Cricket & Baseball
Cricket is basically baseball on valium - Robin Williams.
Cricket in America is often mocked as a knockoff of baseball. But the truth is baseball originates from cricket.
The times of war, starting from the civil war to WW2, led to the adoption of baseball as a recreational sport over cricket due to its ease and undemanding nature.
A cricket field required proper maintenance to ensure a high-quality game, as compared to a baseball game, which, at that time, neither required a well maintained ground nor the cumbersome equipment needed to maintain a cricket field.
A pick-up game of baseball could be played anywhere, as long as the field was wide enough, making it more accessible , whereas a pitch and well-trimmed grass were prerequisites for a cricket game, something that was hard to come by due to the immense destruction caused by the wars.
Correspondingly, leisurely pace and mannerisms of cricket made it ill-suited during the intense unrest resulting from the wars. A game of cricket was just not feasible because it took five days to finish; soldiers at war or the young children back home would not have had the freedom to spend nine hours a day on a cricket ground.
Further, fewer people were required to play a game of baseball. A cricket game requires 11 players on each side, whereas a baseball game requires only nine players.
The combination of these factors resulted in baseball, considered a children game before the war, to be adopted as the go-to recreational activity for the Americans, mainly the soldiers. The acceptance baseball received during the war led to the downfall of cricket in America, and since, cricket has not managed to make its way back into the minds and hearts of the Americans.
Since then, both the games have taken a separate journey in their evolution. The evolution of baseball is rooted in the United States itself, while the journey of cricket in America continues to be influenced by cricket worldwide.
In the present, although both sports have carried forward their respective legacies, rules, and mannerisms, cricket and baseball have undergone a massive transformation to keep up with the time shifts.
