Cricket vs Baseball

Growing up in good old Centralia I didn't learn to play soccer, let alone cricket.

But between spending my weekends watching Chan, or pretending to study while watching the Cardinals, I'd say I know the ins and outs of the wonderful sport of baseball.

During my time here in Manchester I have seen cricket on in a few pubs. At first I didn't know exactly what it was. For some reason Coach Finlay didn't have cricket in our freshman year P.E. game rotation. Automatically while watching I just always tried to compare what was happening to the closest baseball ideal and went with that. I was satisfied with my own conclusions.

Then I met a guy who plays a bit of cricket. Turns out when you play a lot of cricket, you also watch a lot of cricket.

So when New Zealand came to England and the first test match came around (look at me using cricket vocabulary and everything), I watched a good little bit of it on TV with him. After laughing at my knowledge of the sport (zero percent) and answering my millions of questions, I caught on a little bit.

Side-note: My favorite cricket moment so far is from a little English kid at a museum in Liverpool. There was a display in the sports section that had numerous balls from different sports that allowed you to compare them to each other in size and texture and whatnot. Well this hilarious little kid went down the line saying them out loud and knew every single ball, even a tennis ball, but called the cricket ball a bouncy ball. I laughed for probably five minutes but Marty didn't find it quite as funny.

Back to my cricket education.

Then the second test match between New Zealand and England came around and this time we attended a day of it. Yes, I said a day, because cricket test matches are FIVE DAYS LONG. They play all day, too. I'm not sure that I could play one game/one team for five days straight. That's a lot of dedication.

So now since very few of you back home are like me and didn't know anything about cricket/how it is played, I will compare everything from the day to a day at a ballpark.

1. The Field
- Baseball = shaped like a diamond, four bases, quite symmetrical
- Cricket = huge, the pitch (pretty sure I'm using the right word here) is in the middle, a wicket on each end, no bases - have to run past a line

2. Pitching/Bowling
- Baseball = stands in the middle of the field and pitches the ball to the batter, pitcher bends their arm while throwing
- Cricket = bowler runs about half a mile before throwing the ball (I'm curious as to their total distance running by the end of a 5 day match), bowler does not bend their arm while throwing, two types of bowlers - fast and spin (that's pretty much all I know on that topic)

3. Batting
- Baseball = one batter at home, if you haven't hit the ball after 3 strikes you're out
- Cricket = two batters (one at each wicket), one person hits at a time but they both run back and forth, the rest is too complicated for me to try to put into words - basically you can't strike out but if you miss the ball and it hits the wicket and the bails fall off then you're out

4. Outs to Finish an Inning
- Baseball = 3 outs
- Cricket = 10 wickets aka 10 outs

5. Environment
- Baseball = pretty chill, occasional drunk group, quite a huge stadium, lots of video board time
- Cricket = when we went one side was very calm, then we went to the other side where it was a mad house - people were very drunk and yelling crazy comments/chants, they also stacked all of their beer cups and chanted "feed the snake and it will grow" and security ended up breaking it up twice

6. Runs
- Baseball = usually a pretty low scoring game
- Cricket = lol they score hundreds of runs in a test match

Those are pretty much the main differences that I noticed. Oh besides the fact that you don't wear a glove in cricket. Seriously. It makes my hands hurt just thinking about it.

There are way more rules in cricket it seems. It's quite confusing. There are also way more differences than what I listed, I just have my last exam in 2.5 hours that I still haven't studied for.

In conclusion, cricket is actually pretty cool and watching it in person was a great, but long, day. I've enjoyed learning about it but I will be happy to go back to my comfort zone of baseball in a couple of weeks.

Soccer and cricket all in one semester. I don't even know who I am anymore.

Marty says that America probably won't take me back.

Please let me come home, guys. I miss my dog and cat. Also I don't think I would survive without Mizzou football this fall.

Finally....an update on my schedule for the next few weeks:
- Thursday I leave for Thailand. 16+ hours of travel ahead that I am not exactly looking forward to. I would really appreciate good vibes/prayers.
- June 16 I leave from Bangkok and get back to Manchester early in the morning on June 17.
- June 18 I fly back to the US of A! Quite bittersweet, but I'm very excited to see all of y'all again. I'll be back in STL around 6 pm and I'm quite ready for a bit of Mexican food and a good margarita!

Peace and love.