Batting in cricket and baseball is different enough that it's unlikely an MLB batter would ever make it in international cricket. The technique is completely different, and all these guys have been batting their whole lives. But if you could take current MLB players and magically have them start out in cricket at age 8, it's likely many of them would make it in international cricket.
On the other hand I suppose that the same skillset/body type that would make a good MLB pitcher would apply to a fast bowler in cricket. But the actions are different enough that I don't think an MLB guy could come in and dominate, in fact they would probably have a horrible time controlling their length and would get crushed, even if they had high pace, which I also doubt. The straight arm stuff is asinine but there's still a big difference between an acceptable bowling action and throwing. And if you look at fast bowlers in cricket, some of them don't even throw well from the outfield.

Can you please explain the ridiculousness of the IPL to us.

Basically people get paid $1M+ for 6 weeks of work, and then they get auctioned off again the next year to whatever team is willing to pay them. Have I got that right?

No question, but I noticed people wearing cricket uniforms at the Indian/Pakistani restaurants near where I live. I thought it would be cool to join one instead of a softball team, except I probably would be awful.

Cricket is played by more people than baseball worldwide, or at worst it is close. On the other hand, there is way more money/incentive to play baseball nowadays and probably always has been/will be. Anyway do you really think that baseball players are so superior of athletes that all current fast bowlers would be left in the dust if next year MLB decided to become a cricket league? I'm not even sure that you're not right, the only reason I doubt this is that I think someone would be doing this already if it were true. There have to be enough marginal guys that will never make the bigs but can throw 90+ that could be talked into cricket, there's plenty of money in the sport these days. Injuries are so bad in fast bowling that no team would ever let their players try it, though.

Not quite. The auction was two years ago and put the players on three year deals for the same team. Then there was a supplementary auction and another auction last year, of two year deals. Also teams can trade players and there is a salary cap, which I believe was 5 million, and teams have to play at least seven Indian players in their starting 11. Finally players who haven't played international cricket yet can be signed at any time without an auction.

The year after next they are going to be adding new teams supposedly which is the reason for the current system. The system is ridiculous because most players make right about the size of their IPL contract for the rest of the year with their national teams. And if the national teams have a game during the IPL period, they are forced to play for them, forgoing their IPL earnings during that time, unless of course the player fakes an injury or gets kicked off the team on purpose or something. The national teams make money from TV deals and have to play the games, so they do things like play cricket in England in April, against the same team that they just finished playing in March.

Best test team would be one of these three:
Australia 1940s, West Indies 1970s, Australia 1990s-2000s

When Pietersen retires he'll be one of England's top 5 or 10 batsmen ever, imo, and he's probably one of the top 5 active batsmen.

I'm thinking 2-1 Australia for the Ashes

The best cricketer ever is Don Bradman, he played for Australia during the 1930s and 1940s, and averaged 99.94 in his test career. The equivalent to that would probably hitting .500 in a MLB career. He basically hardly ever hit balls in the air, which meant that it was rare for him to be caught out, compared to other batsmen. Using standard deviations etc., Bradman is the biggest outlier in top-level sports, no-one has ever been so much better than everyone else at a sport than he was.

I'm not sure if a MLB player could ever be the best in the world starting from an active MLB age etc. I guess that someone like Evan Longoria would be able to give it a pretty good shot, as he is still very young, and just really strong.

MLB hitters have all the skills that good batsmen have, quick hands, awesome hand-eye, are strong, have the bat control to be able to pick gaps in the field.

But there are similarly naturally-talented guys from cricket-playing countries who have been practicing these skills their whole lives, so I don't know if a MLB player could ever be the best in the world.

In addition, in cricket, it is far more common to play defensive shots, so power isn't so important.

~1977-89 West Indies. The most dominant 'dynasty'. They went like 8 years without losing a test, crushing everyone. Dominated for 12+ years. Greatest fast bowling attack ever. Exciting attacking batsmen.

Pietersen is a top 10 batsmen today. Top 20 all-time for England if career ended today.

Australia win the ashes 3-1.

What is the definition of wide?

What's with the fielding rules that change after a certain number of overs?

Is it true that it is considered rude to run out the inactive batter if he is out of the crease (essentially the equivalent of a pick off)?

Could you talk a bit about the strategy in test cricket? Do inferior teams usually try to win or just go for the draw?

I really like the rule that a team can stop batting and I can't think of another sport where the coach or captain has to make a similar decision.

Do you think any countries will gain test status any time soon? Do you think the US will ever get there?

What is the funniest sentence based on cricket lingo that you can form?

I believe that a few years back during the whole "Does Muralitharan chuck it" controversy, the ICC did a video analysis of bowlers' actions and found that the only bowler in the world who DIDN'T transgress the laws of cricket with his delivery was Ramnaresh Sarwan, a West Indian and specialist batsman who hardly ever bowls.

BTW, I'm one of the few native-born American cricket fans. I lived in Adelaide, Australia about 4 blocks from the Adelaide Oval from 1999-2002 and fell in love with the game while I was there. I'm probably unusual among newer converts to the game in that I prefer Test cricket (the 5-day version) to one-day internationals (the 7-8 hour version) and the one-day internationals to Twenty20.

Props to the OP for an excellent idea for a thread. I'd be happy to help answer questions as well and lend my insight, as an American convert to the game, for anyone who has questions. It's a wonderful sport.

--Scott

the bowler's holding, the batsman's willey

Basically, the definition of a wide is a bowled ball that the batsman cannot hit by use of a "normal cricket stroke". The interpretation of a wide, however, varies greatly depending on the type of cricket that's being played. In Test (5-day) cricket, generally a wide will not be called unless the delivery is completely out of the zipcode (or, rather, postcode ) of the batsman and/or the stumps. In one-day and, especially, Twenty20, cricket, wides are called much more strictly, due to the limited number of deliveries that teams have to make their runs in those formats.

The penalty for a wide is 1 run plus any other runs scored off of the ball, and the delivery does not count towards the 6 in the over. Similar to a no-ball.

--Scott

After they shockingly reached the semifinals of the 2003 World Cup (which is played in a 50-over, one-day format), there was a lot of talk about possibly granting Kenya Test status, but internal problems with their national cricket federation and the retirement and lack-of-replacement of many of the stars who made that semifinal place possible have pretty much nixed that. They didn't even qualify for the Twenty20 World Cup currently taking place in England. (They automatically qualify for the 50-over World Cup because while they are not a Test nation, they ARE an official one-day international nation.) As far as any other nations out there that may one day get Test status....I think the only one out there now that has any realistic chance is the Netherlands, and I think they're going to need a decade or more of growth and continued decent performance at international one-day tournaments to have a chance. Many of their players do play first-class (county-level) cricket in England, though, so they do get some modicum of competition. I suppose Ireland or Scotland could also be granted Test status at some point, although I don't foresee it happening.

As far as the U.S.'s chances to get Test status...zip, zero, zilch. They have never even qualified for the ODI World Cup, and have never come close. The U.S. Cricket Federation (which I used to do some P.R. work for) is run by an old-boys network, a cadre of entrenched longtimers who do not seem the least bit interested in furthering the development of the game in this country. The most exciting development in U.S. cricket in recent years will be coming to fruition this year, though - the New York City public schools have formed a cricket league (Twenty20 format) which will begin play in the 2009-2010 school year. I'm actually in contact with the PSAL to possibly become an umpire for some of these games (it's a 4-hour commute from upstate where I live, though, so I'd have to get a couple of games at least per weekend to make it worth it). To get back to your original question, though, I could possibly envision Canada progressing someday to the point (in the distant future) where they might be considered for Test status (they've had some decent performances in World Cups and have many more actual clubs and pitches than the U.S. does), but not the U.S.

I wouldn't be shocked if the U.S. one day had a competitive Twenty20 side, but that's as far as I see it going, unfortunately.

--Scott

I've always thought that Rod Carew would've been an outstanding cricket batsman, with his bat control and ability to spray the ball pretty much wherever he wanted it to go. Same, to a lesser extent, with Tony Gwynn and Ichiro.

Agreed that Bradman is the best cricketer ever, but what needs to be remembered about him regarding that conversation is that he was a specialist batsman who very rarely bowled (although he took a few wickets at domestic level as a leg-spinner) and was a competent but not outstanding fielder. Of course, his batting was so dominant that he didn't need to be any good at bowling or fielding to be the best ever. The best ALL-AROUND cricketer of all time was probably either West Indies' Sir Garfield "Garry" Sobers, who had a lifetime batting average in the mid-50s, once held the world record for best test innings with 365 not out, was one of the greatest close-to-the-wicket fielders ever, and dismissed 250 batsmen in Tests by bowling 3 different styles (fast, slow left-arm, and left-arm chinaman) depending on the match situation, Pakistan's Imran Khan, an all-time great fast bowler who was also a world-class batsman by the end of his career, or England's Ian Botham, a larger-than-life character who single-handedly won many important matches for England with incisive fast bowling and timely hitting.

--Scott

--Scott

leg spinner, fast bowler, yorker. what does all that mean?

also, what is this talk about "legal bowling motion" and all that?

i finally think i understand the basic rules and scoring for cricket and it seems like Donald Bradman was god

types of bowling. a leg spinner is a bowler that turns the ball away from a right-handed batsman. a fast bowler describes itself. a yorker is a delivery intended to pitch at the feet of the batsman

Shoaib Akhtar (Punjabi, Urdu: شعیب اختر; born 13 August 1975 in Rawalpindi, Punjab) is a Pakistani cricketer, and is one of the fastest bowlers in the world, earning him the name Rawalpindi Express. He set a world record by clocking 160.9km/h (100mph) twice. His ability to bowl fast yorkers, well disguised slow balls, swinging deliveries, and sharp bouncers have made him lethal even on dead pitches.

Fast yorkers ZOMG!

And pitch means bounce?

(It is this completely foreign terminology that makes this game so confusing to many of us.)

It confused me when I was first getting into the game too, sumpy, but it's something that becomes second nature as you watch more and more cricket. In the sense that sixfour used it in his post, "pitch" does mean "bounce", you're correct. "Pitch" is also used to denote the 22-yard long strip between the stumps that is used as the main playing surface. It is flat and consists of extremely short grass (from a distance or on TV, it looks like a bare dirt surface). The conditions of the pitch for a match matter a great deal in strategy and team selection. A "greener" pitch with more pronounced grass growth is of great help to fast bowlers, while a "dusty", dry pitch where most or all of the grass has been worn off tends to help the slower, spin bowlers, whose deliveries act more unpredictably and turn more off the dusty surface. There are, of course, great variations in pitches, and on the subcontinent groundskeepers are known to prepare dusty pitches in order to help the traditionally-strong spin bowlers found in that part of the world. In Australia, the Sydney Cricket Ground is considered to have a particularly spin-friendly pitch.

And if you think that's confusing, wait till you see how many different uses the term "wicket" has in this game. In fact, it's not too much of a stretch to call something you don't know the name for a "wicket" in cricket and the odds are pretty decent that you'll be right.

Probably the best way for an American sports fan to learn the game is to watch a match with someone who knows the game (and preferably baseball, as well, to more easily point out the differences). Living in Australia, I found Richie Benaud's insightful TV commentary to be especially helpful, and I learned a lot from him. He has, sadly retired, though.

--Scott

The fielding rules are intended to increase excitement and level of strategy required. The rules have changed a few times, and the new system is the best so far. In 50 over games the rules are

First 10 overs: Mandatory maximum 2 fielders outside the 30 yard inner circle. Also mandatory 2 fielders in 'catching position'. Catching position is a position very close to the batsmen, slips, short leg, silly point etc. It is intended to discourage teams from taking an overly cautious approach at the beginning. The batting team must balance getting cheap runs while field is packed close versus losing too many wickets.

Bowling 5 over powerplay: The fielding captain chooses at his discretion a 5 over block with a field restriction of maximum 3 players outside the 3 yard inner circle. He can wait until poor batsmen arrive, or use for his best bowlers. Lots of strategy considerations here.

Batting 5 over powerplay: Same fielding restrictions as the bowling powerplay, but the batting teams' captain chooses. Again, the captain looks for the most +EV situation to use this powerplay.

This play is no longer allowed. The mankad rule.

"Mankad caused controversy in 1947/48 on India's tour of Australia when he ran out Bill Brown backing up in the second Test. In other words, he broke the wicket at the non-strikers end during his run-up while the batsman at that end was out of his ground. He had done the same thing to Brown in the game against an Australian XI earlier on the tour, but his running out of Brown infuriated the Australian media, and someone run out in this way is now sometimes said to have been "Mankaded".


Batting strategy.
Score as many runs as possible at a 'reasonable' scoring rate. About 3 runs per over is considered average in the modern game. Anything between 2.5-3.5 runs/over is a good rate. The first 6 batsmens' strategy is usually to just play 'normally;. Accumulate runs playing their natural game, eliminate unnecessary risks but still maintain an attacking approach. For the lower order batsmen, there are 2 situations. If 1 good batsmen is still batting, the poor batsmen will take a cautious approach while the good batsmen plays very aggressively to accumulate quick runs before he runs out of partners. If 2 poor batsmen are left, they either try to smack it around to get some cheap runs or hang around to kill time (depending on the game situation).

In the 1st innings a team generally tries to accumulate a maximum total.
In the 2nd innings the batting team can
1) bat normally if the match is close, basically same strategy as 1st innings 2) score quickly to build a big lead and give their bowlers enough time to win the game
3) play defensively to extend the match and force a draw.

Bowling team strategy.
The captain carries the weight of the responsibility. The captain needs to always be thinking. Rotating his bowlers in the optimal combination, considering the pitch and weather conditions and batsmen tendencies. He sets the field and instructs the bowlers to bowl to a certain plan. Bowl in areas forcing the batsmen to take shot types he isn't comfortable with. And put the fielders in positions to take the catch when the batsmen mi****s. The bowler plays his part by following the captain's plan. The bowler also continues varies his deliveries (think pitch types, curve ball, slider etc). Unlike baseball, the bowler decides more or less what type of ball to bowl. Variation is good, but it's just as important to consistently bowl a 'good length'. A good length is hitting the spot on the pitch where the batsmen is unsure what type of shot to take (backfooted or frontfooted shot).

Test cricket is beautiful because you can watch the greatest batsmen battle the greatest bowler for hours on end. It's a continuous battle of skill, stamina, and concentration. In one day and 20/20 matches everyone gets the bat and bowl. This means a lower quality of matchups, although it's more exciting in the short term.

The strategy of poor teams playing for draw is not very viable anymore. Test matches are 5 days with a minimum of 90 overs a day. Also teams score at a faster rate than ever before. Thus good teams can score big totals quickly, and leave enough time to get 20 wickets for the win. Non-weather related draws are very rare in the modern game.

Possibly a middle eastern country like UAE, with their large population of Indian/Pakistani ex-pats. Actually there are too many test teams right now. Zimbabwe and Bangledesh are not up to test standard.

Yes, pitch = bounce. Pitch is also used to refer to the playing surface.

After a stylish innings of reverse sweeps and flicks, Chanderpaul nearly edged to silly point before getting trapped lbw by a googly for the leg-spinner's maiden wicket.

This thread makes me realize just how difficult it must be for foreigners trying to learn baseball for the first time. I'm trying to understand this cricket terminology, but I'm still pretty clueless. Will have to actually watch a game to see what any of this means.

Do these powerplays occur outside the first 10 overs? After the batting powerplay is declared, can the fielding team then choose its bowlers for these overs in response, or are bowlers somehow declared in advance? (As I understand it, the batsmen must keep batting until they are out, but the bowlers can be changed at the discretion of the fielding captain as long as no one bowls consecutive overs, or more that 10 overs in the match.)

In test cricket there are no fielding restrictions throughout the match?


So what prevents the non-striker from taking a very large lead if he can't be run out? (In fact, what prevents him from just going all the way to the other crease?)





Why would runs/over matter in test cricket? Unlike one day cricket, the match length is determined by wickets, not overs (the match ends after both teams give up 20 wickets as opposed to ending after each team bats 50 overs). Shouldn't the batting strategy be to maximize runs/wicket without regard to how many overs they bat.

Consider the following two test cricket scenarios (probably very unrealistic since I don't know what I am talking about).

1) The batting team scores 30 runs and gives up a wicket in the first over.

2) The batting team takes 50 overs to score 30 runs and then gives up their first wicket.

In both cases, the batting team has 30 runs and has lost 1 wicket out of the 20 that they have available to them. Why would it matter how many overs they used?