Yeah, fair point. You guys were talking about the skills needed to field the ball from the bat and I was just pointing out that cricketers frequently experience balls travelling too fast for human reactions, even if the average speed of a hit ball is slower than baseball. I see that catchers have quite a bit of protection but still, I certainly wouldn’t want to cop a deflection in the face or wedding tackle. If the catcher manages to somehow catch such a ball is the batter out?
In cricket bowlers can legally hit the batsman, even in the head, and intimidation is a big part of the psychological warfare of the game. However, it is considered ungentlemanly to target a batsman’s head with a ball that does not bounce even though that is a legal ball (in the traditional form of the game). Hitting him in the head with a ‘bouncer’ is kosher.
Kind of. Fielders certainly soften their throws when the distances are short but at longer distances it’s no holds barred. The weak throws you see are also to do with how cricketers are selected for the team - the strength of one’s throwing arm is not really considered. Players are overwhelmingly chosen on their batting and/or bowling skills, meaning many cricket players have average throwing arms. I’m a batsman with a fairly strong throwing arm but I’ve never been selected for a team on the strength of my arm - that’s just a bonus. The captain, who sets the field, will usually ‘hide’ fielders with weak arms in the infield somewhere but those fielders will still have to chase balls into the outfield. So every fielder’s arm, however weak, is on display. If I go and watch an international game of cricket most of the players will have weaker throwing arms than mine.
I watched a lot of 2016 cricket highlights over the weekends (also watched some pesäpallo highlights…), and I’ve seen many great catches, great hitting, and nice wickets. I think I can now follow a game of cricket and enjoy it. I think there’s is one edge baseball has on cricket, alternate innings.
Twenty20 version of cricket cuts down game time to a more reasonable modern pace, but each team still gets only a single inning. The away team would always bat first, and after all batsmen are out (in regular cricket), the home team tries their hardest to catch up to the score of the away team. That makes scores going back and forth impossible.
In baseball, each half inning could mean a team tying the score, or taking the lead, only to have the other team coming from behind in the next. That aspect, to me, makes baseball more exciting.
I wonder how much it hurts getting hit my a cricket ball by the bowler vs a pitcher. So as a bowler I can hit the batsman without ANY consequences? In baseball, pitcher can also throw inside almost hitting the batter for intimidation and to get them to back off the plate. Pitcher can technically hit a batter but the batter gets on base. Sometimes teams hits one player and the other team hits the other teams player as retribution. But they may also get ejected for doing so, it really depends on the umpire.
By the way, I think a certain type of baseball players probably can transition well into decent cricket bowlers.
Outfielders with a strong arm. They are very accustomed to running while delivering an overhanded throw, often taking 1 bounce before getting to their target.
Shortstops. For the same reason above.
Sidewinders. I’m talking about Randy Johnson type release point. They can probably do round-arm bowling similar to Lasith Malinga.
By the way, how is it possible that bowlers don’t get Labrum tears all the time?
A bowler can hit the batsman as often as he likes in the body without penalty. He can hit the batsman in the head twice per over, provided those balls bounce (in the traditional version of the game - a newer version of the game only allows one at the head per over). I was incorrect before saying a ball at the head, which does not bounce, is legal - I just checked and it isn’t. Cricket has some ‘spirit of the game’ traditions which are not actually rules and I thought that was one of them. When I played cricket no bowler deliberately targeted the batsman’s head with a ball which did not bounce. Such balls did happen occasionally but they were always accidental, often from the bowler losing his grip on a wet ball, and the bowler would always apologize for his mistake. But targeting the batsman’s head with a ‘bouncer’ is extremely common for a genuinely fast bowler and this is expected by the batsman - that’s why they wear helmets.
That may seem dangerous, and it is, but it is not equivalent to a baseball pitcher being able to hit the batter. Firstly, pitchers throw the ball. Bowlers cannot throw, they have to keep their arm straight (technically, a bowler can have a bent arm but he cannot straighten it during his action). It is very hard to bowl at a speed approaching a throw. Secondly, the balls in cricket bounce, which further reduces their speed and lengthens the distance they travel. So a ball coming at your head from a bounce is easier to avoid than one coming directly from the hand. There is also the related question of how tall the bowler is, or, to be more specific: at what height does he release the ball? Tall bowlers, especially those with a high action, release the ball from a great height and the bounce is much steeper; this means that such a bowler can have the ball bounce relatively close to the batsman yet still hit the batsman in the chest or head; short bowlers with low releases cannot achieve this and must bounce the ball much further away from the batsman in order to have the ball climb to head height. There is also, conversely, the issue of batsman height.
From a batsman’s point of view, an extremely fast bowler is scary, and a tall one even more so. So as a first measure you wear a helmet and pray. When the ball is released from the hand you try to read the trajectory and see how far away from you it bounces - this will tell you how high it will be when it passes you. Most balls pass you between knee to waist height. A ball at your head will bounce much further away than those, so you should be ready to either duck under or step to the side of it. The difficulty for a bowler is that it is hard to maintain such speed for long period of time. So although a bowler, initially, may to be too fast for the batsman to do anything other than just survive and avoid getting hit by these dangerous balls, the bowler won’t be able to keep dishing them out forever. When he tires he will replaced by another bowler and few teams have more than two scarily fast bowlers. And, if the batsman is comfortable with the speed, a ball bouncing so far away is easy to hit.
According to the internet baseballs weigh 5.25 ounces and cricket balls weigh 5.5 to 5.75 ounces.
[quote=“antarcticbeech”]
That may seem dangerous, and it is, but it is not equivalent to a baseball pitcher being able to hit the batter. Firstly, pitchers throw the ball. Bowlers cannot throw, they have to keep their arm straight (technically, a bowler can have a bent arm but he cannot straighten it during his action). [/quote]
If you look at Lasith Malinga’s mechanics, it isn’t that different from sidewinders in baseball.
Malinga’s mechanics looks like a sidewinder taking a few run-up steps before throwing as hard as he can. Before you say a bowler can’t bend his elbow…
So yeah, due to the elbow restraint, a bowler can’t shorten the length his hand has to travel through during acceleration by bending their elbows, but aside from that inducing the awkward twisting of the upper torso to allow the bowling shoulder to catch up, once the bowling hand and elbow has caught up, the rest of the mechanics are essentially identical.
Randy Johnson can pitch up to at least 102 mph during his hay day. With a heavier ball, run-up steps, someone with his ability can probably bowl about as fast even after adjusting for not bending his elbow. The fastest bowl on record is 161.3 km/h (100.23 mph) by Shoaib Akhtar (Pakistan). MLB fastball record is set by Aroldis Capman clock at 105 mph.
That guy is a bit of a freak. Kids learning to bowl are usually taught by coaches to bring their bowling arm through as close to vertical as possible. If kids were encouraged to experiment more we might see more roundarm bowlers enjoying success. I haven’t watched much cricket since I arrived in Taiwan and thus haven’t followed Malinga’s career closely but I remember him giving batsmen a lot of trouble with his speed when he was young. He must have slowed down quite a bit, as all fast bowlers do when they age. Many guys that start out bowling around 150 km/h actually spend most of their careers delivering balls in the low 140s or less.
I don’t know anything about labrum tears but, yeah, shoulder injuries are common as are lower back, knee and foot/ankle injuries. The front leg of a fast bowler takes a pounding.
[quote=“antarcticbeech”] He must have slowed down quite a bit, as all fast bowlers do when they age. Many guys that start out bowling around 150 km/h actually spend most of their careers delivering balls in the low 140s or less.
I don’t know anything about labrum tears but, yeah, shoulder injuries are common as are lower back, knee and foot/ankle injuries. The front leg of a fast bowler takes a pounding.
Those pitches in that video are crazy.[/quote]
There is no way bowling mechanics don’t leads to labrum tears. It’s probably why fast bowlers loses speed as they age. Even in baseball, when sports science is working to find the most natural way to throw, repeated throwing still could lead to career ending injuries. There are amazing come back stories, like Taiwan’s Chien-ming Wang, whose labrum tear looked like a careering ending injury for a long time, but now he’s back in the MLB throwing 150 kph at age 36. That kind of a come back take a lot of medical and sports science, tireless rehab and dedication.
By the way, are the Black Caps not allowed to perform Haka before ICC games? Most NZ national sports teams do it, they even performed it before World Baseball Classic games, but I can’t find any Haka videos from the Black Caps.
to target a batsman’s head with a ball that does not bounce even though that is a legal ball (in the traditional form of the game). Hitting him in the head with a ‘bouncer’ is kosher.
When the ball is released from the hand you try to read the trajectory and see how far away from you it bounces - this will tell you how high it will be when it passes you. Most balls pass you between knee to waist height. A ball at your head will bounce much further away than those, so you should be ready to either duck under or step to the side of it. The difficulty for a bowler is that it is hard to maintain such speed for long period of time. So although a bowler, initially, may to be too fast for the batsman to do anything other than just survive and avoid getting hit by these dangerous balls, the bowler won’t be able to keep dishing them out forever. When he tires he will replaced by another bowler and few teams have more than two scarily fast bowlers. And, if the batsman is comfortable with the speed, a ball bouncing so far away is easy to hit.
Kids learning to bowl are usually taught by coaches to bring their bowling arm through as close to vertical as possible. If kids were encouraged to experiment more we might see more roundarm bowlers enjoying success. I haven’t watched much cricket since I arrived in Taiwan and thus haven’t followed Malinga’s career closely but I remember him giving batsmen a lot of trouble with his speed when he was young. He must have slowed down quite a bit, as all fast bowlers do when they age. Many guys that start out bowling around 150 km/h actually spend most of their careers delivering balls in the low 140s or less.
