Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2017 September 19

= September 19 =

Is the level of play higher in Test Cricket or Major League Baseball?
Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 18:42, 19 September 2017 (UTC)


 * You do realize that this calls for debate and, thus, violates the guidelines for this ref desk. MarnetteD&#124;Talk 18:52, 19 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Besides which, cricket is not baseball. It's like trying to compare the top tennis players with the top ping-pong players. A valid question could be whether test cricket is considered the highest level within the cricket world. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:25, 19 September 2017 (UTC)


 * It's actually quite easy to answer this question conclusively. There are only ten (10) test cricket teams in the entire world. In any given calendar year around 15 people (maybe up to 20 people if there are many changes in a squad) play test matches for each of those teams. Thus in any given year only about 150 to 200 people play at least one test cricket match. Forty players are contracted to each of the 30 current MLB teams in any given year, thus there are potentially up to 1,200 people who play at least one MLB match in any season. The populations from which the players of the respective sports are drawn are around 300 million for MLB versus significantly over a billion for cricket. Thus it is vastly more likely that any random American would play MLB than any of the citizens of the ten test playing countries might play test cricket. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 21:19, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
 * That makes no sense, it is like claiming that the NBA is a qualitatively better league than MLB because the rosters have half as many players and the teams play half as many games. The answer is "it's not answerable" because they are both the highest level of their respective sports, and any so-called objective metric is just whatever bullshit stats brought in to "verify" ones already preformed opinion.  The question is not answerable, and we should just leave it at that.-- Jayron 32 01:13, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
 * "vastly more likely" is not a "conclusive" answer - and all the WP:OR numbers are still "debatable." MarnetteD&#124;Talk 21:25, 19 September 2017 (UTC)