Sudeep: Lost in the often insular enthusiasm Boston has for baseball is an appreciation of the subtle beauty of its distant cousin, cricket.
The two sports, in many ways, are very similar. Two teams take turns to bat, hitting the ball and running between bases. Each has a set of specialist bowlers, batsmen and fielders. Yet, while baseball, being indigenous to America, has a passionate following, cricket is never even spoken of.
For an international student, this can seem absurd. Baseball, with its flashy lights and commercial exuberance, ultimately melts into a simplistic game of hit-the-ball-as-hard-as-you-can. In comparison, cricket boasts skill, patience and fortitude. Its fielders are soldiers, bare-palmed and exposed, risking injury catching high flying balls without gloves. Its batsmen must hit yorkers, bouncers and googlies, balls flying at over ninety miles an hour, only to land at their feet, ricocheting off the ground in every conceivable direction. Some bowlers spin, others curve, others have sheer pace. Only a cricketer can stand still at the crease, his thoughts singular, his breath steady, predicting the inscrutable whims of the pitch in milliseconds to gently tap the lethal ball into the small gap on his periphery.
But more than the skill and the patience required from the sportsmen, cricket gets its flavor from fans. Cricket supporters are not mindless slaves to a commercial entity. This game is not played for profit. While baseball teams may feel free to relocate from city to city and its players can sell their allegiance to the highest bidder, cricket is a game played between nations. Billions sit still for hours as countries battle it out in noisy arenas. Entire nations erupt into flames at the twist of a ball. The best cricketers get their names written into history. The worst get their houses looted.
Peter: I have experienced the beauty of American baseball. Rooting for the Oakland A's for the last twenty years of my life has not only been a personal passion but, dare I say, it has also built character. I'm proud that I've seen some of baseballs' immortal ballparks - from watching my beloved A's crush the Sox at Fenway to seeing one of Big Mac's last games with the A's at Yankee stadium.
I believe baseball is good not only because it is America's pastime, but also because it can help bring us together. Democrats, Republicans, hippies and Evangelicals alike can all enjoy a nice summer day with a hotdog and soda at the ballpark. Sure, people squabble over which of their respective home teams is better, but in the end we can all come to consensus on some things - unconditionally rooting against the New York Yankees, for example.
If cricket truly has no "commercial exuberance" and its supports are not for profit, one wonders why the board vice-president of the India Premier League said that to date they had made almost $1.8 billion, and media contracts for cricket alone exceed a billion dollars.
Unlike baseball, cricket can serve to exacerbate conflict and stir unrest. The bowlers are allowed to violently toss the ball directly at the batter, something the integrity of baseball would never allow. Not only have allegations of racism sprung up between cricket-playing nations, the bitter rivalry of between India and Pakistan pits a billion and a half people against each other in a senseless sporting competition, exacerbating political and cultural tensions. While baseball unites, cricket divides.
Sudeep Bhatia is a junior majoring in philosophy; Peter Radosevich is a junior majoring in political science. They can be reached at Sudeep.Bhatia@tufts.edu and Peter.Radosevich@tufts.edu, respectively.
