Game Length
Game length Baseball games are generally much shorter than cricket games. Most Major League Baseball games last between two-and-a-half and four-and-a-half hours. Because the Major League playing season is 6 months long (183 days), with 81 games played at home and 81 away (162 in all, not counting the postseason or the All-Star Game), baseball teams often find themselves playing double-headers and series games. A doubleheader entails two matches, played back to back, in one day. This usually occurs when a match needed to be rescheduled, and is fairly common. A series occurs when two teams play on several consecutive days. This is an even more common occurrence in baseball because of the number of games required in a season, and because there are large distances between stadiums in the U.S. and Canada, thus conserving time and resources by allowing the teams to spend several days in a single location. In Major League Baseball there is a maximum of 20 days consecutively played before a break in matches must be observed.
Test Cricket games can last up to five days with scheduled breaks each day for lunch and tea, giving three sessions of play each day. The shorter version of the game (termed one-day games) usually lasts from five to seven hours, but can sometimes continue for longer than eight hours.
A new form of cricket, called Twenty20 for its innings of twenty overs per team, has recently and successfully debuted in domestic and international competitions. The average time it takes to play an individual game of Twenty20 cricket is similar to the amount of time it takes to play a game of baseball, around three to three-and-a-half hours.
ODI and Twenty20 cricket, with their inherent limit on the number of fair deliveries, do not have an exact equivalent in baseball. The closest comparison would be games that have a pre-set number of innings shorter than the standard 9 (as with the second game of a doubleheader at some levels) or a pre-set time limit of some kind, such as a curfew restriction, or in the case of one of baseball's cousins, recreational softball, a pre-set length of the game, such as one hour.
Test Cricket games can last up to five days with scheduled breaks each day for lunch and tea, giving three sessions of play each day. The shorter version of the game (termed one-day games) usually lasts from five to seven hours, but can sometimes continue for longer than eight hours.
A new form of cricket, called Twenty20 for its innings of twenty overs per team, has recently and successfully debuted in domestic and international competitions. The average time it takes to play an individual game of Twenty20 cricket is similar to the amount of time it takes to play a game of baseball, around three to three-and-a-half hours.
ODI and Twenty20 cricket, with their inherent limit on the number of fair deliveries, do not have an exact equivalent in baseball. The closest comparison would be games that have a pre-set number of innings shorter than the standard 9 (as with the second game of a doubleheader at some levels) or a pre-set time limit of some kind, such as a curfew restriction, or in the case of one of baseball's cousins, recreational softball, a pre-set length of the game, such as one hour.
