A comparison of baseball and cricket

[HS Thomas]

Things said to describe the two games.
Baseball : is 90% mental, and the other half is physical. - Yogi Berra
Cricket : Baseball played on Valium - Robin Williams
Batter : 'batter' was something that Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig from baseball were entitled to be called; To a cricketer batter is something that was wrapped around fish and chips, not to be used to describe batsmen.
regards
[ October 27, 2003: Message edited by: HS Thomas ]

[Richard Hawkes]

Here's a history of the origins baseball:
http://www.nationalpastime.com/the_national_game.html
Interesting (to a non-American anyway )
Here's a good bit...

In 1874, in an attempt to make a financial killing, Wright and Spalding hit upon the idea of touring England and showing off the new American game ... Two talented teams, the Red Stockings and Philadelphia Athletics, spent more than six weeks touring England, giving demonstrations of baseball to indifferent and confused Englishmen. Spalding had also arranged for the Americans to play cricket matches which the Americans won handily, astonishing the English with their hitting and fielding prowess. What the American players did wasn't "quite cricket"�whaling away at pitches and driving the ball incredible distances compared to the more scientific strategy of cricket play favored by the English � but it was successful. The Americans won all their cricket matches but one. Wright worried that the American brand of play would alienate the English by its ungentlemanly roughness, especially as he concerned to show them that America had developed a game worth imitating.

[ October 28, 2003: Message edited by: Richard Hawkes ]

[HS Thomas]

That's a good link.
Now I don't claim to fully understand the game though I have watched many a match. I find strategy in cricket continously amazes me.
Cricket Strategy
regards

[Richard Hawkes]

A man may very well bat too long at practice, an hour is almost too long, but he can hardly field too long; that is, as long as he does not get fagged out.

...oooer missus, I don't like the sound of that...

Was it not the daily fagging out as youngsters in the playing fields to the batting of the big fellows, all the while under the stimulus of the gentle discipline of the middle stump in reserve for inattention and 'muffing.'

... or that !
[ October 28, 2003: Message edited by: Richard Hawkes ]

[HS Thomas]

A 1900 handbook. Then 'fagged out' was being tired out.The acting as a drudge for another at an English school.
Here's a better link from Seattle. Nothing much about Strategy though. Explaining cricket.
Here's something on Strategy:
More on Strategy
These last two links date from the 70's. I guess strategy is a closely guarded secret nowadays.
regards
[ October 28, 2003: Message edited by: HS Thomas ]