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Comment by dash2 | Hacker News Reader

You big American softies. Cricket matches last FIVE DAYS, with breaks for tea.

Baseball would probably have more game days in a year than the average international cricketer would, counting all levels they are involved in.

The US baseball season seems to make it impossible to watch all your teams games, even for the most dedicated fan.

You can watch an average American baseball game in a ‘condensed’ format in under 20 minutes. The condensed format shows key pitches and plays.

The blackout rules don't help either.

This is a positive to me. Pretty much every day during baseball season, if I feel like watching baseball I have the option. I don't want to watch everyday, but I love being able to watch basically any time I want.

Us Cubs fans had a truly awful decompression in 2016. Don't get me wrong, winning the world series was amazing. But, I wish they did it in less dramatic fashion.

And, to stifle the high, there was an absolute (and ongoing) tragedy less than a week later.

> even for the most dedicated fan

I watched 100+ regular season games of the Dodgers last season. It was a lot of baseball. That plus an exhausting World Series meant I had to decompress and avoid sports for a few months.

Think about how the players must have felt!

Meh, I watch (or listen to on radio) a good majority of SF Giants games. Definitely not all the home games, but I can usually watch 2/3 of just about every broadcasted home/away series, so maybe 120 games, give or take 15? That's not unreasonable.

For those interested, the longest baseball game in history:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest_professional_basebal...

(From a baseball player who once attempted to play cricket with my Indian friends. Threw out my shoulder in the first “at bat”)

Up to ten days if the Cranker can't get committee approval for third season overtime. (Sucks too cause then mandatory tea breaks swap out biscuits for bread and jam)

I think you're yanking my chain ...

The fact that I can't tell says something about cricket ...

I took an American colleague to watch the cricket on the village green one lunchtime, just a few minutes from our office. Nothing professional, this was just the local cricket club.

They bowled about four balls before there was a shout from the clubhouse, and all the players left the field to drink sparkling wine and eat strawberries.

I think my colleague understood the spirit of the game.

Yes, but they also learned from that and created one dayers. Even that proved too slow for some, so now we have 20-20...

It might just be the purist in me but I don't really enjoy limited overs cricket.

Test cricket (the 5 day matches) on the other hand is just about the perfect spectator sport for the Australian summer I reckon. You have the Xmas Holiday period with time off from work combined with the fact it's too hot to do anything around the house. So putting your feet up enjoying a few beers and watching the cricket with your extended family is a great way to pass the time.

Nah, I disagree. I do like test cricket but I absolutely have to be doing something else at the same time to watch it (like playing a game or programming). It's a terrible spectator sport.

On the other hand, limited overs cricket doesn't do much for me either. I'd rather just watch a footy game at that stage.

20-20 is really fun but it’s almost a whole different game in approach than Test cricket.

It feels like the difference between the NFL & Rugby - related but a vast strategic and game flow difference

That sounds interesting! What about breaks for sleep?

It's five days of play, during normal day-time hours. It's like a festival that you go to.

So how would you rank Rugby here?

Oh, like in Twenty20 cricket?

We're talking about sports with real athletes.

What makes baseball more athletic than cricket?

Faster pitches, not a gigantic paddle, and running even when you may not have liked how well you hit it.

> running even when you may not have liked how well you hit it.

How many times are you expected to run in baseball though? In cricket, it could easily be 100+ (22-yards a time).

Same with bowlers - a 10-20 yard run up for potentially hundreds of balls is a not insignificant amount of work.

I feel like you are comparing two things that are _different_, and just deciding one is lesser for no clear reason (both sports seem quite athletic to me). I'm also not sure what difference the size of the bat makes to athleticism (they also aren't _that_ much different in size: <4.25in width vs. ~2.7in for baseball, <38in length vs. ~42in for baseball, and weigh roughly the same: ~1.2kg for a cricket bat, ~1kg for a baseball bat).

I'm just joking around, but I think it was taken very seriously.

Cricket deliveries are similar speeds to baseball pitches, aren't they?

Also, outs are cheap in baseball, but very expensive in cricket - so playing more conservatively is optimal.

Yes - 95-100mph is very common in fast bowlers. Also the bounce gives a much larger variety of angles and spins.

Plus the ball is a LOT harder. A lot.

The quality of the ball also becomes very important later in the game. I don't think baseball/rounders has the New Ball aspect.

If I remember my baseball enough (I'm a casual fan) they rotate the balls regularly in baseball to actually specifically avoid that factor.

And the bat is a LOT bigger. A lot.

Oh absolutely, but the game is very very different in so many ways.

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