Anyone see the ESPN segment on the Baseball Pitchers from India? I thought it was an interesting story. It makes you want to pull for these guys and hope that they do well. In a nutshell, these two Indian guys win a contest for a chance to become American baseball pitchers. These guys know nothing about baseball, but out of 30,000 contestants have the best arms. I don't want to spoil the rest of the story so here's the link if you want to look at it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OC3gczLJLuE
pjalst wrote:Anyone see the ESPN segment on the Baseball Pitchers from India? I thought it was an interesting story. It makes you want to pull for these guys and hope that they do well. In a nutshell, these two Indian guys win a contest for a chance to become American baseball pitchers. These guys know nothing about baseball, but out of 30,000 contestants have the best arms. I don't want to spoil the rest of the story so here's the link if you want to look at it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OC3gczLJLuE
Having watched the YouTube segment. It was very good and informative. I know a few Indians and you are right they are clueless about Baseball. They only mentioned that one of them has only thrown a javelin. However, they have this game in India called Cricket. If you have seen Cricket played or have been lucky enough to play the game that is as Greek to us as Baseball is to them. Even though, the story did not mention that either of the men had Cricket in there back ground. How many of young men in the United States are familiar with baseball and who have probably played a couple of games of Pick-Up Ball, Stick Ball, Home Run Derby, or, pardon the term, Indian Ball. (We in fact played Indian Ball when we only had 3 to 5 players). I am not writing this to degrade what these two men or doing or trying to place a black cloud. Nevertheless, these two young men had to have played Cricket at some point during their childhood. I am not saying that playing one translates to the other.
Wikipedia wrote:Baseball and cricket at the professional level 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.
Wikipedia wrote: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.
Wikipedia wrote: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.
One main difference however is that the ball in cricket is harder and heavier in weight. The legal weight for the ball in baseball is not to be under 5 oz but never to be over 5 1/4 oz. The ball in cricket must weigh between 5.5 oz to 5.8 oz. One luxury that bowler has in cricket is that the the batsman is fair game to be hit by pitch and bowlers pitch to a wicket which total height is 28.5 inches, three wooden stumps placed in a straight line with the width of the three stumps is 9 inches, with two wooden crosspieces place on the top of the stumps.
The differences are many just as the rules and some terminology. In fact at the core of it all, is a simple fact. See the ball, hit the ball or catch the ball. It is a ball and bat sport after all.
For those of you that are unfamiliar with ball and bat sports/games:
Wikipedia wrote:Bat-and-ball games (sometimes named safe haven games, to avoid confusion with the club-games like golf and hockey) are field games played by opposing teams. The two teams alternate between being "at bat" and "fielding". Each team has an equal number of turns in each role, the game typically (though not always) being untimed. A player on the "fielding" team puts the ball in play, with a restricted delivery, the restriction depending on the game, while a player on the "at bat" team attempts to strike the thrown ball. The player uses a bat, which is a club whose shape is dictated by the rules of the game, hence the name for this type of game. If the ball is struck with the bat, then the player becomes a runner, trying to advance to a marked "safe haven". As long as the runner maintains contact with this marker, the runner is safe from the other team and is in a position to score runs (only the team "at bat" may score). Leaving the safe area places the runner in danger of being "put out". When enough players, are "put out" the teams switch roles. There may be multiple runners, and the goal of each runner is to ultimately reach a particular specially designated safe haven, with the movement between "safe havens" being restricted by the rules of the game. Cricket and baseball are the most globally popular bat and ball games.
I am not making the argument that if you can play one that it translate to the other. I am here to tell you it doesn't. Just try hitting an z ball with a flat bat. I looked like an idiot. But if one is at least a little familiar with the main principles and mechanics of either game, then the transition will be become natural with work.
Just my thoughts.
Phillip
Denotes that I got some information about Cricket from Wikipedia. Just search Cricket, Baseball, and bat and ball games. There is a wealth of information about Cricket that most of us don't know and maybe some information about baseball that you may have forgotten or just not known.
Trying to hit a cricket delivery (which is the equivalant to baseball pitch) is much harder.
A 'fast' cricket delivery comes in at around the 100 mph mark from a bolwer who has just run in a sprint speed to deliver the ball from a height approaching 10 feet! it is then hurled into the ground in order to rise sharply at the batsman (hitter) generally anywhere from knee to head height. It can be angled into the batsman or drifting away from the batsman, in similar fashion to a baseball pitch.
Go to youtube and see;
Larwood, Harold.........the 'Bodyline' series England in Australia 1930 something Garner, Joel Marshall, Malcolm Holding, Michael, McGrath, Glenn Donald, Allan
In cricket there are also slow (spin) bowlers; a descriptive terms relating to their delivery speed not their Wonderlic capabilities! these bowlers bowl at around 50% of the fast bowlers speed but add deceptive spinning of the ball when it makes contact with the ground. there are a plethora of variations of spin which include spinning the ball into the batsman, spinning it away from him, and making the ball keep alarmingly low after hitting the ground.
See; Warne,Shane Murali... Sri Lanka Qadir, Abdul
the technique for spin bowling is 'mostly' in the wrist action (cue Family Guy style guffaws from some of you ) A batsman will look at the twist in the bolwers arm/wrist during delivery to guage the spin of the ball (again, not dissimilar to baseball hitters) . the trickery comes with a delivery called a "googly' aka ' Wrong 'Un' whereby the bowlers is able to flick his wrist indicting the ball will spin away from the hitter when in fact it will do the opposite. this is often very very difficult to detect.
Spinners can make the ball move more than a foot either way after hitting the ground.
Anyway, both games have their pro's and con's....
Cricket was a 5 day, yes FIVE day game, which in the past 40 years has since ever increasing variations of the game played over the course of 1 day...or more recently over the course a a few hours.
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by pjalst » Wed Dec 24, 2008 11:12 pm 
z ball with a flat bat. I looked like an idiot. But if one is at least a little familiar with the main principles and mechanics of either game, then the transition will be become natural with work.
) A batsman will look at the twist in the bolwers arm/wrist during delivery to guage the spin of the ball (again, not dissimilar to baseball hitters) . the trickery comes with a delivery called a "googly' aka ' Wrong 'Un' whereby the bowlers is able to flick his wrist indicting the ball will spin away from the hitter when in fact it will do the opposite. this is often very very difficult to detect.
