Three strikes and you’re bowled!

After I moved to the U.S one thing I struggled with the most was the beginning of a work meeting.

Conversations would invariably start with sports-talk. Did you catch last night’s Packers game? What about that Braves offence? Weren’t they the best?

For someone grown up on a staple diet of cricket, cricket and more cricket, this was tough. I felt lost. I tried to smile along. But what made it harder was the lingo. ERAs, shut-outs, curve-balls, at-bats, OPG, OPS, offence, defence. The Hail Mary pass!

How am I ever going to understand these games?

Americans love their sports. And true baseball fans are deep into game stats. That’s what first intrigued me. Being a research consultant and a bit of a data-nerd, the stats talked to me. I had watched Moneyball — the Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill starrer in which a team manager builds a team of undervalued talent by taking a sophisticated sabermetric approach to scouting and analyzing players.

To understand the game a little better — specifically the predictive analytics that teams were employing — I bought the book Astroball by Ben Reiter. The author predicted that the Houston Astros would win the World Series in 2017 (they did).

I was hooked.

Picking a team to follow and root for was difficult. Should I pick the best team to follow? Should I pick the team that represents where I live?

I also immediately (and naturally) started comparing baseball with cricket.

Baseball is synonymous with the American way of life — American summers, hot dogs, holding hands and singing (still don’t understand that). Baseball is America’s game.

Granted cricket did not originate in India. It was more a legacy left behind by the departing British rulers. But one can safely say today that cricket now is as Indian as hamburgers are American.

My attempts at comparing the two games became an effort to reconcile two cultures. As an Indian starting my life in America, it offered me a window into American life, culture and lifestyle.

My attempt here is not to make binary connections between the two games and the two cultures. In many ways, they don’t stand on a continuum. And the descriptions I will use are broad and not generalizable.

I am also not trying to determine which game is better than the other.

This is just my way of making sense of it all.

Baseball is a pastime. Cricket is a spectacle.

Baseball seasons are long and leisurely. 30 teams play 162 games — a mindboggling 2,430 games in one season — not including the playoffs. Compared with just 60 odd games in the Indian Premier League (IPL) — cricket’s annual extravaganza. That’s 40 times more baseball games than cricket games in the IPL. The baseball season is long — extending from summer to fall. The games resemble long and luxurious family picnics rather than cut-throat tournaments (at least till you get to the playoffs). In my first few baseball games, I saw that people were more interested in the concession stand than what was going on in the middle of the field. And you didn’t need to know the rules as much to enjoy the game. No wonder baseball is called America’s pastime.

Cricket today on the other hand is pure entertainment akin to Bollywood (a pejorative used to describe the Indian film industry). Especially the IPL. In IPL games, you are going to see screaming fans, high voltage energy, pyrotechnics and American football styled cheerleaders. Indians are passionate about cricket and they take it seriously. Sometimes too seriously. It is not surprising to hear of the Indian captain’s house being stoned because the team lost a big game. The flagship Cricket World Cup organized every four years is perhaps the biggest spectacle. Work shuts down and the streets start looking like the aftermath of an apocalypse.

Cricket in India is a tamasha (a big entertaining spectacle). And all must partake.

Some of my American colleagues are fond of saying that they are more of a baseball guy or a football gal. If you are Indian and you say you don’t really like cricket, you might face extreme isolation, be branded a pariah and potentially have your family disown you. That tells you something about Indian culture. About India’s penchant for big, bold life moments. Just like their Bollywood, Indians want a grand spectacle in their cricket too — the emotional roller coaster ride, big bold heroics, the exuberance and hopefully the fairytale happy endings.

The rules are massively different

The games look similar but the rules are dramatically different. In the beginning, I knew that baseball was similar to cricket. Well, both games are played with a bat and a ball. But that is where the similarity ends.

As I started watching baseball games I realized how remarkably different the rules were. I bugged my coworkers to explain the game to me. Some of the rules just didn’t make sense. I kept watching but some of the rules came so out of left field (see what I did there!) that they seemed weird, odd and ambiguous.

Perhaps the most ambiguous ‘concept’ in the game of baseball is the strike zone — the invisible box just behind the batter. While there are rules that give you a definition of the strike zone, in most games, it’s left up to the judgment of the umpire whether a pitch passed through the zone. In baseball, the batter has three strikes. And you can face four balls (that do not hit the imaginary strike zone) and walk to first base. You can take your time, plot your course. Breathe a little even when you miss a ball.

In cricket, the strike zone is three wooden sticks dug into the ground called stumps. You hit those, the batsman (the batter) is out. No strikes, No balls. Hasta la vista. There is a certain finality to that.

The strike zone in baseball is one rule that stumped me (am I nailing those analogies or what?!). And perhaps that is why the clarity and finality of the stumps work for Indians. No ambiguity. Straightforward result. There are other ways you can get out. But the stumps is what cricketers guard with their lives.

That does not mean Indians can’t deal with ambiguity. On the contrary, Indians thrive when there is ambiguity. Indians really know how to improvise. Jugaad (or frugal innovation) was recently the subject of study for many Ivy league schools including at Harvard. I also don’t mean that Americans can’t deal with ambiguity. Americans can deal with ambiguity as long as someone calls the shots. But Indians need extreme clarity just to keep moving ahead. You can expect a meeting of Indians to be long-drawn, with sometimes endless debates and arguments.

American culture is different. Meetings can be inclusive, consensus-driven. But then someone calls the shot. And it’s done. And we all move on.

Cricket is about endurance. Baseball is pure bursts of energy.

My American friends are shocked to know that a form of cricket called tests is played over 5 full days. And each day and each ball (a pitch for my American friends) is watched with great gusto and enthusiasm — even when the game ends up being a draw!

The game of cricket is about endurance. Staying power. A well-known cricket player now retired was nicknamed the wall. You knew when he set foot on the cricket pitch, that he intended to stay — perhaps for days in the 5-day test. The pace of the game would become slow, draggy. But to most Indians, still extremely enjoyable and each ball would be analysed and dissected with great rigour. That would be torture for a baseball fan.

An average baseball game is three hours. Of course, some games can go beyond the stipulated nine innings — but most rarely do. The game itself reflects American culture in more ways than one. The fast and agile gameplay reflects what Americans value — speed and time. And time is money. The aggression is on full display too. The first time I saw ‘benches cleared’ in a baseball game, I wondered whether I was watching a baseball game or a gladiatorial wrestling match.

Cricket on the other hand has always been known as the gentleman’s game. One can hark back to long, leisurely games being enjoyed, sitting in airy pavilions in the English countryside, enjoying a spot of tea. Not any longer.

In the recent past, the level of aggression has been ramped up — first by the Australians sledging their competitors, egging them on to make a mistake. And now by the aggression on display by young, firebrand Indian cricketers — including the current captain.

Indian cricket is highly competitive. To make the national team one must navigate their way through multiple local, state and regional tournaments. They must stand out amongst millions. When you make it to the Indian cricket team, you know you have arrived. But you also know that your spot is not guaranteed. You are as good as your last game. Indian fans will adore you. But won’t be that forgiving when they see you stumble. In my opinion, baseball fans are more forgiving. Because there is always next year! Indians have to wait for four years to see the possibility of their national team lifting the cricket world cup.

These were important learnings. They provided me with a clearer view of American culture — something I could use to navigate my way through life in the U.S.

Nowadays I get into meetings knowing I can engage in some sports-talk. I still pray that there are more baseball guys and gals in the meeting room (or in the zoom) than those who are college football obsessed. I still don’t get American football — and that’s okay. Let’s take it one sport at a time.

And I did pick a team. It wasn’t the Houston Astros. The data-savvy Astros had allegedly cheated in 2017. Team members supposedly banged on empty trash cans to signal what plays would work best to their pitcher.

I picked the Dodgers — the Astros’ opponents in the 2017 world series — and the rightful winners of the commissioner’s trophy that year.

They represent the city of Los Angeles — a city I love and where I now reside. I feel good about the choice. In fact, I think this choice is a sixer. Ahem. I mean a home run!

So take me out to the ball game. I am ready.