Walker

Then I shall declare victory! Cricket is officially better than baseball.

So you agree with me about bowling? I'm assuming your attempt to divert the discussion is at admission of defeat.

I'm saying that cricket is thought of as a gentlemens game. Sort of like jousting in that it's all about honour and chivalry. It's not actually like that, but it's supposed to be.

Well, as long as you're happy to look like a ducks face.

Whatever. What I'm saying is that pitching is just a specialised form of throwing. Bowling isn't a specialised form of throwing, it's bowling.

Whatever, dude. All I'm getting at is that it's supposed to be a "polite" contest. You know what I mean.

But why would you want your head to look like a ducks face?

Sorry, I'm just imagining a sex locomotive.

Bowling cannot possibly be reduced to throw ball, hit wicket". Bowling is nothing like throwing. It's about rhythm and technique, none of which come naturally (I remember it took me weeks to figure out bowling). Your arm doesn't bend, and you have to literally swing it around your body. Of course you're going to keep arguing with me until you actually try to bowl properly (which I'll admit is highly unlikely in the first place). Pitching is more of a sidearm, slingshot action, which comes a lot more naturally. Cricket players learn how to throw through their fielding, and can generally hit a single stump (a couple of feet high and about the diametre of a 20c piece) from 20 yards away, with lightning reflexes. A pitcher would have to study the action, then learn it, keeping his rhythm... rhythmic. He'd then have to work on his aim. It's a lot harder than point and throw (which, again, cricketers learn how to do rather well).

Okay...? I don't make the rules, dude.

Yeah, but it protects about a fifth the area. Cricket hats may look silly, but that's the price you pay to avoid skin cancer.

I agree that Coasties incorporate aspects that are both ninja and pirate. They're like the ultimate hybrid. They are awesome. I was not talking about Coasties, though, was I?

No, because a pitcher would have to learn a discipline which is entirely alien to them. It would take them days (at the very least) to get the rhythm down, let alone actually being able to get the ball to land where you want it. A bowler could learn to pitch much quicker because they already know how to throw, and rather accuratly I might say. After that, it's a simple matter of learning the proper footwork, etc.

Hence the qualifier "supposed to be".

Keeps the sun off the head though, so it's more practical than anything.

And a ninja isn't a coastie. I would never say that a coastie couldn't get on board a pirate ship, because that's what they do.

Well, I'm sure if a baseball player got to have go after go, and counting bases as runs, the scores would probably be equal.

I'm talking about your best pitcher and our best bowler swapping places. The pitcher would take longer to learn how to bowl than the bowler would to learn how to pitch.

What? Cricket is a gentleman's game (or at least it's supposed to be). They don't look like that anyway (at least not in international cricket). They look like this in a test match



And like this in a one day match



Ignore the indian guy.

What's so weird about the hat?

Ok, so you're saying that baseball pitchers can do the same number of different things if you exclude swing, reverse swing and the ability to bounce the ball. Riiiiight. I guess it does, considering batsman have worked on how to reduce that degree by running (it's really a little kind of skip) to get closer to the ball. Of course, if they miss, they'll get stumped and go out.

Same! We'd be the perfect couple. Alright, take two professional players, at equivelant level, from out respective sports. A cricket player could learn to pitch well before a pitcher could learn to bowl at all.

Yeah, I get that. I just thought we were talking about the measured speeds.

Ok, so if pitchers don't get any speed from bending their elbows, then why did they abolish the straight arm rule?

Thanks very much.

Did you complete the game? Coz it may get a bit spoilery...

Is the leveling system different?

I've heard that there are paragon/renegade actions that you can choose in a limited time.

Is it true?

But I'm pretty sure they measure the balls speed out of the bowlers hand, rather than after it pitches.

A bowlers followthrough is generally straight armed (with the exception of spin bowlers, but that's only because they do crazy **** with their wrists and fingers, and are allowed to bend their arm more than fastbowlers).

No, it wont. You can't swing a baseball (I'll get to that later). You can't change the angle you pitch from, you can't make it spin off the ground. Sure, you can make it curve in the air, but spin bowlers (and Lasith Malinga) do that too. It's definitely not easier to tell with spin bowling. You don't know which way it's going to go or how far it's going to go, and it does it abruptly, making it less predictable.

A cricket ball can curve and drop and change in midair. It can also do a few other things.

And since you asked, swing involves differences in the aerodynamic properties of each side of the ball. Over the course of a game, the fielding team will polish one side of the ball with sweat and saliva (you might have seen a fast bowler rubbing the ball on his pantleg in a vaguely erotic manner), whilst allowing the other side to become scratched and rough. This means you end up with one smooth side and one rough side. The smooth side creates less friction, and thus moves faster in the air, whilst the rough side creates more and moves slower. This means that the ball ends up moving towards the rough side as it travels through the air.

Reverse swing is pretty simple. When the polished side of the ball becomes so polished that it becomes significantly heavier than the other side, it starts swinging towards the heavier side. This means that it moves a lot later and a lot more severely than conventional swing. Because the ball moves in the opposide direction than in conventional swing, it is called reverse swing.

You say that like bowling is something anyone can do. Pitching is really only throwing the ball, and anyone can do that. Sure, it involves technique and skill to be able to do it well, but I'm 100% certain that I could learn how to pitch well before you could learn how to bowl.

Dude. I'm serious.

Oh yes I did ;]

Well, there's no way you'd want to survey every planet. Seriously, it'd take you weeks,

What..........?

I'm worried about the surveying and probes. I want to complete the game 100%. Will it show "100% completed" or something when you've done everything in that system and in that cluster?

Is getting credits and resources hard? Do you have to pay to get probes? Do you have to pay to get fuel? How is surveying of the planets now? Is it different? Can you land on uncharted worlds like in Mass Effect 1? Is it possible to miss any paragon choices if you do not have enough paragon points?

That's it for now.

Thanks.

Hey Walker, I have a few questions about Mass Effect 2.

But, you also have to deal with the ball going up and down, side to side (which it does a lot more severely than in Baseball) and different angles the bowler can bowl from.

I'm saying that a pitcher has a lot less choices to choose from when he's deciding how to throw the ball.

And I'm arguing that it's easy to hit a vanilla ball at just below waist height, with no spin or swing about it. That's what you're baseball player was doing in that video. If you add swing or reverse swing to the equation (If you hadn't noticed, I'm trying to bait you into asking me to explain to you the physics of swing and reverse swing. Not for arguments sake, I just think you'll find it interesting), drift, spin, or cutting, all of which are in common use in cricket games, then you'll find that hitting a cricket ball is perhaps not as easy as baseball. Even if it's not as hard, and you can't really prove it either way, it's definitely close.

Ok, your sister plays softball. Try and get her to pitch with her arm completely straight, and see if she can get the same speed she usually does.

On a side note, after some research I've realised that the speed of delivery is about the same in both sports. The fastest cricket bowl was 100.02 mph, whilst the fastest baseball pitch was 100.9 mph. Also, apparantly cricket balls are heavier. A baseball has to be between 5 and 5.25 ounces, whilst a cricket ball has to be between 5.5 and 5.8 ounces.

But you're not taking into account that a softball is thrown from about 20 feet closer, is less dense and larger, which means more turbulence, and it moves around more in the air.

But you said that a pitcher can do anything that a bowler can do. Removing the restrictions on the strike zone, a pitcher still couldn't do half the things a good bowler can do.

No, it's supposed to get you to realise that batting in cricket isn't the easiest thing in the world, which seems to be your outlook.

But, as I said, a softball is both larger and less dense, meaning that wind resistance has a lot more of an effect on it. Not to mention the fact that you typically have women throwing them (not meaning to come across as sexist, but women aren't generally as strong as men).

The tactics are similar enough, the skills are similar enough. It's logic (pure, untainted logic) which should make it obvious for anyone with a working brain that having a larger surface area, padding, and webbing between the digits, makes a ball easier to catch. You don't even have to have it touch your hand! It can just land in the webbing and be completely safe. You may as well use nets.

Actually, a pitcher is a lot more limited in variation than a bowler. The bowler can change his angle by bowling on either side of the stumps, he can make the ball deviate in the air three different ways (using spin [drift], swing and reverse swing), and have it spin OR cut in a different direction off the pitch.

I highly doubt it. He's left all kinds of gaps in between his legs and the bat, which means the ball can get through a lot more easily than otherwise. This is why good spin bowling is so effective: The batsman doesn't know which direction the ball is going to bounce. It could go left, right or stay straight. Secondly, even if he does know which direction he doesn't know how severely it's going to deviate. The bowler doesn't even know a lot of the time. Barring a fluke, any hit will almost certainly be an edge or some kind of mis hit, and it will get caught by a fielder.

But you forget that in softball, you're dealing with a much bigger ball, and an all around seam (more turbulence). I doubt they would be able to get the same speeds by keeping their arm completely straight, even in the follow through.