| Finnish baseball 13:44 - Jan 19 with 392 views | Sharkey |
The thread on the football page about improvements to the sport made me think about Finnish baseball, "pesäpallo", (there is no letter b in Finnish).
Two big differences from baseball. 1. pitching is not really a big thing. Basically the pitcher lobs the ball up in the air at least a certain height , and it should (if it landed) land on a square metal plate, - but mostly it doesn't land because it's pretty easy to hit. (But the batsman can leave the ball and get a point if he realises the ball is going to miss the plate.)
2. The batter then must hit the ball so it lands on the field. (As long as it has bounced at least once on the field , it can go into the car park or whatever and still be considered in play). In other words, you get no points at all for hitting the ball out of the park (i.e. a 6 in cricket). So you're trying to hit the ball through the fielders, rather than over them. This means the fielders are always involved, ... and the fielding (especially the throwing) is unbelievably good to watch.
It's like baseball but with about ten times as much fielding involved. Legend has it that the sport was adapted from baseball by the Finnish military to make their soldiers better at throwing grenades.
I think top-level T20 cricket would be more interesting if a 4 was worth 6 and a 6 was worth 4. The fielders would be more involved, and the more skillful batsmen would be rewarded more for ''squeezing the ball through the covers" than top edging it over third man. The playing area should be as big as possible ( - very big at the Oval for example) , and then fielders with really good throws would really come into their own, and also the fielders who are quick across the ground.
I say this as someone who started to love cricket in the first place because I watched Keith Boyce fielding on the boundary for Essex when I was about 6.)
Of course it will never happen, but I would like to see a game played with these rules. |  | | |  |
| Finnish baseball on 19:21 - Jan 19 with 295 views | norfsufblue |
I like the boundary value switch idea, never reallythought of it like that and would be an interesting experiment. |  | | |
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