This past weekend I took a trip to the cricket cages for batting practice. I learned two things: 1) Cricket batting technique is not in the same universe as baseball hitting. 2) Bowling (pitching) uses muscles a baseball pitch does not. The next day, the right side of my torso felt like it was given a beating.
While bowling, you cannot bend your elbow as you throw. As far as batting goes, the point is not to hit the snot out of the ball like in baseball. Sometimes you only need to block the ball because the main point is to protect the wickets. So often I let quality balls go by me that were, in my mind, “out of the strike zone.” Other times, I tried a baseball swing. Word to the wise: this doesn’t work.
I definitely caught onto bowling more easily. I actually bowled well by the end of the afternoon. Batting was a different story. Very hard to unlearn nearly 20 years of baseball technique. In baseball, you extend your arms, throw your hands at the ball, swing all the way through, and turn your hips for power. In cricket…well, you don’t do any of that. Take a look…
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Bowling. They bowl from 22 meters, which is a bit longer than the 60 ft. 6 in. from the mound to the plate.
I look like I play the part. You wear so much armor, as I call it, that it’s hard to actually focus on hitting.
There are no foul balls, since the field is circular. This ball, going behind me, would be in play.
My best connection of the afternoon. Looks like a baseball swing, huh?
And finally…this is what you call a “whiff.” I can hear my dad saying to me, “Keep your head in there!”
James Pruch 