American baseball’s appeal puzzles many Americans, who have developed a taste for faster action sports like American football and professional basketball and hockey. But baseball remains a popular sport to watch and play. However, for many visitors hailing from places where cricket dominates, American baseball can seem strange and tedious. It is for them that I present, “What Cricket Looks Like to Americans”:
Happy Friday!
Discussion
11 Thoughts on "What Cricket Looks Like to Americans"
Read ‘Playing hardball’ (a comparison of baseball and cricket by man who’s played both): http://edsmith.org.uk/books/
And as a reminder of America’s own cricketing heritage, The Tented Field, by Tom Melville.
I do like that video – I’d love to play the game they’re playing!
There’s more on cricket in the US in this excellent article from the Smithsonian magazine http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/cricket.html?c=y&page=1
I’m sure Kent would rather buy the book than read the free-to-read web article, but others might feel differently.
An apt time for this reminder of the rules of cricket:
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 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!
The in’s and out’s of cricket. Wow!
Bizarre but true: the first ever international cricket match was played between the US and ‘not quite yet Canada’ in 1844. What went wrong?
Did not see that coming. Indeed, what went wrong?
Canada-to-be was in, and still is, but the US was out. Nor is soccer football. Seems simple enough, compared to cricket.
But then there is Newfoundland, which is only half out, and in, unless you ask Quebec. Please don’t. Spiraling off topic, and why not, this reminds me of one of my favorite Newfie jokes. Newfies want Quebec to secede so they will be 2 hours closer to Toronto. But then http://www.newfiejokes.net/.
Baseball is cricket for people with very short attention spans. There. I said it. Also, I watch this when I need a smile: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6fcko3knok
Before answering let me take another puff on my Birkenstocks, to get in a Vancouver frame of mind. Ahhh, much better. What was the question? Oh right, baseball. I remember baseball, but I digress, I think, or not. Quite right about the attention span, which averages 3 seconds or less. Very American. Where was I? Oh yes, I played the game and made many catches as good as that YouTube one, but I had this great honking glove. Your guys should try it. Exhale.
I’d love to play the game they’re playing!…. I want to share Live cricket match streaming website here “http://www.cric.smarttechera.com/” you can watch match any wait..
Just look how he fringes the ring.
