Comparison of baseball and cricket

Bat-and-ball games

Main article: Bat-and-ball games

Bat-and-ball games, in general, are sports in which one team (the fielding team) has possession of the ball and delivers it to a member of the other team (the batting team), who tries to hit it. The two opposing teams take turns playing these two distinct roles, which are continuous during a specified interval. This contrasts with "goal-oriented" games, such as all forms of football, hockey and basketball, in which possession of the ball or puck can change in an instant, and thus "attackers" and the "defenders" frequently reverse roles during the course of the game.

In both cricket and baseball, the players of one team attempt to score points known as runs by hitting a ball with a bat, while the members of the other team field the ball in an attempt to prevent scoring and to put batting players out.

Once a certain number of batting players are out (different in the two sports), the teams swap roles. This sequence of each team taking each role once is called an inning in baseball, and an innings in cricket (the singular form having a terminal 's'). The single/plural usage in cricket is comparable to the baseball slang term for a single inning as the team's "ups". A baseball game consists of nine innings, while a cricket match may have either one or two innings per team.

Other present-day bat-and-ball games include softball, stickball, rounders, stoolball, pesäpallo or Finnish baseball, punchball, kickball, and British baseball, which has similarities with both cricket and baseball. Earlier forms include The Massachusetts Game of baseball, which was similar to rounders, and one old cat and two old cat.