{"id":465,"date":"2008-06-17T18:55:59","date_gmt":"2008-06-17T17:55:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=465"},"modified":"2009-09-26T11:47:09","modified_gmt":"2009-09-26T10:47:09","slug":"switch-hitting-cricketers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=465","title":{"rendered":"Switch-hitting cricketers"},"content":{"rendered":"

I posted last week about the proposed MCC exhibition tracing the relationship between baseball and cricket.\u00c2\u00a0 One of the ways cricket has borrowed from baseball over the years is in the terms and phrases that it conjures up.\u00c2\u00a0 If you listen to commentary of cricket games, you will often hear the odd baseball word or phrase thrown in.\u00c2\u00a0 Another one has just been added to the list.<\/p>\n

Everyone has gone ‘switch-hit’ crazy over the last couple of days thanks to Kevin Pieterson’s audacious shot playing against the Kiwis on Sunday and, of course, the resulting hoo-hah over whether it is legal and ‘within the spirit of the game’.\u00c2\u00a0 The MCC held an emergency meeting today and has decided <\/a>that the shot is legal.\u00c2\u00a0 That means plenty of cricketers (from village parks to county grounds) will be making fools of themselves trying to hit from their weaker side, and ‘switch-hit’ will become an established part of cricket parlance.<\/p>\n

Richard\u00c2\u00a0Williams\u00c2\u00a0from the Guardian has\u00c2\u00a0likened<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0Pieterson’s play to switch-hitting in baseball and\u00c2\u00a0makes reference\u00c2\u00a0to arguably\u00c2\u00a0the greatest exponent: Mickey Mantle.\u00c2\u00a0 KP’s batting was\/is controversial because he switched during the bowler’s delivery.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Williams makes the point that ballplayers cannot switch from one side of the plate once the pitcher has started his wind-up.\u00c2\u00a0 I can just imagine someone leaping from one batter’s box to the other while trying to hit a 97 MPH fastball!\u00c2\u00a0 That 0.4 second reaction time is short enough already.<\/p>\n

Switch-hitting is seen as being a perfect new addition to this brave new world of Twenty20 cricket, driven by the money of Indian franchises and Sir Allen Stanford.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 The latter\u00c2\u00a0reckons Twenty20 could be the format to sell cricket to America.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m not the slightest bit convinced of this, much as I enjoy watching the odd game of Twenty20 myself.\u00c2\u00a0 If we’re being honest, Twenty20 is trying to grab hold of some of the things that make baseball such an appealing sport to play and watch and throwing out a pale substitute in comparison.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve no doubt that cricket-mad countries like India will continue to lap up Twenty20, but having watched a couple of games on TV recently they do quickly become very repetitive.\u00c2\u00a0 Unlike baseball.<\/p>\n

In fact far from making America turn to cricket, Twenty20 is more likely to\u00c2\u00a0encourage cricket fans to give baseball a look, which can only be good news.\u00c2\u00a0 If they do, they’ll at least recognise a switch-hitter when they see one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I posted last week about the proposed MCC exhibition tracing the relationship between baseball and cricket.\u00c2\u00a0 One of the ways cricket has borrowed from baseball over the years is in the terms and phrases that it conjures up.\u00c2\u00a0 If you listen to commentary of cricket games, you will often hear the odd baseball word or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[553],"class_list":["post-465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlb-2","tag-mlb-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=465"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4594,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465\/revisions\/4594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}