball, stickball, rounders, pesäpallo or Finnish baseball, punchball, kickball and British baseball, which has similarities with both cricket and baseball. Earlier forms include the "Massachusetts Game" of baseball, which was similar to rounders, and one old cat and two old cat.
Bat-and-ball games
Bat-and-ball games, in general, are sports in which one team (the fielding team) has possession of the ball and delivers it to a member of the other team (the batting team), who tries to hit it. The two opposing teams take turns playing these two distinct roles, which are continuous during a specified interval. This contrasts with "goal-oriented" games, such as all forms of football, hockey and basketball, in which possession of the ball or puck can change in an instant, and thus "attackers" and the "defenders" frequently reverse roles during the course of the game.
In both cricket and baseball, the players of one team attempt to score points known as runs by hitting a ball with a bat, while the members of the other team field the ball in an attempt to prevent scoring and to put batting players out .
In both games, there is a "defensive" aspect to the batting team concurrent with its "offensive" or "attacking" aspect of trying to score runs. In cricket, the batsman is attempting to defend the wicket. In baseball, the batter is attempting to defend the strike zone.
Once a certain number of batting players are out (different in the two sports), the teams swap roles. This sequence of each team taking each role once is called an inning in baseball, and an innings in cricket (the singular form having a terminal 's'). The single/plural usage in cricket is comparable to the baseball slang term for a single inning as the team's "ups". A baseball game consists of nine innings, while a cricket match may have either one or two innings per team.
Despite their similarities, the two sports also have many differences in play and in strategy. A comparison between cricket and baseball can be instructive to followers of either sport, since the similarities help to highlight nuances particular to each game.
Field
Baseball is played in a quadrant of fair territory between foul lines. The official minimum distance from home plate to the far edge of fair territory is 250 feet (76.2 m), but the recommended distances are at least 325 feet (99.1 m) along the foul lines and 400 feet (121.9 m) in center field. This produces a recommended fair territory field area just over 100,000 square feet (10,000 m 2 ). Most Major League Baseball parks have fair territory areas in the range 110,000 to 120,000 square feet (11,000 m 2 ).
In contrast, Test and One Day International cricket is played on a field with a minimum width of 420 feet (128.0 m) and length 426 feet (129.8 m), giving a minimum area of 140,500 square feet (13,050 m 2 ), assuming an elliptical shape. However the shape of a cricket ground is not fixed. Test grounds around the world are typically 450 by 500 feet (137.2 by 152.4 m), an area of 175,000 square feet (16,300 m 2 ), and range up to the Melbourne Cricket Ground at 468 by 566 feet (142.6 by 172.5 m) or 207,000 square feet (19,200 m 2 ).
Discounting the pitcher/bowler and catcher/wicket-keeper, this means Major League Baseball fielders must cover an average of approximately 16,500 square feet (1,530 m 2 ) per fielder, while Test cricketers cover 19,500 square feet (1,810 m 2 ) per fielder. In practice, fielders in both sports cover variable amounts of territory, with outfielders potentially having to run much farther to field a ball than infielders do.
In cricket, the distance between the two wickets that the batsmen defend is 22 yards (20.1 m), 66 feet, or 1 chain (4 rods) in the old English system of measurement. The rectangular area between the two lines is called the pitch . In baseball, the pitcher must deliver from a rubber slab (officially called the "pitcher's plate" and typically called "the rubber") whose front is 60.5 feet (18.4 m) from the point of home plate (officially called "home base" and often simply "home"). Before the advent of the pitcher's mound and the rubber, the pitcher threw from within a rectangular "pitcher's box". There was a large rectangular dirt area, between the pitcher's box and the batting areas around home, which resembled the cricket pitch.
In cricket, the wicket stumps and the bowling creases are 66 feet apart. The popping creases are 4 feet (1.22 m) in front of the stumps and thus are 58 feet (17.7 m) feet apart. The bowler's release point could be perhaps 1 foot (0.30 m) beyond his popping crease. The batsman tends to "take guard" or "block" on the popping crease, i.e. he stands 4 feet (1.22 m) in front of his stumps. That nets to a typical distances of about 57 feet (17.4 m) between delivery point and bat. In baseball, the pitcher's release point could be about 55 feet (16.8 m) depending on his delivery style, but the batter also tends to stand back or "deep" in the batter's box, to maximize his time to "look the ball over", up to 2 feet (0.61 m) farther from the pitching rubber than the point of home plate is. Although the delivery distance, from release of the ball by the pitcher/bowler to its arrival at the batter/batsman, appears to be similar in both sports, the ball actually travels further in cricket as it bounces off the ground first.
Play
Fielding
The main difference between fielding in the two sports is that the fielders in cricket are not allowed to use any sort of protection for the hands – padded or otherwise, even though the balls are of similar hardness. The only exception to this rule in cricket is made for the wicket-keeper, who is allowed to wear padded gloves as well as leg guards and a box. In baseball, catchers and first basemen normally wear mitts, which have no fingers and are specially designed for each position respectively. The other fielders wear gloves, which have fingers. (Note that early baseball was also played bare-handed; gloves were adopted in the latter 19th Century.) This means that the risk of injury due the impact of the ball is far higher in cricket. Also, especially in Test cricket, it is common for several fielders to be stationed close to the bat (slips, short leg, silly point and similar positions) since the value of dismissing a batsman off a catch is higher. Catching at these positions require exceptional reflexes, skill and courage, associated with bare-handed catching of a hard ball traveling at up to 100 miles per hour (160 km/h), with reaction times of the order of 0.2 seconds.
Baseball games have far lower scores than cricket matches. The largest combined runs total in a single game in the history of Major League Baseball is 49, whereas first-class cricket matches, including Tests, have produced combined totals from both innings of over a thousand runs.
For a more direct comparison, matches in Twenty20 cricket, a form of limited overs cricket in which games last about as long in time as a regulation baseball game, regularly produce combined run totals of 300 or more, with the all-time record being 443. Each run in a baseball game is roughly seventy-five times the magnitude of a run in a Test cricket match; therefore moments of poor pitching (akin to bowling in cricket) and individual fielding mistakes are much more costly. A player who is a good batter, but who is not a competent fielder, will not play regularly, or only in the designated hitter position in leagues that use it.
Baseball players often need to throw immediately after catching the struck ball (for example, the double play), while this is unnecessary in cricket as the ball is deeemed "dead" when a "dismissal" takes place.
The configuration of the baseball diamond effectively bars left-handers from the fielding positions that make throwing to first base a primary responsibility. Right-handers can throw to their left—i.e., toward first base—with much greater ease than can left-handers, so virtually all second baseman, shortstop, and third baseman are right-handed. Apparently for cultural reasons, left-handed catchers are also exceedingly rare. While most throws a first baseman must make go to the right, which a left-hander can generally accomplish with greater speed and fluency, this is a relatively small factor in the advantage for left-handed first baseman. More important advantages are related to the position of a left-handed first baseman with respect to the base. First, a left-handed first baseman has an advantage over his right-handed counterpart when catching a pickoff throw from the pitcher—when a first baseman is in pickoff position, standing in front
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