Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I see baseball as a predominantly North American and Japanese sport.
I am no expert on this particular field, but as far as I can tell, it has not garnered the worldwide support that other US exports have done.
Not that traditionally cricket has fared a great deal better. Seen largely as an "Empire Sport" played by nations once a part of Britain's colonies, its slow pace and tiny nuances have all too often dissuaded the casual sports fan from sitting down and watching a five day test.
Enter Twenty20 cricket.
The format, with each team facing a single 20 over innings (an over is six balls), has revolutionised the game and turned a once tactical and intricate field game into a smash and crash frenzy.
Following the success of the shorter game, a group of incredibly rich Indian cricket fans decided to form a league comprising of the world's greatest players all playing a small season of Twenty20.
The IPL, or Indian Premier League, has attracted almost all of the globe's leading stars through the healthy salaries and exciting format and led to a buzz around the sport not seen since the inception of the one day format.
The big-hitting, frenetic pace of the games have already taken a firm grip on fans and led to some of the most incredible feats of cricket in recent memory, with one batsman, New Zealand's Brendon McCullum, scoring a sensational 158 runs from 73 balls in the league's opening fixture.
With the incredible enthusiasm for the game being generated and the sure-fire TV audiences that are watching around the world, one question stuck in my mind: why has baseball not done a similar thing?
Like I said, I am not an expert on the sport, but I imagine that reducing the number of innings in a match from nine to five, for example, would increase the pace and urgency of the game, creating more excitement and fun for the uninitiated world sports fan.
Why not try to create a small, knock-out tournament comprising of the world's best players using a shorter format in the off-season?
Cricket was stagnating before Twenty20 and the new lease of life given to it promises to create a new generation of players from around the world and increase its standing to a leading global sport.
I'm sure that baseball fans would love to see the same happen to their beloved game.
2 comments Last one added 2 months ago — Leave a Comment
arun kamath about 1 year ago
Never thought IPL was big outside INDIA!!!
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Simon Langley 2 months ago
As both a cricket and baseball fan, I have to disagree with you. For one thing, baseball games aren't all that long, not much longer than a Twenty20 game.
However, the main reason they cannot do this, is that the mechanics of the game would prevent it from working. Since most batters are out after no more than 4 pitches (usually) they have to swing at most pitches that would be strikes. You just cannot bide your time in baseball like you can in cricket. Batsmen in Twenty20 take risks that test batsmen just wouldn't take. In a shortened baseball game, the batters couldn't take any more risks than they already take. All that would happen is that the game would be too short.
One other reason why I wouldn't want to see this is that I am a baseball (and cricket) purist. Test cricket is the only real game and like cricket, the main form of the baseball game has not changed substantially for decades. It is possible sensibly to compare Babe Ruth's record with A-Rod's just as one can compare Don Bradman's and Ricky Ponting's. You can't do that in football (either association or NFL), rugby etc as the rules have changed too frequently.
BTW Go Yankees (please)!
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